Speed Gibson

Follow the link in the banner to my new TypePad site, where all new posting will be published.

All of my archives have (finally!) been transferred.

Please update whatever links and blogroll entries you may have accordingly. This site will disappear at the end of this month.

Finally, I would like to thank Powerblogs for 4 great years, with the system that most fit my modest needs.

What a shame. PowerBlogs is hanging it up on November 30, so I have barely a month to find a new blog host.

I started blogging in 2004 using Blogger.com, which I still use for two other blogs. Back then, Blogger was up and down, fast and slow, and I decided to spend a little to get a quality service, which I think Powerblogs has been. It's not fancy but it works, the only real outage being a major fire at the server farm they use in Houston.

Since then, Blogger.com has improved significantly, with many nice features, and it's still free. Still, I'd like to consider some alternatives if they're worth the money. One key requirement is that it be entirely web based as I use 4 different computers.

*** UPDATE ***

I know many have migrated away from it, but a quick survey had me looking at TypePad, and that's in fact my decision. Follow the link in the banner, but bear in mind job one is to move the content.

Remember the early days of Monday Night Football, with Howard Cosell? Legend has it that a bar in Denver, whose Broncos allegedly got no respect during Cosell's halftime highlights, auctioned off a brick each game. The winner got to throw that brick at an old black and white TV at Howard's face.

Luckily, I had no brick handy when I saw a clip of House Speaker Margaret Anderson-Kelliher on Almanac from last Wednesday's debate among the candidates for Governor:

"Well you know, I've been actually praised as the adult in the room, the calm within the storm, the ability to bring people together, attack the problem and not each other. And when you look at the track record of three years as Speaker, we've actually been able to get a lot done that's been sitting there for a very long time. Has it been everything? I had to clean up after eight years of Republicans in the Minnesota House, and President Bush, and I have to work with Tim Pawlenty from time to time."

She's the adult? She sure as hell doesn't talk like an adult, either now or before. And after saying she attacks problems not people, a sentence later she in effect attacks half the state of Minnesota.

You Democrats had better remember Kelliher's shaky first year as Speaker, then picture her again in over her head on a statewide campaign trail. You have more experienced, more competent, and above all, more adult candidates to pick from.

As several of us moaned during that voyage of the damned, watching the McCain campaign sink beneath us, Brack Obama had no experience whatever in running anything. And as I personally inferred and feared, he has no executive skills to even develop on the job. He's a weak person thrust in a big job, and as expected, he has surrounded himself with even weaker subordinates, lest they outshine him. Contrast that with the military leaders that he can't pick nor dominate.

But there is one skill even a beginner like Obama should be able to demonstrate - the removal of an obvious incompetent like Anita Dunn. Her public worship of Chairman Mao violated rule number one of public relations, supposedly her profession. She became the story, not the storyteller, on an unbelievable scale, in a manner where she cannot possibly feign surprise.

I think every President has makes a bad appointment or two. When President Bill Clinton saw his Secretary of Defense Les Aspin frozen at the wheel, unable to make a decision, he ceremoniously but firmly removed him. And nobody really blamed either. Senator Aspin's extensive experience with military procurement in the Congress proved of no value after all.

President Obama needs to do the same here.

I have given out some incorrect information regarding the upcoming Robbinsdale School Board Candidates Forum being presented this week by the League of Women Voters. Here is the information I verified with the District this morning:

Date:  Thursday, October 22



Time:  7 pm



Place: Education Service Center (ESC) Boardroom (3rd floor)

       4148 Winnetka Ave. N, New Hope

I am of course sad to report that a woman died after being hit by a Metro Transit bus Friday morning. As you may remember, about one person a year is dying from Hiawatha Line accidents, which should be of great concern to those planning the much more exposed Central Corridor and other lines.

But to be fair, yes, there are fatal bus accidents like this one from time to time. I couldn't find any official statistic, but I doubt it exceeds one a year, maybe about the same as Light Rail. But of course, buses are everywhere, mostly in dense residential neighborhoods. The intersections of pedestrians, motorists, and buses are several orders of magnitude that of Light Rail.

The obvious difference is that trains don't stop very quickly and don't mesh well with the surrounding traffic infrastructure. That's one reason why they generally increase congestion, not reduce it. And why mistakes are so much more likely to be fatal. And another reason why surface Light Rail should be halted in its tracks.

Again, my sympathies to the family and friends of the victim.

It hit 63 degrees today, a whopping 5 degrees above normal! No wonder I had to doff the jacket while out walking this afternoon, listening to the Vikings. Something's different this year, must be Favre. These are exactly the kind of games we normally lose in the waning minutes thanks to the "prevent" defense.

