Not News’ hosting provider had to disable the site in order to deal with a problem connected to an old version of the site. There are still some posts in the old bulletin board version of Not News that I need to bring over and reformat into the WordPress version. I lost momentum on that […]
There are some days that I really ought to know better. If you follow the news in Philadelphia, you know that over the last 36 hours the top story has basically been nightmare fodder for any teacher and parent. So while I was making my rounds today checking work, a couple of students diverted themselves […]
In 2011 I wrote Thinking Through the Hostage Metaphor, where I suggested that in the hostage-taker analogy, the American public was like a sniper that could defeat the hostage-taker in the 2012 election. Well, for the most part, the American public took its shot, voting for Democratic candidates by a considerable majority. But thanks to […]
My continued and growing uneasiness with football continued this week with the confirmation that Junior Seau had CTE – the brain disorder that numerous football players have been diagnosed with from repeated head injury – and a story in the Miami newspapers about the injuries that Jason Taylor endured during his football career. The latter […]
The thing that I most enjoyed about the talk of the trillion-dollar platinum coin is that it brought to the forefront the idea that money isn’t a real thing. It’s something we make up, and it works because we all agree that it works. It doesn’t have to follow the laws of physics or anything […]
So off and on over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to nail down the art of baking sticky buns. I had recipes from America’s Test Kitchen and the Joy of Cooking that were almost but not quite what I was aiming for. So I took the Joy of Cooking recipe and tweaked […]
To me, one of the biggest themes of the 2012 election was the conflict between narrative and data. Pundits, campaign officials, and traditional press focused on telling a story throughout the year, with important decisions and turning points, changes in momentum, and an uncertain conclusion. Political scientists and a lot of data-driven analysts tried to […]
I have had numerous opportunities to think about how fortunate I am. I am married to a wonderful woman wit whom I have an amazing daughter. We both have parents who worked hard to help us get good educations, and we have both been able to find jobs that let us use our skills and […]
As a junior in high school, I took the AP class in American History. We did a lot of reading, a lot of discussing, a fair amount of writing . . . I’ll be honest, 20 years and a ton of books since then have made it hard for me to remember what I learned […]
So as part of the professional development program that my school and district have implemented, my principal has suggested I keep a reflection journal. I truly think this is a good idea. I spend a lot of time thinking to myself – my wife says she can hear me thinking when I’m supposed to be […]