the yellow chair

2002-09-22T08:06:00.000-05:00

What the lines represent. In the diagram below, left of the vertical line represents above average people, to the right of the vertical line are those who are below average. The line at the bottom is zero people. Most people are near the center, where the curve is highest. Few people are at the extremes, where the curve is lowest.

Conclusion. Measuring the intelligence of large groups such as race or nationality produces results that are not useful or perhaps harmful. What matters is opportunities for individuals. In comparing races or nationalities, one who is below average who belongs to the brighter group can find ego enhancement despite his inferiority to a good number of people of the other race or nationality who are brighter than he. Ego enhancement is okay, but not at the expense of others. People should find self-worth somewhere other than in considering whether they are better than others.
Early Civilizations. Some have found ego enhancement in being descended from a people who became civilized earlier than others. This is a mistake. They do not know whether their ancestor was one of the lesser in intelligence of that early civilization. And those who were earlier in creating civilization were not necessarily superior to other peoples -- although they considered themselves as such and called the not-yet-civilized an equivalent to the word barbarian. . One people who proved themselves other than inferior but who were late in creating civilization were those who occupied the islands now called Japan. Geographical accident played a role in who was civilized earlier than others. The Sumerians, for example, happened upon the Ubaidians and took to their agricultural ways, and perhaps acquired their writing from the Ubaidians. Civilization rose where a greater opportunity for agricultural abundance existed rather than among people who were superior. Happenstance brought success to those early in creating civilization, but happenstance also brought an early demise. The Sumerians soon disappeared as a people. The Egyptians were overrun by the Assyrians and others. The great Assyrian Empire and a good number of Assyrians were wiped out around 600 BC. Those who appeared superior for awhile all eventually failed as a people.

2002-09-21T13:34:00.000-05:00

the new observations are pointing to an ever-more puzzling Universe: a Universe whose birth was dominated by mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

"We're stuck with a preposterous Universe," he says.

The observations confirm the inflation theory of the early evolution of the Universe, which describes an explosive spurt of expansion when the Universe was young.

2002-09-21T04:32:00.000-05:00

2002-09-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

Feynman said this about the students he met in Brazil,"
After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant. "
I believe I have met them also...we teach fact but no time left for meaning and understanding...

2002-09-20T08:22:00.000-05:00

I got up at 2 then pretended to sleep till 2 30 wow guess who is tired now...

2002-09-19T04:01:00.000-05:00

If you would like to throw a brick of correction into the Massive Glass Walls of the educational machine pass this site along to every intelligent human you may happen to meet...Engines for Education by Roger Schank, an extraordinary scholar of learning and teaching...

2002-09-18T05:42:00.000-05:00

Why aren't more people listening to this program?

2002-09-14T07:24:00.000-05:00

A reminder of a decade I lived in once upon a time...

2002-09-13T06:05:00.000-05:00

Is war coming soon?

2002-09-09T06:17:00.000-05:00

I have a student (whose mom I also taught) who said, "we must be gone for two weeks can I get my assignments now"...well no but yes I said...i have an electronic version of my classroom and starting Monday I will post assignments and messages for you. I believe you will learn more than anybody else I teach in the next two weeks!! Isnt technology fun!!

2002-09-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

This is the MOST IMPORTANT book I have read in the past fifteen years and I have read some very important books but I have not read even one more necessary than this one.

2002-08-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

Man what formations...

2002-08-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

And towards the end, Sebald writes:

Now, as I write, and think once more of our history, which is but a long account of calamities, it occurs to me that at one time the only acceptable expression of profound grief, for ladies of the upper class, was to wear heavy robes of black silk taffeta or black crepe de chine.

The worm builds its cocoon to continue its cycle of life, its metamorphisis. The worms are killed, and the cocoons are gathered and unwoven, spun into silk. From death arises beauty.

I saw this on a weblog quoting the author sebald now himself cocooned in the endless night...

2002-08-21T05:32:00.000-05:00

School began this week and I am so delighted with my students...even the so called "roughnecks", right?

2002-08-21T05:31:00.000-05:00

Coover a virtual reality writer said this, "Books are much too robust, sophisticated and subtle to be displaced by electronic technologies. We should not see print and electronic literature as in competition but rather in conversation. The more voices that join in, the richer the dialogue is likely to be."

2002-08-14T05:51:00.000-05:00

I read this in the Times...
In 1990, as its last act of planetary observation, Voyager 1 turned its camera on the receding scene of its triumphant journey and snapped a sequence of pictures of most of the Sun's family. A mosaic of the pictures showed six of the nine planets in orbital array like diamonds laid out on black velvet. From 3.7 billion miles out, Earth was barely the size of a single pixel, or picture element.