I finishing the Armatage neighborhood at the southern edge of Minneapolis, which makes 37 of 87 neighborhoods complete now.

The stock market is up, some say the recession is over, but the rest of the news is pretty bleak. What a treat to see America at its best Saturday morning (SD 45), meeting Jeff Wiita, GOP candidate for State Auditor. He's a CPA who's done considerable work in the public sector but is otherwise new to politics.

A fine family man as Lawrence Welk would say, here's a man who wants to be State Auditor, and knows what he wants to do when he gets there. Assuming the DFL will stay with incumbent Rebecca Otto, he is at once the most qualified candidate for 2010. Besides sending power back to local government, his ideas should save the State money as well. What he doesn't want to do is use this as a stepping stone to Governor or other office.

How refreshing to our America democracy function like it's supposed to.

I've heard callers on several talk shows say they've canceled their satellite / cable NFL packages because of the NFL wimping out on Rush Limbaugh - again. I'm not that level of fan, not even for the Vikings, good as they've been this year. But on further review, even my limited NFL viewing must be called into question.

I'm thinking back to when Paul Tagliabue was made NFL Commissioner. Then a lawyer for the NFL, he beat out the late Jim Finks among others for the job. I remember thinking that nothing good could come of this, putting a lawyer, not a football man in charge. He was a wuss on camera, had his good days and bad days, but somehow the NFL wasn't quite the Sunday ticket anymore. Some say over-expansion took its toll on quality.

I'm thinking back to Rush's short career on ESPN. I was a devoted fan of "NFL Prime Time" with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson, both of whom soiled themselves rather than "lose touch" with the NFL, ostensibly the players in particular. I never watched it or them since, whom I now saw more on par with pro wrestling announcers. You know, maybe not always forthcoming, a little less than honest lest they offend their masters?

And now this, with Commissioner Goodell himself joining the fray. Goodell was an athlete, then did public relations. Maybe I was wrong about lawyers in high places. But once again, the damage was done, a good man slandered, and for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with the business of professional football.

Well, there is one political link, the NFL's clever strategy to get taxpayers to build them stadiums. They're actively at it again, in fact, taunting with a new Los Angeles facility as a possible new home for seven markets whose locals not yet "supporting" their teams, including our own Minnesota Vikings. And, curiously, the St. Louis Rams. Maybe that script has already been written, the Rams' triumphal return to their original home in LA. We wouldn't want a "divisive" owner to mess this up. Or one with deep family roots in Missouri who wouldn't want to move the team.

I have always opposed publicly financed stadiums. My Hennepin County Commissioner, my Legislators, and my Governor managed to swindle me and the rest of Hennepin County into buying the Twins their new home next to a beautifully landscaped garbage burner facility, by taking the ballots out of our hands. Don't get me wrong. I like garbage burners. We should build more of them, not windmills.

But as for professional football, I'm all but done. Like KTLK's Chris Baker, I'll stay with the Vikings, and even there, I'm going to listen to Paul Allen on the radio, not his Roller Derby counterparts on TV. Maybe it's time to rediscover college football, that I used to watch in the 1970's. And, of course, there's NASCAR.

Meanwhile, my favorite sport remains baseball, and I'll be watching tonight to see if the Angels can knock off those damned Yankees.

I wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say of our brave new world, where as Dennis Prager said, if you're black and on the Left, it's perfectly acceptable to lie about a white on the Right.

I wonder what Edward R. Murrow would say about this new low in so-called mainstream media coverage, indeed participation and promulgation, of nothing short of slander.

Even Dennis Prager, who normally gives even the undeserving every benefit of the doubt, has had enough. Some quotes from his Wednesday program:

"The attempts by people on the Left to deny him the right to do that should scare every Liberal that is aware of the issue. This is the dividing line between the honorable Liberal and the totalitarian Leftist."

"You cannot be a good person, this is disqualifying, your moral character is shown by the opposition to a radio broadcaster, on the Right or on the Left, owning a part of a football team, especially when the opposition lies."

"This is not a Conservative / Liberal issue. This is a good / bad issue."

"Your conscience has been dulled if you can support the lies being told about Rush Limbaugh."

Prager went further, to now brand MS-NBC as the "M-Sewer network" unless and until they make a full apology to Limbaugh.

Ditto.

I came up 3 yards - 1.6 pounds - short of a first down, but that also means that I lost a net 3.4 lbs. these past four weeks. So once again, I'm moving the chains.

I did a much better job tracking my points this week, which included several days of travel. I really feel like I've regained my mojo. This is the lightest I've been since mid-January. In fact, two pairs of pants just rejoined the rotation!

I will be making a personal appearance (!) at tonight's gathering at the Crystal VFW (5222 Bass Lake Road) at 7 pm. Featured are two of the eleven District School Board candidates, neither an incumbent.

