Things have been pretty good for me at school so far this year. All 5 of my classes have been good, and having 4 preps is actually a relief after last year’s 5 daily preps. I have two girls doing Independent Study in Advanced Calculus, one of them only a junior who is probably the best all-around student I’ve had in a dozen years many long-time readers know who that other student was; think Princeton).

Some of my teachers are not having as much fun as I am though, especially the teachers of low-level senior math classes. Many of those students had substitute teachers both their sophomore and junior years, so their classes were largely out-of-control and they neither learned how to behave in a math class nor developed very good basic math skills. This year they are serious behavior problems, so I tried to move a few of the discipline problems out of the classes since they are disrupting the learning of the other students. However, the supervisor refuses to permit it since she believes those students were cheated of a math education the past two years and we owe them this year. But they are depriving several dozen other students of an education by their constant disruptions, so who is really being cheated here? State law requires that students disrupting the learning of other students be removed from the classroom, but such disruption is taking place this year and nothing is being done about it.

I am a firm believer that selfishness is the root of most evil in this world, and that the greatest good for the greatest number requires cooperation and compromise rather than selfishness. Often that is not the case in education though, where the rights of the minority are allowed to trample the needs of the majority.

I have been writing science fiction most of my life, beginning as soon as I was old enough to walk to the library and take out books such as the Oz books and something called The Light At the End of the Tunnel, whose author I do not remember and whom I have never been able to find anywhere online.

But before science fiction there were comic books, which I began reading at the age of 9 with an anthology comic called Tales of the Unexpected. It consisted of punchy little science fiction stories, sort of a cross between The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. They were great stuff, but a few years later DC Comics underwent their superhero revival with the return of Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League of America, and endless others, so I naturally drifted in that direction as the anthology comics gradually faded away.

A few science fiction comics continued, such as Mystery in Space and Jim Starlin’s fabulous Dreadstar, but they were much fewer than previously. Recently DC Comics has begun issuing a series of 500+ page books containing collections of stories mostly from the 1960s, and a few of them have sf themes. Today I received Adam Strange–which was a science fiction comic about a character influenced by Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars–and Challengers of the Unknown, which was equally parts non-super-heroes and sf. I have not bought–but may do so eventually–The Great Disaster, featuring post-apocalyptic stories, and House of Mystery, which is more horror than sf, but featuring many of DC Comics' best writers and artists.

You can take the comic books away from the boy, but you can never truly take the boy away from the comics.

Here are more alphabetized comments. The remainder of them are posted at my sf blog linked below:

K: My pantheon of favorite rock performs include several famous artists such as the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and several more obscure artists such as Chris de Burgh, Richard Thompson and the Strawbs, but my very favorite artists are still the Kinks, who were sadly underrated for nearly twenty years.

L: I was in college during the Vietnam War protests and the Summer of Love, but I was so immersed in science fiction that I hardly even noticed either of them taking place. In the aftermath of Kent State, protests took place on the Seton Hall campus a short distance away from where I was taking classes; I finally realized what was happening when final exams were cancelled my senior year.

M: I have serious doubts about mankind when many of the most renowned historical persons are basically a bunch of mass murderers. After all, doesn’t most of the fame of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte come from their success at invading countries and slaughtering millions of people? Are these people who should be held up as icons of “greatness”? And isn’t it revealing that while European conquerors, such as those listed above, are considered great heroes, Asian conquerors such as Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, whose careers were very similar, are considered lowly savages?

N: Isn’t it ironic that I have devoted a large portion of my life to reading and writing about science fiction, yet if I have any small recognition outside my school, it is probably because of a nonfiction book about the Nanking massacre?

O: Ocean City, MD, is a very nice place to visit, but were I to retire in that vicinity, I would probably select neighboring Fenwick Island, DE, which is much less touristy, has as much beach access, and resides in a state with incredibly-low taxes.

P: Most polls for the past few decades have shown that one of the leading concerns of most Americans is high taxes. Does this mean those people are not worried about the country’s infrastructure falling apart, millions of people dying from lack of medical coverage, or the fact that America has more crime and poverty than many non-Third World countries? Apparently so, since handling all of those problems would require paying more taxes, which is precisely the opposite of what most Americans want.

S: There is only one reason why teaching is a wonderful profession: students. True there are obnoxious students, ill-tempered students, and arrogant students who consider disruption their right as Americans. But other students take learning seriously, and consider teachers their mentors and role models. Those are the students who make up for all the other ills of the profession.

V: My new Jeep Compass came with a year of Sirius Radio pre-paid, so I have been listening to better music in the car than I have heard since the heyday of WNEW-FM in the 1970s. My favorite station is Sirius 16, the Vault, which plays classic rock but not vastly-overplayed hits, dipping into album tracks instead. In a single day I heard The Kinks’ “Celluloid Heroes,” the Moody Blues’ “The Actor,” and Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a Brick.” I realize Sirius is vastly overpriced, but an entire year of music like this might convince me to change my mind about that.