Then both craft turned their attention forward, to the heliosphere and beyond. The Voyagers are expected to survive millions of years of interstellar travel, steadfast as ever. But silent, their computers and radios dead and the Sun receding into cosmic insignificance, the two spacecraft will have long since lost touch with their makers and the home they left behind in 1977.

2002-08-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

I wrote this at Floyd's...
My great friend the physics teacher Don Hays once left our faculty lounge at near the speed of light--when he rambled triumphantly back in he laid upon the faculty table a series of snapshots of the eclipse that had just taken place. "Wow, neat-huh?" he said. Most of the faculty nodded then said in low whispers "wierd, strange-Don-what about Don huh?". Me I stood over the pictures exclaiming "Wow-Neat-How'd you do that Don?" but Don moved to a more intellectually alive place and we do not hear many wows anymore. Not neat.

2002-08-10T10:43:00.000-05:00

A yellow rain of leaves falling (a verb which means autumn cool nears with winter's cold close and nigh) on me told me summer ended. I neither weep nor smile for I must bend with the arc of time.

2002-08-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

I saw this at Barlow Farms which I had visited after reading Fragments from Floyd (my kind of title, my kind of blog!)

2002-08-07T16:17:00.000-05:00

Wow my friend at Marty's Belinda Williams is on the front page of the New York Times...you go girl!!

2002-08-04T07:42:00.000-05:00

Did you know a skinny zero means one thing while a fat zero means something far different? Symbols does...

2002-08-03T05:19:00.000-05:00

"Surfing is this pure thing," he said. "You take this board, you paddle out and ride the waves. All the things in this show, all this external stuff is like the road map that tells you about surfing, but none of it is surfing. It cracks me up because I have these mounds of stuff. But surfing; you can't bottle it, you can't package it, and it's not about the money, because you can't sell what it really is. What it really is is all the beautiful things that happen to you when you're riding a wave." Thanks to NYTimes.com...yeah teaching used to be like that but its all in a bottle now and packaged for the market.

2002-07-23T20:38:00.000-05:00

The day began with a longish drive to Harrison, smack-dab in the hills of north Arkansas...for our lovely wife had a business meeting to attend leaving me to fend for Steve's self. After a day of painting the walls of my blog study yellow I did not mind the motoring assignment. In fact I find great fun in randomly driving around such areas with a camera and yellow pad of paper and lots of good black walmart medium nibbed ink pens sketching and snapping the results. Invariably one finds something like William Least-Heat Moon did in BLUE HIGHWAYS (remember that?)...what a great book...RIVERHORSE never worked precisely because Moon remained a prisoner of the boat and could not interact with the unique humans along the way...

After visiting the rather boring local libraries we found a fountain of human refreshment in the Unnamed Diner on the side of the main road in Harrison Arkansas. The Diner once had a sign and may again in the future but today it just had a post with an empty space where one would expect to find big letters and words saying EAT AT JOES or some such thing as guide to the contents of this smallish pre-Sonic structure of the American road. Even better than the nice people inside (a lady cook and her co pilot the lady waitress whose names no one said and I decided not to say mine either, this seems to be the main mystery of the whole place, right, its anonymous...) was the new picnic table outside with purple flowers falling from a lovely combination of trees and boulders. Wow, what a trip, man-thank you Harrison Arkansas.

2002-07-20T09:09:00.000-05:00

The world's smallest website thanks to Metafilter

2002-07-20T08:53:00.000-05:00

Consider this, LAPD Blues.

2002-07-20T05:36:00.000-05:00

Alan Lomax jr said, "We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they're not like him," Mr. Lomax once reflected. "Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities. My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency"...His obit appears today. So long old friend.

2002-07-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

a brilliant page

2002-07-19T10:24:00.000-05:00

A brilliant

2002-07-18T05:57:00.000-05:00

Is this a false picture of the first telegram in America?

2002-07-16T06:24:00.000-05:00

Isn't Erin's design just delightful!

2002-07-16T06:21:00.000-05:00

Such a neat contest!.
You may send neat envelopes to yours truly at 17 Ivy Bentonville AR

2002-07-16T05:49:00.000-05:00

Don't forget about Louis for Pete's sake.

2002-07-12T06:34:00.000-05:00

Go ask Alice, I think she knows...

2002-07-11T05:06:00.000-05:00

For a person fresh from the beach nothing can compare to sand world.

