Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

As of this writing, HR-550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, has 203 co-sponsors in the House. If there were — say — 218 co-sponsors, that would constitute a majority of the House, and would force a vote on this resolution. (Hint, hint.) It’s past time to wake your “Representative” the fuck up if they’re not already on board with this measure.

Click here to go to a previous Stump Lane post about HR-550.

Sixteen artists* whose work— [when they/if they were to] put out an album of new material —Your Montag [would purchase/at one time would have purchased] sound unheard. Listed alphabetically.

• A Perfect Circle
• Alice in Chains
• Aphex Twin
• Bad Religion
• Cure, The
• Jane’s Addiction
• Led Zeppelin
• Morphine
• Nine Inch Nails
• Nirvana
• Pixies, The/Frank Black/Black Francis
• Radiohead/Thom Yorke
• Rage Against the Machine
• Smiths, The/Morrissey
• Stereolab
• Underworld

*Bold entries indicate artists that [would likely/have actually in the past] swindled Your Montag into purchasing a [greatest hits/anthology/some crappy movie soundtrack/digitally remastered boxed set] just to get the one or two [rarities/unreleased tracks/new material] included.

Here’s my alternate take on a Bazooka Joe comic. Leave your own take on the joke, and help breathe some life into our underpopulated comment area.

“Senator Mortimer, won’t you please, please, please do something about the unprecedented, and thus far unchecked, consolidation of power in the executive branch, which manifests itself most brazenly in the disregard of the rule of law through the use of Presidential signing statements; and has resulted in, among other things, the violation of privacy, a disregard for due process, and torture— generally, a degradation of human rights!”

“If you’re scared, do what I do! Shut your eyes!”

[NewsHour (PBS): Signing Statements Undermine Law]

Able-bodied, powerful (read: wealthy), English speaking, white males do not hold a monopoly on human potential. No matter what the test results imply.

That’s ultimately what we’re talking about, isn’t it?

Doomed Aesthetic

Despite the failure of past efforts to get this feature off the ground, Your Montag tries once again. Maybe Wednesdays are better than Saturday to solicit reader participation. Here’s my alternate take on a Bazooka Joe comic. Dear Reader, you are cordially invited to leave your take on the joke in our underpopulated comment area.

“Herman, the Senate Judiciary Committee and I have been expecting some answers from you on your domestic spying operations— and how you can possibly argue that they are fucking legal in light of current law, namely the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act —for months!”

“I know, Mort!”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll forget about all the individual warrants you should have got before wiretapping US citizens, if you submit the program as a whole for judicial review!”

“Fine! Just so long as the judicial review is optional, takes place in a secret court, that that court has the power to dismiss the case for any reason whatsoever, and that there is no plaintiff to argue against us or to bring any appeals!”

[Reason: A Specter Is Haunting America]

The peculiar headline on this New York Times article declares Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study.

The “study” the headline refers to is one released Friday by the Education Department entitled Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, and if you’ve read as far as the end of that title, you may actually be interested in reading the full study which can be downloaded and read at this link.

Bizarrely, the Times article avoids telling the reader what the study’s basis for comparison was. There’s a lot of talk about “performance” and “scores,” but it isn’t until paragraph 13, that the phrase “test scores” appears, and there is no further indication in the text of the article of what test scores the study actually studied; (though there is a link to a pdf file of the study on the NYT web site.)

At any rate, for clarity, when the article says:
“Students in private schools typically score higher than those in public schools, a finding confirmed in the study.”

…the article means:
“Students in private schools typically score higher— on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics tests given to public and private school students in 4th and 8th grades —than those in public schools, a finding confirmed in the study, which looked at the 2003 NAEP results.”

And the article says:

Students in private schools typically score higher than those in public schools, a finding confirmed in the study. The report then dug deeper to compare students of like racial, economic and social backgrounds. When it did that, the private school advantage disappeared in all areas except eighth-grade reading.

And in math, 4th graders attending public school were nearly half a year ahead of comparable students in private school, according to the report. [Emphasis added.]

If you’re like me, you’re interested in how a shill for private schools would spin this. Here is what Joseph McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, an umbrella organization that represents 80 percent of private elementary and secondary schools, had to say about the findings:

Joseph McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, an umbrella organization that represents 80 percent of private elementary and secondary schools, said the statistical analysis had little to do with parents’ choices on educating their children.

