Fixing California

View 724 Tuesday, May 15, 2012

I seem to be recovering form whatever malaise has struck me, but it’s slow. Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson has a piece called “Can California be fixed?” which tells pretty well why Californians are often depressed. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299975/can-california-be-fixed-victor-davis-hanson# It’s worth your time.

It’s pretty well accepted among those who study education that schools can be fixed – or at least doubled in effectiveness – by the simple expedient of firing the 10% least competent teachers and not replacing them. Just allocate their students to the other teachers. As to who are the 10% least competent, you will find by and large that everyone knows who they are. Principals know (although there are incompetent principals who need to go). Parents know although some will have political agendas. Students know, although some will of course have a grudge against competent but unpopular teachers. Other teachers know. But when you come down to it, you can choose the 10% least competent by using almost any rational procedure and you will get most of them, and of the few that you fire who shouldn’t be fired, essentially none will be in the top 50% of effectiveness.

But that’s unfair! If you fire even one who should not be fired –

But, alas, the alternative is to inflict all these incompetent teachers on the children unfortunate enough to be stuck in the public school system (and you will note that few who can afford an alternative will inflict this system of education on their own children).

Now the California courts have held that education is a right, meaning that paying for education is a public duty. I don’t accept that, but assume it is true: surely if you have a right to education then you have a right not to be stuck with an incompetent teacher? Whereas if you assume that education is an investment in the future, then surely you would not invest your money in incompetents? Those who claim that incompetent teachers have a right to a job at public expense have not explained the origins of that right.

In eBook era, slackers are out, reads the head for a New York Times thought piece picked up by a number of local papers. It tells stories of writers doing, not one novel a year which was the goal most writers aspired to but seldom met, but ten novels a year, plus a cascade of short stories, and a ton of blogging. The good news is that they’re selling, particularly for thrillers.

I find I’m not likely to join this new revolution, but it’s inspiring – and ought to be so for all those who want to make a living at this racket. Productivity counts…

Fortunately, backlist sales are up, too, and I’ve got a fairly large backlist. Backlist isn’t as good as a new thriller every couple of months. Back when I got into this racket, you had to write a lot, but it was mostly small stuff for the magazines, fleshed out with non-fiction, and the right non-fiction paid more than the magazine fiction. I don’t suppose that’s true any longer.

But the writing business is pretty good for those of an age and temperament to enjoy it. And science fiction writers are still the bards of the sciences.

In digging around on this topic I came across this, done back before we knew the effects of the Internet. A lot of it is still valid. http://www.whedon.info/Joss-Whedon-SciFi-com-talks-to-SF.html

And I do find I have a bit more energy every day, so apparently things are improving.

And the poll data are good. The President’s approval rate is about 43%. And it’s falling with key groups. Even Democrats are drawing away from him. It sure would be nice if some sanity returned to the Democratic Party. Maybe the New Democrats will come back?

Eric has been scanning and proofreading the ancient first BYTE columns that I did. We’re going to put them together into a book, with some comments by me looking back thirty years. I must say the darned things were pretty interesting – I started with the notion of seeing what Eric had got done, and ended up reading several of my old column, and my conversations with my mad friend Mac Lean. Mac Lean was an old retired spook with strange hobbies, one of which was small computers – he’s the guy who got me into it. Anyway, we’ll be putting much of that together in the next month or so.  But it got late and I haven’t done the mail and I guess I won’t get to it tonight.

And just as I was going to bed I got

‘The dominance of modern humans could have been in part a consequence of domesticating dogs — possibly combined with a small, but key, change in human anatomy that made people better able to communicate with dogs.’

<http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.15294,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx>

Roland Dobbins

Which looks like my cocktail party theory of the coevolution of humans and dogs – they kept their sense of smell, we used our forebrains to get smart, and we each look after the others kids – may be getting respectable.  I’ve always believed it, which implies to me a pretty strong ethical obligation to dogs, but then I have other weird ideas.

Anyway good night.

And of course I just had to see if there was a new Freefall panel, and there is. If you don’t know Freefall, I would be astonished if anyone who reads this place regularly didn’t like it. http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm The problem is that it won’t make sense unless you go to the Story Start and read from there. That will take a while, and it’s worth it. Trying to backtrack the current story line won’t work very well.  The first few episodes may not be as good at hooking you as they should be, but read on. It will get to you. And in case you are wondering, no, Sam is not human. He’s not even humanoid. But he’s not a robot.