2002-07-10T09:55:00.000-05:00

We have pie charts. I prefer the Alphabet, how about you?

2002-07-01T11:22:00.000-05:00

Momma Linda and I are in the Gulf. Wish you were here...

2002-06-28T06:41:00.000-05:00

The how and the why of The Who...we played their songs in 1967...Goodbye then to John Entwhistle...

2002-06-26T07:11:00.000-05:00

I love the Hyde Park Review of Books...not for the snobbish.

2002-06-19T06:25:00.000-05:00

2002-06-19T06:19:00.000-05:00

working on enetation...

2002-06-17T07:11:00.000-05:00

Make book at Living Words.

2002-06-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

Each day I pray just a little.

2002-06-14T07:49:00.000-05:00

My cat ate Woodstock!

Real birds? No. Rubber stamps? You bet!
Hobby Lobby knows

2002-06-13T06:31:00.000-05:00

ROLLING STONE yields to the death of language...now read this quote from the nytimes "All the great media adventures of the 20th century have been visual," said Mr. Needham, 37, who grew up in Cambridge, England. "Television, movies, the Internet, they're all visual mediums, and I don't think people have time to sit down and read. The gaps in people's time keep getting smaller and smaller, and the competition is getting more intense. It's one of the facts of media life"....nytimes.com

2002-06-07T07:16:00.000-05:00

Welcome to a tree I love! Find it at horvatland.

2002-06-05T08:36:00.000-05:00

See the Blind Boys of Alabama sing...and rejoice.

2002-06-01T06:23:00.000-05:00

Paragraph...sounds like a theme for next year's writing in my history class...200 words-no more and no less...I once had a friend who often employed this phrase when discussing questions of faith...just the truth...nothing more and nothing less...but I came to believe this verbal equation faltered in the last instance on "the nothing less" for there was a lot more to this than meets the mind's eye...right?

2002-05-30T11:12:00.000-05:00

The art of the Word.

2002-05-30T06:42:00.000-05:00

A Life Uncommon
at this location

2002-05-30T06:35:00.000-05:00

I should like to humbly invite each one of you to visit the since sept 11 site entitled, Courage...Thanks to ECVA for everything in the spirit of human love and divine forgiveness.

2002-05-28T05:51:00.000-05:00

My next book...four days till freedom...

2002-05-24T08:24:00.000-05:00

Do I have to draw me a picture...this is the map drawn by a defector lt. general in Saddam's army of a secret camp where terrorists train to kill Americans.

2002-05-24T06:34:00.000-05:00

How come Catfish Hunter's bronze hat has no team insignia? Sounds fishy, right? Bill Littlefield knows the scoop, as usual.

2002-05-24T06:31:00.000-05:00

Ancient (and I mean older than the first dirt on earth, right?) DNA. My question: can it be "re-vived" or "re-born" and what would an ancient bacteria or whatever it is do when it gets a breath of fresh new modern air?

2002-05-24T06:14:00.000-05:00

In the Times I read this:
"Optical truth reveals the lie of conventional schoolbook perspective. Cézanne was right: a line, like the line of a tabletop, interrupted by an object, like a tablecloth, seems to reappear at a different latitude on the other side of the object, even though that makes no logical sense. It's just how the eye works. That's the nature of realism."

2002-05-22T06:23:00.000-05:00

Thomas Wolfe...my favorite American writer.

2002-05-16T05:36:00.000-05:00

POET ALERT...
The 1950's and 60's began a real democratization of poetry, and that led us to everything from poetry slams to rap music," said Steven Taylor, director of the audio preservation and access project at the Naropa archive. "There's a massive audience for the spoken word, including in the MTV generation

2002-05-15T03:33:00.000-05:00

Don't miss it,

2002-05-14T04:53:00.000-05:00

The Poetry Society is back! Thank you Director-
Christina...

2002-05-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

bhikku, thank you...

2002-05-12T20:24:00.000-05:00

2002-05-12T20:10:00.000-05:00

Plantlife needs us, now!

2002-05-11T03:52:00.000-05:00

What is a Palestinian refugee camp?

2002-05-11T02:47:00.000-05:00

The greatest scrapbook I have ever seen now on the web.

2002-05-08T05:19:00.000-05:00

Can't afford Harvard, try Barnes and Noble University it's free!

2002-05-08T04:48:00.000-05:00

Bush voted no but I vote yes for the International War Criminals Court, how about you?

