I just read a very interesting article over at reason.com titled Reason: Stand and Deliver Revisited: The untold story behind the famous rise — and shameful fall — of Jaime Escalante, America’s master math teacher. This courtesy of Brenda, a post at isomorphisms: representations of the identity. A blog which, by the way, absolutely rocks. Anyone who starts the bio on her about page with the following is gonna be interesting as hell: My name is Brenda, and I study mathematics. An unusual introduction, I know; there is other information, answers to more conventional questions, that could have served as …
Author: gordsellar
The War, aka If you don’t like this deal…
Tell you what. Let’s make a deal. You believe what you want. I’ll believe what I want. If you agree to this deal, I’ll go into battle side by side with you to safeguard it. I’ll write books about it. I’ll wade through swamps under-munitioned to make sure it isn’t ripped from us, and I’ll cradle you in my arms when you’re shot to pieces, as I hope you will me. I’ll spend my life building machines that will safeguard our freedom, I’ll pay taxes to fund a governmental organization that will protect this sacred right of ours. If you …
Really, I don’t like this one bit…
But I’ll post it anyway. Er, thanks for violently executing the injection of this horrible thing into my poor unsuspecting head, Adam… And another scary thing, also c/o Adam, is here… Gollum in da haus, yo.
I’m listening to Bach again now…
… and reflecting on how this music has so profoundly impacted on the way I think of music in general. There’s this line I’ve started playing lately in Deep End, one of the songs we play in my band, which is simply these arpeggios, and I commented about how hard it was to play these sustained arpeggios live, suggesting it might not be the best idea to attempt it live. Myoung quipped something about it being something “common in jazz, isn’t it?” and I replied: “No, it’s Bach. It’s figured bass!” and that’s exactly what it is, melody and bass …
Ha, last day of marking, my butt…
I have, as it turns out, two exams on Monday evening. So today was not my last day of marking at all… But before I go on about the craziness of today, which was after all a very crazy day, I want to say that waking in the morning to a very nice sweet good-morning message waiting for me as a text-message on my phone, that’s probably one of the best possible ways I could wake up in my current circumstances. It made my day, really. My students are damned lucky that I did wake up with this text message …
Here it is… the last day.
Actually, it isn’t. I have one more test to administer after today, to my Monday night class. But anyway, it’s today that will be the real test of my strength. I gotta sit through about 6 or 7 hours of examinations, meaning either conversations that make little sense, or rehearsed dialogues which are most often botched by more than fifty percent of the class. Not that I lack sympathy… it’s impossible to learn English in a room full of 40 people for 2 hours a week, definitely. But studying and practicing makes the dialogues possible! I know, I’ve seen D …
Charlie’s Publication
I forgot about this, and only remembered because I did a little search to find his email address online. My good friend Charlie in Cyprus was published: he beat me to it, basically, getting a contribution into a book about his favorite football club and the horror of its fate at the hands of moron greedmongers. There’s a page about the book he was published in here, but I’ll excerpt the bio below: Charlie grew up in Wimbledon and followed Wimbledon FC from around 1980. He is a member of the WISA Committee. When he’snot talking far too much about …
A Boy’s Toys: Friday Five
This week’s Friday Five is from Rob Stones over at About Pip. About whom I should say, he has posted several wonderful comments on my site. My lack of response is not a lack of appreciation. I usually decide to think over his comments, and what do you know, the thinking segues into drinking or band practice and eventually I’ve forgotten to post my thoughts. Argh! Anyway, without further ado, Rob’s question: It’s soon xmas. Very very soon. What are you going to buy for your partner, your kids, your parents, grandparents – takes deep breath – ???? I’ve been …
My Favorite New Toy…
… is my flute. Brought it to band rehearsal tonight. Ended up promising I wouldn’t play it on every song forever, but it was fun trying it out in so many different tunes. Looks like it will be normally used in at least two songs, and rather useful for a few others once we get into the studio. While in India I really MUST practice. I also need to print a flute fingering chart because my 3rd octave is really shaky, and it’s also the only octave audible above roaring guitar and bass riffs. Hmmm. Flute flute flute. I don’t …
Excitement about Fingering!!!
First of all… Get your mind out of the gutter! I mean fingering charts. See, I just bought a flute for my trip to India; flutes are great because they’re compact, light, easy to carry around, and for me it’s a chance to practice an instrument I haven’t tried to play in a long time. I was never very good to begin with, but having started on a pawn shop flute with keys that didn’t seal even after repairs, one shouldn’t be surprised.