Y: I am not a country-western fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I really like the music of Dwight Yoakim, who is as much rockabilly and rock and roll as he is country. Unfortunately, straddling genres that way is usually career suicide.

Z: I am a huge fan of progressive rock, where the vast majority of artists are non-American, mostly British (Yes, ELP, Pink Floyd, King Crimson) or European (The Flower Kings whom I discovered through Frank Denton). Frank Zappa is probably the outstanding American artist, although the new Decemberists are certainly a very promising band.

I am very upset tonight, because of problems happening at school which I dare not discuss in public. Maybe it’s time to start considering retirement... ;

I have a bunch of comments that I will post alphabetically over the next week or so. Enjoy!

B: My brother recently bought a 55+ house near the Jersey shore in Barnegat, one of those towns which are becoming overrun with seniors. I like their house, and the community seems fine with a lot of options for retirees, but I have one complaint: the houses are so close together a person could literally stand between two neighboring houses and touch both of them simultaneously! That’s a bit too close for me.

D: From a very young age, I wanted to be a professional writer, and I never really had any specific interests other than that. I selected Math as my college major because the two areas I enjoyed most were English and History, but neither seemed particularly practical except for teaching, and I wanted to be a writer. Then I went for a Masters Degree for lack of something better to do, and I was actually accepted into a doctoral program before I realized that devoting my life to researching mathematics would seriously interfere with my writing. So I thought I would try teaching math for a few years while I was writing, and somehow I turned out to be a considerably better math teacher (I think...) than I was a writer.

E: My entire family is now working in Parsippany, which is twenty-five miles away directly in the flow of rush hour traffic. Jean and I work at Parsippany High School, Andy works at Embassy Suites, and Mark works at Prudential. Maybe we should consider selling our house and moving closer to work.

F: While many purists claim that all rock and roll descended from blues, there is a large aspect of r&r that evolved from folk music, both the American version (Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Loving Spoonful) and the British version (Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Strawbs). Folk-rock is usually distinctive in that there is virtually nothing bluesy about it.

J: John Cleese is my choice for the funniest person in the world. Some scenes from Monty Python’s Traveling Circus or Fawlty Towers still make me laugh no matter how many times I have seen them.

You would expect a four-day weekend to give me lots of time to accomplish things. NOT! Here is a list of chores that I have either accomplished so far, or need to do the next two days:

> go shopping two different times to Shop-Rite and B.J.’s
> go to the YMCA
> take my car to the dealer for a checkup
> go to a doctor’s appointment
> work on the Tibet book proposal
> prepare some Calculus since we are using a new text this year
> vacuum
> make macaroni gravy
> make granola
> go for a haircut

A four-day weekend is not nearly long enough!

One morning this past week Mark heard a strange noise outside the house, and when he opened the door Misty came running inside. He thinks it was a fox, so we have been careful about letting the cats out early while it is still dark, since foxes tend to hunt at night.

Currently reading: I have started my fall short fiction reading, currently Jonathan Strahan’s annual collection Best Short Novels. The first two stories by were very good, so that bodes well for the rest of the book.

Currently listening: Pink Floyd’s classic album Mettle. You can never get enough Floyd!

Attention, all book lovers! Go immediately to this link and gape in awe at some of the most wonderful libraries in the world. Then let me know which one is your favorite: http://www.curiousexpeditions.org/2007/09/a_librophiliacs_love_letter_1.html

After the first two days of school spent running around like a lunatic, trying to deal with all the annual problems caused by defective room scheduling and administrative snafu, we have our first four-day weekend of the year. Some of it will be spend doing school work, of course, but at least it won’t be in a building whose ambiance resembles a fully-functional sauna more than an actual school.

Our trip to Ocean City, MD was fun. Lots of time spent in the ocean, in the condo’s pool, walking the huge boardwalk, walking along the bay side of the narrow peninsula, eating (three buffets), shopping, and visiting Assoteague Island, the home of 180 wild horses! It was good to have a relaxing week before shifting gears from summer vacation to the new school year.

Friday was the first day of teacher meetings, with freshmen orientation Monday and classes Tuesday. My schedule is slightly better this year than last year, only 4 preps instead of five: AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics (2 sections), Honors Algebra 2, and ESL Math. My department has 6 new teachers, but 3 of them are experienced, including Jean, so there should be lots of people helping out the newcomers. Check back with me in three months on all this...

As usual, I did not accomplish as much writing and editing this summer as I hoped to do, but I actually did more than I finish most summers, so it was a fruitful summer overall. I even read 10 books, the best of which were Steven Saylor’s historical mystery The Judgment of Caesar, set in classic Alexandria, and Robert Silverberg’s Roma Eterna, an alternate history which presupposes that the Roman Empire survived into modern times. I guess that makes my second consecutive summer a Roman summer in some ways.