“In the real world, private school kids outperform public school kids,” Mr. McTighe said. “That’s the real world, and the way things actually are.”

Dang, Joseph, condescend much? That quote makes you sound like a priggish elitist snob. Very ‘private school’. Well played, chap.

I guess Joseph’s ‘real world’ is one in which one can flatly disregard systemic biases— based upon gender, race, “disability status” and “identification as an English language learner” —or at least dismiss such frivolous minutiae as inconsequential.

While this report would seem to confirm one of Your Montag’s most deeply held convictions, that public schools are not inherently inferior to private schools; and though I appreciate the political cannon fodder for use against the pro-voucher crowd, (I oppose pretty much anything that would take money away from public schools,) I must balk at the tendency of debating education policy based almost entirely on standardized test results. The fact that this type of study is even necessary seems to reinforce the misgivings I harbor about testing.

Standardized tests do nothing to fix the inequalities in our education system; they don’t measure understanding, critical thinking, creativity, or problem solving ability; and they may even do more harm than good through biases that perpetuate the very inequalities we wish to correct.

Test preparation is not education!

The last 50 posts or so have been a long hard slog; but this here is the five-hundredth (500) post here at Stump Lane.

Arcs above

[Cross posted at Braindead Shithead. Hey, that rhymes-ed!]

I don’t have the spoons to get a list of my top 100 albums together as others among us are doing… So here’s a plain old list of eleven random songs.

Say what?

Fire up the jukebox, don’t skip over anything, and take the first eleven that pop up. [Norbizness]

1. Outer Accelerator — Stereolab — +
2. Forgotten — Linkin Park — As Linkin Park songs go… — +
3. 54 Cymru Beats — Aphex Twin — =
4. Come On In My Kitchen — Robert Johnson — +
5. 19-2000 — Gorillaz — I suspect this song was diminished in my estimation by the 15,000 plays it got on the radio summer of ’01. It was probably one of the last things I heard before the terrorists ruined everything. — =
6. Baghdad — Offspring — Anti-American, anti-war-in-Iraq song with a reference to flag burning “our flags our burning, our flags are burning.” This is why we need a constitutional amendment… — +
7. There’s Just No Home for You Here — White Stripes — -
8. Soak the Sin — Blind Melon — Toward the end there’s some really cool guitar work on this one. — +
9. Don’t Go — Yaz — =
10. Stuck in the Middle With You — Stealers Wheel — [spoiler]The ear slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs.[/spoiler] — =
11. I Bleed — Pixies — Not sure how popular this notion is, but the Pixies’ Doolittle may just edge out Bossanova as my favorite Pixies album. It would make the top quarter of my top 100 albums. — +

Bonus #12: Street Fighting Man — Rage Against the Machine

I weeded a bunch of stuff off my player to make room for new music, which might have something to do with the fact there is only one “-” this week: +, +, =, +, =, +, -, +, =, =, +. Aggregate: +5.

Colombian Formula One racer Juan Pablo Montoya is switching to SUCKCAR NASCAR.

Announcing his new plans at the weekend to drive Chip Ganassi’s No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger, Montoya said: “When people think of moving from Formula One to NASCAR, some people think I’m crazy, but I think it’s exciting…” [Formula1.com: Montoya to switch to NASCAR]

I don’t know whether I should now disdain Montoya, or deign to actually watch NASCAR. [shudder]

MTT: Your Montag hasn’t been following closely enough this season to be up on the latest motorsprots politics, but I wonder what role, if any, DaimlerChrysler plays in Montoya’s move from a Mercedes F1 car to a Dodge stock car…

Probably not much of one.

Montoya has a history with Ganassi. He was the 1999 CART champion behind the wheel of a Target/Chip Ganassi Racing car. Can they get similar results in NASCAR? I’ll be interested to hear about it, but I doubt I’ll be watching.

I’ll watch when they ban the use of petroleum products.

I propose a new formula: Formula Montag: Anything goes except maximum speed shall be limited to [insert arbitrary number less than 200 here -- say 175?] mph, and vehicles shall be powered with renewable energy.

And dont’ forget the ‘no petroleum products’ thing.

UPDATE:

McLaren have announced current race driver Juan Pablo Montoya will not drive for the rest of the 2006 season and test driver Pedro de la Rosa will race alongside Kimi Raikkonen for this weekend’s French Grand Prix. [Formula1.com: De la Rosa to replace Montoya]