2002-05-06T04:32:00.000-05:00

Tom Waits said this,

Meanwhile, he's working on songs. "Sometimes they're coming so fast there's not enough to catch them in," he said. "And other days you have to do a rain dance for it. You wait. I've got tape recorders all over the house. I can scribble notes on a napkin. But what I've really done is learn to exercise my memory. If I have a melody in my head, my challenge is to keep it in my head all day. And then try to sit down to dinner, forget it and then go back in the car and see if I can remember it again. I think if this is a really good melody it'll never leave me. Some you lose. A lot of them get away. Those are the best songs, the ones that got away."

2002-05-06T04:21:00.000-05:00

this one-just good writing -no linking...

The rash of bombs has disturbed the lives of thousands of rural Midwesterners living around places like Tipton, a town of 3,155 people, 37 miles southeast of Cedar Rapids. The explosion that injured Mrs. Werling dominated the breakfast talk at Kombo's Cafe, which looks out on the town square across from the Cedar County courthouse.

"The bomb was the buzz," said Kirby R. White, 42, the cafe's proprietor. "People were asking, `Who could have done it? Why would it happen in Tipton?' People couldn't believe it.

"I guess it hit people's fears, as it was designed to do," Mr. White said.

Today, with the town awash in sunshine, mulberry trees leafing forth overhead and dandelions ablaze underfoot, Tipton residents seemed determined to put fear behind them and go about their lives, though a bit more cautiously.

"People are more annoyed that it could happen here than they are afraid," said James W. Laughlin, the Tipton postmaster, who supervises Mr. Anderson and 11 other postal workers.

A few leafy blocks east of the post office, Benjamin C. Johnston, 20, brushed aside concerns about the bombs in a conversation that interrupted his afternoon of in-line skating with his girlfriend in a parking lot.

"We have a pretty smart dog," Mr. Johnston said. "He'll let us know if there's any problem with the mailbox."

A sign greets visitors driving into town along Route 38: "Tipton, Where Dreams Happen." But until now there has been a certain community satisfaction that not much else happens in Tipton.

For decades the town was known mainly as the site of Cedar County's only stoplight, at Cedar and Fifth Streets. A few years ago, however, nearby West Branch (President Herbert Hoover's birthplace) installed the county's second stop light. That lessened, somewhat, the interest generated by Tipton's.

Stuart Clark, the editor of the town's weekly newspaper, The Tipton Conservative, circulation 4,700, said that before the bombings the biggest news story here may have broken in November 2000, when Cedar was the only county in Iowa where George W. Bush and Al Gore fought to a tie, with 4,025 votes each

2002-05-03T07:04:00.000-05:00

Were we the first Nazis, right here in America?

2002-05-03T05:07:00.000-05:00

The Infinite Mind explains why humans enjoy hating others...

2002-05-03T04:31:00.000-05:00

Shakespeare vs Britney Spears

2002-05-03T04:10:00.000-05:00

Did you play the God game? I did. At question six the sign said So Far So Good but Danger lies Ahead (Didn't Jim Morrison say that better?)

2002-05-03T04:01:00.000-05:00

What is Alternate History?
Simply stated, an alternate history is the description and/or discussion of an historical "what if" and its possible consequences. Other names which may be applied to the form include alternative histories, allohistories, counterfactuals, counterfeit worlds, if worlds, negative histories, uchronias, etc. Whatever it is called, alternate history somehow involves one or more past events which "happened otherwise" and includes some amount of description of the subsequent effects on history.

Perhaps the most common themes in alternate history are "What if the Nazis won World War II?" and "What if the Confederacy won the Civil War?",

but alternate Napoleons, Romes and Kennedys are also common.

2002-05-02T05:14:00.000-05:00

I read this and for some reason I keep thinking of Bill Gates...

The Chinese seem prepared to sidestep the Taiwan dispute for now in the interest of better overall ties, said Bates Gill, a China expert at the Brookings Institution

2002-05-01T06:10:00.000-05:00

Imagine the nerve...

2002-05-01T05:29:00.000-05:00

Man, if only my papaw Davis could have seen MLB like this. No commercials, no waiting for the pitch, wow...

2002-05-01T04:59:00.000-05:00

This I saw and I copied...

I can read people's thoughts.

Using an ancient technology, handed down over millennia, improved and refined along the way, I am able to read people's thoughts. And not just people nearby, or people I know. I can even read dead people's thoughts. This gives me a great deal of power and knowledge - I can learn from their lives, their experiences, their dreams and fears, their insights and imaginings. I can study their successes and failures, learn from their great ideas and their mistakes, absorb their experiences, laugh at their jokes and wince at their pain

2002-04-29T04:38:00.000-05:00

Peter Till

A TOURIST FOCUSES in on a most idyllic picture: a man in simple clothes dozing in a fishing boat that has been pulled out of the waves which come rolling up the sandy beach. The camera clicks, the fisherman awakens. The tourist offers him a cigarette and launches into a conversation: “The weather is great, there is plenty of fish, why are you lying around instead of going out and catching more?”

