Some random comments...

School has been pretty good so far this year, although my students are not as sociable as last year’s students were. But that class was a rare one indeed, and experience shows that type of class comes around once every few years at most. I was fortunate that only a few years prior to that class I had Wenjing and Preeti’s class, another special one.

Every year a handful of kids spend lots of time in my office, and they are the ones I bond with the most. I wonder if I went back through my records if I could recreate the list of all those “Math Lab” students? I still stay in contact with many of them, but others have totally vanished from my life (which is a bit sad when I think about it ☹).

The weather is fairly dismal this weekend but, hey, it’s still a weekend! And no matter how much I enjoy teaching, having time to sleep late, relax, write and read is always a pleasure. After I return to school Monday, I have another two days off, which is great!

Currently listening: Jean Luc Ponty first came to prominence in the rock world as a member of Frank Zappa’s band on some of his most acclaimed albums. Since then he has had a stellar solo career, and I am really enjoying his Life at Semper Opera. Jazz-rock fusion is one of my favorite types of progressive rock.

Currently reading: Clifford D. Simak was my first favorite writer when I discovered sf at the age of 14. He had so many outstanding stories and novels that periodically I go back and reread one of them. Right now I am reading A Choice of Gods, one of his loose trilogy of philosophical novels (along with Project Pope and A Heritage of Stars) he wrote late in his career. I still enjoy his pastoral musings tremendously, and I realized how much of an influence his writing was on my own Sashi series of stories.

The current financial crisis in this country is very scary, and I do not believe there is any easy fix for it. It will definitely cost taxpayers money, and I suspect credit will not be as easy to get in the foreseeable future as it has been recently. The government was wrong to treat business with a laissez faire attitude for so long, so that needs to change. John McCain was one of the “hands-off” leaders in Congress who wanted to privatize social security (which thankfully did not happen!), so I was really annoyed by his public reaction to the crisis on his newest ad in which he glibly blames the crisis on “Wall Street greed” and claims that he will fight Wall Street. I’m sorry, the man is an imbecile if he really believes that statement, and he is a hypocrite if he does not believe it but makes the claim for the sake of a few votes. Hopefully, his latest intention to suspend campaigning and work together with Barack Obama will have elicit a more sophisticated response to the crisis from him.

Mark and Kate have decided to go to Hawaii for their honeymoon, which sounds delightful. That is one of the places I would like to see sometime, but probably will not since I am not much of a traveler. It took Fei Fei’s wedding to finally get me to Italy, which was the best trip of my life.

Today is another Chinese buffet visit with Alan and Denise, something I should be avoiding since I am trying to both get in better shape as well as lose a half-dozen pounds. But how can I avoid the lure of good, Chinese food?

Chinese buffets have become very popular in recent years, not surprisingly since they offer such a wide variety of good food, plus there is less overhead than menu restaurants for several reasons. I wonder why some Italian pizzerias have not converted into buffets as well. Just think of an endless aisle filled with pastas, pizzas, seafood and chicken dishes, half of it smothered in life’s finest delicacy: tomato sauce! I get hungry just dreaming about it.

The town in which I live is split down the middle by Route 46, whose length contains a dozen Italian and Chinese restaurants in a six mile stretch. How do so many competing restaurants possibly stay in business? Here’s one possible reason: the past two weeks have been perhaps the most volatile financially in this country since the Great Depression, while unemployment and prices continue rising out of sight, yet as Jean and I were driving home yesterday we saw the parking lots of several restaurants absolutely packed full. I guess economic hardship does not prevent people from eating out, so while retail businesses might be suffering, apparently restaurants are not.

Currently listening: The History of the Dave Clark 5, one of the underrated British invasion bands. At one time they were consider competition to the Beatles until it became obvious that nobody could compare to the Fab Four, but the Dave Clark 5 deserve to be remembered a lot more than they are.

Currently reading: DC Comics has published a series of 500+ page trade paperbacks under the collective title Showcase Presents, featuring titles from the 1960 and 1970s, the comic industry’s Silver Age. I always felt Hawkman was an underappreciated comic,largely because of Joe Kubert’s fabulous art, and I am pleased to be reading many of those stories which I never read in their original comic format.

Facts to live by:

Work definitely interferes with the activities you really enjoy doing (in my case, reading and writing).

Thinking too much is definitely no good!

How can so many supposedly intelligent people believe Sarah Palin is actually qualified to be vice-president of the country?

Somebody told me last year that this country had only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as its financial crisis, and I assumed she was exaggerating. Nope, if anything she was optimistic considering how dire have been the events of the past few weeks.

The Roman Empire lasted hundreds of years (even longer if you accept the Byzantine Empire as the successor of the Roman Empire). The British Empire lasted longer than a century. America’s predominance in the world began fifty years ago and it is beginning to look like we’re on our last legs already.

