So it turns out I was quoted in The Hub this week, along with Illinipundit, Champaign Common Sense, Old Guy, Chambana Community Livejournal, and Openingbands.com. The Hub took it's quote from this post regarding the NAEP results, which many conservatives have used to trumpet the President's NCLB legislation.

It is flattering to be quoted, and I am humbled by the company, but I had absolutely no idea this publication was going to use my words. Frankly, I had no idea anyone was even reading this blog. So I did a little research on the legalities of quoting blogs. It looks like this site has the definitive conclusion:

Question: I found something interesting on someone else's blog. May I quote it?

Answer: Yes. Short quotations will usually be fair use, not copyright infringement. The Copyright Act says that "fair use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." So if you are commenting on or criticizing an item someone else has posted, you have a fair use right to quote. The law favors "transformative" uses — commentary, either praise or criticism, is better than straight copying — but courts have said that even putting a piece of an existing work into a new context (such as a thumbnail in an image search engine) counts as "transformative." The blog's author might also have granted you even more generous rights through a Creative Commons license, so you should check for that as well.

I personally have no interest in a Creative Commons license. Maybe I should?

Either way, it looks like the bloggers of the world have fairly little control over who quotes what they say, and how those quotes are used. We should probably be a bit more careful in the future. Who knows who is out there? 8 comments

I am taking part in an institute run by these guys all week and will be blogging very little. After that it's back to Michigan for more fun in the sun, so this thing may be neglected for a while.

But, it turns out Tim Johnson will be holding a "Town Hall Meeting" on Monday, August 1st in the Urbana Civic Center. Festivities will begin at 6:00 p.m.

Johnson recently voted against the Patriot Act, apparently because he didn't like the absence of the sunset provisions. More interesting to me is Mr. Johnson's apparent cruising as a Rep. A cursory glance at his website shows that he has sponsored zero legislative initiatives this year, and only co-sponsored 68 (co-sponsoring means very little, he is a co-sponsor with over 300 other reps on one bill, the smallest number of co-sponsors is 6 and that happens only once, most are over 50).

I am hoping to still be in town on Monday but if I am gone I certainly hope that someone in this town will call Mr. Johnson on his lackadaisical attitude toward his job. Are things going so well in D.C. these days that no new legislation needs to be offered for District 15? I doubt it.

A better question might be: does anyone care? 1 comments

I’ve been holed up in the Urbana Free Library’s Archives for the last two weeks doing background research for an upcoming teacher institute. I’ve learned much from flipping through the pages of old C/U newspapers like The Courier and the Champaign County News-Gazette, with their constant kudos and quips about business around town. I’m a big fan of local and Illinois history.

One of the most interesting facets of reading through old papers is the advertising. The ads for automobiles in the 1950s and 60s are fascinating, as are the changes in dress and household goods. One of the most interesting product evolutions is the washing machine, which goes from a hand driven machine with a large crank (The Maytag “Pastime” of 1907) to the gas powered monsters of the 30s (Maytag Model E), to the beloved hummers that are even now cleaning my clothes (Maytag Atlantis). The ingenuity that went into the development of these time and grief savers is admirable. Especially in the case of Maytag.

Founded by Illinois native Frederick Louis Maytag in 1893, the Maytag Corporation began life by creating a safer threshing feeder for farmers, who often suffered debilitating injuries feeding straw into a threshing cylinder. By 1902 Maytag had cornered the market on threshing feeders, and Fred turned his attention to new inventions, including the brief production of the Maytag-Mason Automobile in 1910, which was famed for being the most powerful car of the age. By 1907 Maytag had produced its first washing machine, the Pastime. Innovations came fast and furious, including the creation of the first aluminum tub washing machine which radically changed the face of the market once and for all. By the 1950s Maytag Corporation was one of the most successful manufacturers in America, employing thousands of Americans and creating convenience for millions of others.

In short, Maytag Corporation is the epitome of American success. Maytags are as American as apple pie and baseball.

Which makes the recent news of the Chinese corporation Haier’s interest in buying Maytag all the more disturbing. The deal didn’t go through, but it revealed a major flaw in the “free market” thinking of the last twenty years: the rest of the world isn’t playing fair.

While our leaders in Washington and Wall Street have opened up our most sacred corporations to foreign investment and purchasing, most of the rest of the world refuses to sell their corporate interests to Americans. The Asians are renown for their reluctance to even allow American investors to buy their stocks. Try buying Hyundai sometime. It’s quite the chore.

The Chinese would never allow the sale of a hallmark corporation like Maytag to a foreign country. They would see that as an invasion of their country, and a sign of weakness. We call it free trade.

Much has been made of the fall of the Soviet Union and the “collapse” of Communism. But careful study of global economics shows that the Communists may indeed be winning the Cold War after all. Instead of using missiles and threats to coerce us into détente, the Chinese and Vietnamese are exploiting the weakness of capitalism: our obsession with greed.

Maytag will not be sold to the Chinese, and Unocal may stay American as well, but it is just a matter of time. The power of the Chinese Government will allow it to offer the highest prices for American corporations in the future. Our profit mentality will demand that we acquiesce to their offers. Soon China will own more than our government ($120 billion in T-Bills), they’ll own our washing machines as well.