One is "Status Quo Must Go" Andrew Richter, the other "Wise and Creative Financial Oversight" Jim Oathout.

I'm also planning to attend the Thursday, October 22nd candidate forum presented by the League of Women Voters, 7 pm at the Winnetka Learning Center (3138 Winnetka Ave N).

I thought "MEA" was just two days, making for a four day weekend in mid-October. As we all know, the vast majority of teachers no longer attend this event, it's just time off.

I see now that Robbinsdale and Anoka-Hennepin have made them five day weekends. Robbinsdale is taking today, Wednesday 10/14 off. Anoka-Hennepin is taking Monday 10/19 off. I also notice that Robbinsdale is now taking the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off.

No wonder class runs well past Memorial Day.

Feeling the need for a frivolous post, I thought I'd do a little TV critiquing. I'm all but unwilling to watch most network prime time fare, with one current exception, CBS's "The Mentalist." Created by Bruno Heller of HBO "Rome" fame, I find it almost addicting for its fresh approach to otherwise ordinary police drama.

The supporting cast is ordinary at best, but the fascinating main character Patrick Jane must have his foils. Here in season two, I still find the scripts generally worthy of actor Simon Baker's fine performances.

Actually, I find ABC's new "Flash Forward" worth the time spent so far. It's like "Lost" but you can follow along this time. Everyone (except one!) loses consciousness for exactly 137 seconds during which everyone (except one who will apparently be dead) sees the same point in time six months in the future.

I tried "Eastwick" for 2+ episodes, but it's nothing but three very attractive cougars in various poses. You could turn down the sound and not miss a thing. The juvenile dialog isn't worth listening to. There is no plot worth following. "Flash Forward" could be the opposite, told entirely on radio with a few descriptive embellishments, much as Superman would say "up, up, and away" to tell us when he was flying.

But otherwise, Prime Time TV remains the vast wasteland, even if I do have a guilty pleasure for Dancing with the Stars.

Let me spare you the buildup before posing my second debate question for the eleven District 281 School Board candidates.

The Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program currently turns away dozens of applicants for lack of space. Would you expand capacity, keep the current system, or abolish it?

I'll also give you my rather blunt answer, were I candidate #12: I'd abolish it.

Point one is that it's an anachronism, innovative when first created, but America and the world have changed much since then. Spanish was the obvious choice back then, but with immigration and economic reality, Mandarin Chinese might be the better choice today.

Point two is that it's a mis-allocation of resources. An entire elementary building, a neighborhood school, is devoted to very specialized service. I personally would prefer 9 similar schools vs. 8 similar and 1 different. That difference also requires more management and centralized support, and complicates testing.

Point three is that it is the one major 281 program not open to everyone. Only the enrollment process is open to everyone, a process somewhat tainted with set-asides and other back doors. It creates some animus between those included and excluded, neither group really able to say why they're in or out. Advanced Placement is available to everyone, even if not equally convenient. So is International Baccalaureate. So is pre-Kindergarten, or even Alternative Learning (Highview) for that matter. But not RSI.

Point four is that many appear to be enrolling in RSI for the wrong reasons. One reason is that it provides a vicarious experience for stage door parents. Mostly, though, I think it's just to escape the other schools, into a sort of gated community. I'd like to think this isn't so much race or income, but a flight from a perceived general lack of excellence and/or discipline. RSI students inherently have more parent support, which pays dividends on many such fronts.

I would end RSI as gracefully as I could, trying to keep the commitments already made. But end it I would.

Per my criteria, Fall on the Speed Gibson calendar began on October 5th, exactly the same as last year. But my summer started earlier this year, on May 26, for a total of about 19 weeks. I have a feeling winter will be early, however.

If I have one basic criticism of our K-12 public education in Minnesota, it's its near total focus on inputs, not outputs. It's a too rare exception to see a Suzanne Kelly, interim St. Paul Superintendent, actually commit a program to a significant, measurable result, like knocking 10 points off the minority achievement gap.

No, my own District 281 is more the norm. I have sat through more "Teaching and Learning" presentations the past two years at Board meetings and work sessions than I can remember. And it's always the same: here's what we're going to do, not here's what we're going to get done.

This not only avoids basic accountability, it also provides excuses for deflecting any accountability at all, for even inputs can never be implemented perfectly, and without any time or resource constraints. "We couldn't implement the full program with the limited funds we have." "Given their demographic mix, these schools cannot be expected to..."

This low accountability, inherent excuse mentality, in my opinion, further engenders what President George W. Bush so aptly called the "soft bigotry of low expectations." The low road of relaxed expectations is easier, and everyone takes pride in seeing those attendance certificates awarded at graduation. Our job is done, even if their college professors are not sure if these new students have a native tongue.

