IDOL Update
· Country
Music superstar Keith Urban has been tapped as the third judge on season 12 of
American IDOL. Apparently, Randy “Pitchy”
Jackson will move to a more behind the scenes/mentoring role (a la Jimmy
Iovine).
Urban will reportedly make 3
million dollars a year, which is more than 10 million dollars less than his fellow
judges Mariah and Nicki will earn. If I
were him I’d be so pissed. I bet even Bucky Covington makes at least 4 million a year.
Truancy in CT
· A school
Superintendent in Connecticut wants to charge a $75 per missed-day fine to the
families of truants. I guess if you
don’t pay the fine, your kid’s expelled ( a variation on the notion of “if you
won’t come to school, we won’t let you”).
I’ve read a few articles over the past few days, and have not seen a plan for how these fines will actually be
collected.
I’m sure that truancy is a complicated
problem, but this proposed remedy assumes that parents aren’t motivated to be
good parents unless there’s money at risk.
The pessimist in me thinks that this fix smells like a revenue generator
rather than a deterrent.
Using a punitive fine as a
solution also shifts responsibility away from the truant student, and frankly,
from the school administrators. Again, I
acknowledge that this is a complicated issue, but I think that workable
solutions will be based on identifying and capitalizing upon what incentivizes
and motivates the kids to attend school.
“That’s One Small Step for [a] Man, One Giant
Leap for Mankind” -Neil
Armstrong, 1969
· By
all accounts, Neil Armstrong was a class act.
With a name that sounded like it was a superhero invention, Armstrong
was an “astronaut” during the early days, when cowboy fighter pilots were
recruited for extremely dangerous flight test experiments.
Imagine being the first to
do anything with global exposure and historical
significance, and then not caving to pressure to capitalize on that status. Armstrong is said to have been guarded and
conservative with his public persona, associating as a spokesperson only with US
businesses that had philosophies he agreed with and engineering programs that
interested and engaged him.
He was the first man to walk
on the moon 43 years ago, and I remember watching footage of the landing in
glorious black and white on a television in my third-grade classroom. It was surreal, for us little kids and our
parents alike. Although we were in the
midst of the very unpopular war in Vietnam, we all had great national pride for
having won the “space race.”
I bet plenty of folks my age
had lost track of Armstrong and what he did in 1969, and that for many of us he’d
faded into a blur of astronaut names we “kind of” remember, including John Glenn
and Buzz Aldrin. Many of our kids probably don’t know anything about Armstrong
or of the early space program, except for that one scary mission that Tom Hanks
led.
As Neil Armstrong’s passing
last week is getting media coverage, it’s a good time to reflect on that time
in our relatively recent history, when we “raced” other nations for dominance
in space, and won.
Count Von Count
· Jerry
Nelson, the guy who was the voice of Sesame Street’s “The Count”, passed away
the other day. It’s sad that the man
died, and condolences to his family.
I’m still not sure about The
Count. He was a vampire who taught kids how
to count. I guess he is being remembered
more for the good he did than the whole living dead blood sucking part.
Nelson was the voice of one
of the Fraggle Rock guys, too, but that character probably was less
controversial and duplicitous.
Christie On Isaac
· It
looks like Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac is tracking further west than was
expected. New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie expressed concern today for Gulf coast residents in the path of the
storm. Drawing from his experience with
coastal storms, Christie recommended that “...any idiots walking on the beach in
the Gulf get the hell off.”
The Decline of Wonky
· When
I first heard the word “Wonky”, I had no idea what it meant. I determined through context (and then by checking
the dictionary) that it means expert in arcane matters or nerdy. But now I’m hearing people use the word to
describe something as being disgusting (“Does this milk taste wonky?”) or
questionable (“I checked MapQuest, but the directions seem wonky..”) and unreliable
(“My car has been acting wonky”.) Wonky this and wonky that. It means GREAT and it also means SUCKY. So now the word really has no true meaning.
What a shame, Wonky had
promise. But it’s the new Gnarly, (“Dude,
that wave was gnarly!” and “Dude, your grandfather’s toes are all gnarly!”).
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