Fred Maytag just rolled over in his grave. 0 comments

That bastion of anti-truth, the New York Times, has a fascinating article in today's business section (subscription required) about Hollywood's new marketing approaches toward Christians. It's a good read, and I would consider it essential for any believer getting ready to enjoy the new crop of Christian-ese films. Here are some of the best quotes:

"We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians," explained the movie's director, Doug Liman. "It's literally in there for no other reason than I thought, This is cool." ...

... Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians number an estimated 30 million in the United States, and Hollywood - faced with a prolonged slump in ticket sales - has followed its natural instincts in trying to tap one of the country's most powerful niche markets. ...

... "It's a well-formed community, it's identifiable, it has very specific tastes and preferences and is therefore a group that can be located and can be directly marketed to." He added, "In every fashion, you need to customize your message to your audience."

...studios throughout the industry have been turning to newly minted experts in Christian marketing to scan their family-friendly scripts for objectionable content and to devise marketing plans to reach the Christian audience.

etc. etc. etc...

So this is what the new secularization of Christianity has come to: a niche market for Capitalist production. The only reality worse than reading the schemes of the marketers is the realization that youth groups, families, and even congregations will undoubtedly flock to consume these new customized Christian products. Unaware and (most likely) uninterested in the fact that they have been created for no other reason than to entertain by people who most likely are not Christian and are first and foremost interested in creating a profit.

The average Hollywood movie now costs over $100 million to create and market. The Chronicles of Narnia, which is to be marketed directly to Christians, is expected to cost over $180 million, before marketing. It seems likely that this film (the first of the series) will cost a quarter of a billion dollars to produce and market.

Which seems to beg the obvious question: wouldn't this money be better spent somewhere else? It is obvious that the producers of this film, Disney, Inc., believe they will make a hefty profit off this movie, and that Christian dollars will play a large role in their take. Disney, of course, is a part of the ABC network which pedals wares like "Desperate Housewives" in prime time. But I digress.

While the world is burning and millions die each day of starvation or preventable diseases, Hollywood has finally caught on that Christians have a lot of disposable income. The point of the NYT's article is not that Christians are spreading their influence throughout the country and now God Himself is taking the reigns at Dreamworks Pictures. No, the point of this article is that Christians are ready to start making their influence felt in the marketplace. We have money left over, and we'd like, no we deserve, to be entertained. Just cut out that dirty word, and maybe drop the nudity a bit? Thanks. Here's my $8.50. Let's get some popcorn, hun.

In but not of the world? 4 comments

Much will be made of yesterday's report on the increase in reading and math scores for elementary and middle school students across the nation. We in Urbana actually took part in last years NAEP exam, and these results do in fact reflect the progress our own students have made.

The crucial question will of course be whether or not the President's NCLB legislation is to be credited with these increases. As I have said before, NCLB is not all bad and actually has some merit in it's emphasis on the achievement gap between minority and white students. The test results seem to indicate that this emphasis is making a difference. Intimidation apparently works better than we thought.

While critics of the teacher unions have bemoaned the woeful job our teachers have been doing over the last thirty years, our nation's educators have been quietly working their asses off. The long term trend of test scores has been rising for those thirty years, even though teachers are increasingly called upon to solve societies problems (for $35K a year), and are often blamed for the failure of their students (regardless of family life, socio-economic status, etc.).

In Urbana we have focused incredibly hard on identifying our struggling learners and creating new opportunities for them to learn. My colleagues and I have spent countless hours rethinking how we teach, redesigning curriculum, and adapting new strategies for instruction. It seems that, eventually, our work will pay off.

But will we be recognized? Let me be clear, the students are the folks who deserve the praise here. NCLB didn't raise those scores through intimidation, our students raised those scores through hard work.

But the teachers had a lot to do with it. Perhaps it is time to recognize not only the difficulty of the problems public education faces, but also the amount of success that our nation's teachers create on a daily basis. NCLB may have laid the foundation for improvement by imposing intimidating mandates on our nation's schools. But it is the students, and their teachers, who have done the hard work to improve our schools. 0 comments

A recent article in the NG suggests that the City of Urbana will be pursuing large grants for the installation of bike paths in East Urbana. This is a great idea, far superior to the woefully inept Tram notion that has been floated for the last few years. Some conservatives seems to reject this idea as a spread of federal power. That might be true, but what would this power look like? A gravel trail instead of pavement? Cedar railings instead of pine? Hmmm.

Here's an idea: Let's run the bike path along the rails that feed the Emulsicoat factory. If you don't know what Emulsicoat is, just give a sniff at Schnucks or any road in that area on a hot summer day. Smell that tar in the air? That's Emulsicoat. Polluting the air in Urbana for a profit. Gotta love 'em.

Wouldn't we all rather have a way to safely bike from East Urbana to campus, or even across town to Champaign rather than a tar factory spewing stench into the air? Call me a loony liberal, but I'd take the bike path any day. 0 comments