ClapTrap

Reverse Ro-Bonehead

So the internet is going to be sold to the highest bidder in the US. No way that these corporations would use their monopoly position for political purposes, especially AT&T(NSA, ahem). It's all so they can be more competitive, right? The tiered internet, yah? Asian countries seem to be going in the opposite direction, signing up more and more users to ultra-high speed DSL and cable accounts at ever lower prices. In the short term this may help giant US telcos competitiveness, but may doom the US to greater technological backwater-dom. And the bill criminalizing even thinking about surpassing DRM I'm sure will go over well with just about everyone who is a shareholder in one of the major corporations set to benefit from said law. Everyone else? Not so much. Nothing in Moore's Law says that the leaps have to come from the US, and the way things are going, it looks like all these anti-competitive, monopoly favoring laws will outsource even Moore's Law. When the sms text-messagers in Beijing spread the word about the PRC's cover-up of the SARS crisis, what did the Beijing government do? Did they ban all cellphone usage? Nope, they fired those who covered up the crisis. Washington could learn a thing or two from Beiing. Instead of trying to cover-up their failures, trying to shut down the press, the internet, and spy on all American domestic calls and emails, they could actually fire some people. A little sunshine goes a long way. Good for the people, good for the economy.

Why Movie Downloads Won't Work

Err, the legal kind, that is. Cinemanow and movielink are now starting trial programs to sell movies online. The biggest problem isn't that you can't watch them on your tv, burn them to DVD, or have to watch the DRM'ed windows media player 10 files (though those are considerable roadblocks); the main reason they won't take off, like iTunes has, for example, is that very few people want to watch King Kong (one of the featured downloads) more than once. Now I'm a movie nut, and I regularly buy DVDs from the local DVD shop (albeit mostly secondhand ones). And I almost never watch them more than twice, with a few notable exceptions (BBC series, Spider-Man, a couple of others). Why buy them then? Well, for one, they are just so damned cheap secondhand --just picked up SAW for $NT99, and secondly, the ones I do buy are ones I want to have in my collection. Kinda like collecting books. Great Art and all that jazz. How much do they want for King Kong and other legal downloads? Over $NT700!!! For that price I can get the new DVD with all the extras, and still get some change back. And in a couple of months it'll be on sale for $NT199, or even $NT99.

Not In A Day

       Turns out not all my recalcitrant jr. high classes can just be straight out bribed to behave.  Though that did work to a degree, I finally had to break out my back up weapons, and then some.  Ninth grade has got to be the toughest age to teach, period.  Forget kindy.  Forget business classes.  These are by far the toughest nuts to crack.
        Started out with the treats for answers.  That held for about twenty minutes.  Then back to the incessant chattering and various ruckus raising.  Out with the vidcam.  That got the sleepers (both of them) up.  And the loudest quieted right down.  But, damn! not enough were participating.  Just stopped teaching mid-class.  Let them know in no uncertain terms that we could do it the easy way or the tough way.  It was up to them.  Started up again, and things were ok for a few minutes, then wham! back to (unruly) normal.
        Out comes the last weapon.  The pop quiz.  Total attention.  Total silence.  Now, I'm not some kind of nazi nutcase that wants absolute silence throughout, just keep it down to a low roar!  Put up five questions.  Still a few shenanigans.  OK, I told them, this 'quiz' can be five questions long, or a hundred questions long, it's your choice.  Wrote some more numbers on the board, without adding the questions.  End of first period.
        Second period begins, and I as much reach for the chalk to start writing more quiz questions, and most of the students are urging the few noisy ones to stfu.  Kinda weird, but less volunteering from this class, yet no resistance to being called on.  And students that had never participated were repeatedly answering questions.  Pretty gratifying.
        A couple of asides.  You may well be saying: well, probably your class sucks, that's why the kids are acting up.  Prepare a better lesson plan, dood!  And be 'more lively', fer gawdsakes!  Fair points.  The problem is that no amount of well constructed lesson plan can overcome the institutional obstacles inherent in the Taiwanese educational system. 
      This is not Montessori with everyone sitting on rugs in a circle, and loads and loads of teaching aids at the teacher's fingertips.  This is Stalinist style cramped classes with plus forty students in perfectly straight rows of desks, with just enough space for a single person to pass in the narrow aisles between desks.  Stick a teacher with a book in there, and that's your class.  Any and all aids are paid for by the teacher alone.  I love teaching, but to throw my entire pay packet into buying stuff to teach isn't going to end up being very profitable for yours truly. 
      Sadly, some of these 'real' schools are set up just like cram schools: profit first, actual education somewhere down the list.  Squeeze as much blood from that stone as possible.  Many of these 'real' schools chew up both foreign and Taiwanese teachers at an alarming rate.  You really have to enjoy teaching to stick it out in this kind of situation.  Unfortunately I do enjoy teaching just that much.  Silly me.

Dept Of Wishful Thinking

            Hardy har har!  This is just too much:

                     

A bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation Wednesday they said would save 2.5 million barrels of oil a day within a decade and 10 million barrels a day by 2031. The country now uses a little over 20 million barrels of oil a day, most of for transportation.

            

Link.   And Peak Oil isn't going to hit until after 2031?  Really?  Well then this is just a capital idea!  Bravo!

Tinkerbell Lives!

From somewhere down south we get this:

"About an hour ago, we got a phone call from our friends up at Camp Casey saying that the line of gravemarkers along the road (Arlington West) had been run over. People there said that as they were talking to a few members of the press, a pick-up truck came down the road and stopped at the fork by the edge of the tents. The driver then jumped out and attached a pipe to the undercarriage with a chain and began to "swerve into the line of crosses," said Tammara Rosenleaf from Montana. "Then we heard the pipe being dragged over the gravemarkers and the pick-up's wheels crushing them." "

And I'd bet donuts to dollars (or is it the other way 'round?) that the pipe made a little clap, clap sound with each crucifix it hit. Loverly.