What is all the fuss over golf’s Ryder Cup? America used to beat the British handily every competition because we held a 5-1 population advantage. So the rules were changed to make the competition America versus Europe, giving the Europeans a 2-1 population advantage. Now, of course, they are winning regularly. Wasn’t that the intent of the rules change?

Being a Yankees fan, I cannot help but chuckle as the Mets face yet another September meltdown.

Did anybody really believe that Bret Favre was going to turn the dismal Jets into instant Super-Bowl contenders? Building a team through drafting and teamwork is the best way to build a championship team, kind of like that other team in the Meadowlands did it. They have won 3 Super-Bowls and their only superstar anytime was a linebacker.

My favorite book this summer was Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a book I recommend highly.

A few observations on the first week back at school:

The first week of school is always very busy and exhausting, which is why I have not posted all week. Between waking at 5:15 am and being on my feet the entire day, who has the energy to post blogs at night?

My classes seem pretty good so far. My most tiring class is my ESL class where most of the students do not speak English, so I am running around the entire period trying to answer all their questions (with answers they can hopefully understand) as they work at their own pace, since each of them came to the school at different levels.

The overall schedule is fairly chaotic, which the administration blames on the new computer system. Considering that we have never had wonderful schedules in the past, we assume part of the blame must lie with the schedule programmer as well. For example, two sections of Honors Geometry are the same period, yet one began school with 9 students and the other with 21 students. Surely a bit of error-checking would have caught that imbalance before classes began?

In recent years there had been 2 sections of regular-level Statistics and 2 sections of advanced placement Statistics, which was weird considering how few other honors-level math courses there were. The high number of students taking AP Statistics was largely due to the former teacher who recruited marginally-capable students just so she could have a better schedule, but consequently the students did poorly on the annual AP test. Since I took over both AP sections last year, I was able to teach the course on the level it deserved, which is why there is only 1 section of it this year as compared to 3 sections of the regular level.

I have been in contact with a few of last year’s graduates who seem to be adjusting to college fairly well. Thankfully, none of them have complained they are unprepared for their math courses this year, which is the true test of how well I taught them last year!

Some thoughts about the start of the new school year:

The start of a new school year is always a combination of wistfulness (Where did summer vacation go so quickly?) and anticipation. But our first day Friday consisted of 7 hours of meetings with district administrators, building administrators and area supervisors, and it was so deadly as far as being boring and useless that it put a damper on the start of the school year.

Because of my reputation, my students tend to come to my classes in a bit of shock, a situation which actually makes my job as a motivator and disciplinarian much easier. Thus I am thankful to all my former students for spreading tales about how difficult my classes are, haha.

Five seniors this year are “doubling up” in my AP Calculus and AP Statistics–those lucky kids! What will make their year even better is that my two classes are back-to-back, so they get to have 88 consecutive minutes of me every single day of the school year! ☺

I have been chatting a bit with some of last year’s seniors who started college this year, and one of them commented to me, “High school was so much easier!” When students work so hard in high school to get into the most competitive college programs, sometimes they do not realize how challenging those programs will be. That is why I try to maintain such a high level for my advanced placement seniors so that the high school to college transition will be a bit less traumatic for them. I know they are not thrilled that I do it, but in the long run I believe it is beneficial to them.

There are two qualities I look for in a vice-presidential candidate. What expertise do they have that will assist the president in making decisions affecting the country and the world? And should the president die in office, is that person prepared to take over the role of president?

When John McCain selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I was immediately skeptical on both of the above counts. So last night’s speech at the Republican national convention was her chance to show what she offers the Republican presidential ticket. And what did she show? An ability to read a speech that was written by John McCain’s campaign theme, and joyfulness at attacking the Democratic candidate.

Did she reveal any expertise? No. Did she state her positions on the important issues of the campaign? Not at all. In fact, her uselessness as vice-president looms even larger when compared to the expertise and extensive knowledge possessed by Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden.

In 2000 I thought John McCain was the best of all the primary candidates running for president, until he passively let George W. Bush libel and degrade him throughout the primaries. In the eight years since, McCain completely abandoned his reputation as a maverick and a compromiser who reached across party lines by backing almost all of George. W. Bush’s disastrous policies, so that I lost much respect for McCain. I was hoping that he would redeem himself in my eyes during the primary campaign, but what he mostly showed instead was that he learned from Bush how to attack other candidates while revealing as few policies as possible.

And after winning the nomination, McCain’s first important decision was selecting a vice-presidential running mate, a decision which he botched terribly. One of the headlines at CNN online asked, “Has McCain lost his mind?” At this point, it is difficult to think otherwise. He certainly has lost my vote in the upcoming presidential election.