The fisherman replies: “Because I caught enough this morning.”

“But just imagine,” the tourist says, “you would go out there three or four times a day, bringing home three or four times as much fish! You know what could happen?” The fisherman shakes his head. “After about a year you could buy yourself a motor-boat,” says the tourist. “After two years you could buy a second one, and after three years you could have a cutter or two. And just think! One day you might be able to build a freezing plant or a smoke house, you might eventually even get your own helicopter for tracing shoals of fish and guiding your fleet of cutters, or you could acquire your own trucks to ship your fish to the capital, and then . . .”

“And then?” asks the fisherman.

“And then”, the tourist continues triumphantly, “you could be calmly sitting at the beachside, dozing in the sun and looking at the beautiful ocean!” The fisherman looks at the tourist: “But that is exactly what I was doing before you came along!”

G

2002-04-29T04:21:00.000-05:00

The Sky at Night is 45.

2002-04-27T06:03:00.000-05:00

heh-heh from David Chess Great Moments in Journalism: I just passed by a TV set tuned to the Larry King Show, and the banner on the bottom of the screen said

Can We Talk To The Dead?

To which the obvious answer is

They're not here right now, but we'll tell them you called.

2002-04-27T05:12:00.000-05:00

is this really the best movie of 2002?

2002-04-27T04:27:00.000-05:00

Making things right...CRADLE TO CRADLE...William Mcdonough...
His talk at CSPAN with the National Press Club bowled me over...

2002-04-26T05:30:00.000-05:00

A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini's score of the G minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it.
The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores -- marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them--is the reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author. every book I own is marked...see marginalia which is a book composed of nothing but notes in the margins, right?" You could look it up.

2002-04-25T17:15:00.000-05:00

Too blessed!

2002-04-23T08:25:00.000-05:00

Today my world history students study why we fought World War II. In a picture here is the reason...

2002-04-23T08:24:00.000-05:00

Today my world history students study why we fought World War II. In a picture here is the reason...

2002-04-21T07:36:00.000-05:00

ALICE IN CHAINS lead singer (found dead in Seattle) said this of his heroin habit, ""At the end of the day or at the end of the party, when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." bbc.

2002-04-21T06:50:00.000-05:00

Your revolution will not be televised-Sarah Jones banned by FCC because she wrote a poem attacking the misogyny of hip POP (i.e. the commercialization of black-urban based music)...She is right...her anti-revolution will not be but you can hear her on the wonderful new NPR Tavis Smiley program.

2002-04-17T06:07:00.000-05:00

Left to his own devices, Vic Chesnutt...a fan writes "Paraplegic after an auto accident, Chesnutt, a natural keyboardist, learned to play the guitar with a pick Velcroed to a glove on his half-paralyzed right hand. His strumming often starts shaky, gets tense, tired and skips around like a needle on a scratchy 45 played at 38 or 39. Lurching ahead and falling back, his voice twangs so severely that words and phrases dovetail into notes bent-in-between where they "should be."

2002-04-16T06:30:00.000-05:00

Don't forget this is Poetry Month

2002-04-16T06:13:00.000-05:00

She forced McDonald's to clean up its mistreatment of animals.

2002-04-16T05:03:00.000-05:00

Classrooms should be creative and dynamic places, not graveyards of dry prescription. Many teachers in effect become researchers in their own classrooms, taking what has been discovered about teaching and learning and adapting it to their own unique context.
Guardian

2002-04-15T08:54:00.000-05:00

The world's oldest hat.

2002-04-13T06:07:00.000-05:00

Everybody has a story. Matt has a most moving one as told on video by Steve Hartman...

2002-04-13T05:14:00.000-05:00

The world's scariest god.

2002-04-13T05:13:00.000-05:00

The night side of America.

2002-04-13T05:06:00.000-05:00

Cornel West has left Harvard which has no loyalty for him back to Princeton which is aggregating a supremely powerful phalanx of African-American scholars...You go Dr West and we who read you are with you!

2002-04-12T05:12:00.000-05:00

Beyond Words

2002-04-11T06:14:00.000-05:00

How I became me

2002-04-11T05:25:00.000-05:00

The homes of the future