The high road of high expectations, the one usually taken by non-public schools, works. I'll add that their are portions of many public school systems that do challenge their students as well, but these are usually targeted to the above average students. But consider this news from Florida, via District 279 United:

Over the past decade, Florida has succeeded in improving student achievement despite its demographic profile. Low-income students (those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) make up almost half of Florida’s K–12 student body. Florida has a “majority minority” mix of students, with non-Hispanic white students making up 48.3 percent of the total, African Americans about 24 percent, and Hispanics 25 percent. But the educational situation is not as bleak as those statistics might imply: both minority groups have recently made academic strides forward.

Florida has managed to realize such gains although the state’s per-student funding is below the national average. More than making up for its fiscal limitations, the state, led by former governor Jeb Bush, implemented a series of school reforms that together appear to have had dramatic consequences for student performance. Upon taking office in 1999, the governor pursued a multipronged strategy of education reform: an emphasis on reading, standards and accountability for public schools, and new choice options for students. The bulk of the reforms passed in his first year in office. Subsequently, those initial measures were buttressed by additional innovations, including the curtailing of social promotion for students who failed to learn to read in the early elementary grades.

That last sentence really intrigues me. What public school district in Minnesota would have similar courage, to end social promotion?

This would be a great debate question, the first I would ask of our eleven candidates for the Robbinsdale School Board.

"In order to help close the obviously unacceptable achievement gaps in our District, will you actively seek out and eliminate social promotion in 281?"

What a world! I'm sitting in an Alexandria hospital lobby while my son has knee surgery (football), my laptop happily connected to their guest Wi-Fi.

I downloaded the audio mp3 of the School Board meeting, which I'm listening to on headphones as I write, at 1.5 times speed. I'm VPN'ing to do some minor support work for my employer. I'm reading about the fantastic Twins victory last night. And I'm blogging now. Earlier, I found where Caribou Coffee is, got some for us.

I wonder what my father who grew up with vacuum tubes, magnetic tape, LP's, soldering irons and relays would think of all this.

Due to travel plans, I weighed in a day early. That's a good feature of Weight Watchers, that there is always a meeting somewhere when you need it, at least in the Metro area. Even on vacation, I've visited groups in places like St. Louis, Memphis, and Las Vegas.

I expected only a so so result, maybe a pound or two, maybe not even that because of going early. But instead, I lost 5 whole pounds! I wish it was always this easy. This at least gets me back in positive territory for this set of downs. But if I can lose 5 lbs in 6 days, I should have a shot at losing the remain 4.4 lbs in 8 day.

According to the Wall Street Journal opinion page, the teachers unions have lost favor with the media. (h/t: District 279 United.)

Quick: Which newspaper in recent editorials called teachers unions "indefensible" and a barrier to reform? You'd be excused for guessing one of the conservative outlets, but it was that bastion of liberalism, the New York Times. A month ago, The New Yorker—yes, The New Yorker—published a scathing piece on the problems with New York City's "rubber room," a union-negotiated arrangement that lets incompetent teachers while away the day at full salary while doing nothing. The piece quoted a principal saying that union leader Randi Weingarten "would protect a dead body in the classroom."

Things only got worse for the unions this past week. A Washington Post editorial about charter schools carried this sarcastic headline: "Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased." And the Times weighed in again Monday, calling a national teachers union "aggressively hidebound."

In recent months, the press has not merely been harsh on unions—it has championed some controversial school reformers. Washington's schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who won't win any popularity contests among teachers, enjoys unwavering support from the Post editorial page for her plans to institute merit pay and abolish tenure.

We on the right might be hidebound ourselves in thinking the media will always wear the union label. But many of these reporters and editors have kids in school themselves, and must face some union reality themselves. Regardless, they're generally good people. The lack of results despite decades of promises and billions in targeted programs may have finally left them with no other conclusion.

In Minnesota, as I've posted before, the once close working relationship between the Legislature and the public schools has weakened considerably. K-12 Education funding is now secondary to various welfare programs, stadiums, even some transportation programs like Light Rail. There are calls to raise K-12 spending (and taxes), but they clearly lack support from the leadership. The return on investment (ROI) is clearly not there, the investment being heat from unhappy voters.

Again, these are good people overall despite the notable exceptions we all have chronicled. They've lost that lovin' feeling for K-12 as well it would appear.

That said, recent coverage of Charter Schools in Minnesota suggests that our own Minneapolis Star Tribune is not quite ready to follow the Times' and the Post's lead. I'll concede that east coast teachers unions are more aggressive and more corrupt. But the fundamental question remains.

Is a high cost, highly unionized, highly regulated K-12 system the best we can offer our children?