I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!

I was sad to see this week that Peter O'Toole had passed away. I loved Lawrence of Arabia when it came out, but my favorite O'Toole movie was My Favorite Year, which came out in 1982. Set in the 1950's, it also starred Selma Diamond, who would be in Night Court in 1984 and Mark Linn Baker who would be in Perfect Strangers on TV two years later.Here's classic Selma Diamond:


                


Peter O'Toole plays swashbuckling movie star Alan Swann who finds out right before going on a TV variety show that it is live.



It is a very fun movie, and Peter O'Toole plays the dissolute movie star perfectly. Unlike his character, Peter O'Toole was a movie star and an actor of the highest order. Probably the best tribute I read this week: "Oh my god, if Peter O'Toole can die, anybody could die!"

The Memory Conundrum

My mom was ten years older than I am now when she passed away of diabetes problems and related heart problems. Ten years does not seem like a long time to have left. And as I seem to more often forget what I cooked for dinner last night (which is a blessing because I'm sure it wasn't healthy), I also seem more able to remember some things from a long time ago. Our friend's son Patrick is starting a new job in Okemos, Michigan. Almost 41years ago, Ann and I moved into our first apartment on our own in Okemos, Michigan. We were married on Saturday night, December 30, 1972, in St. Marys, Ohio, spent our wedding night in Toledo (how many people can say that?), then moved on to Okemos to open the new apartment we had loaded up with lots of boxes and left-over furniture from both families  two weeks earlier. I was to start student teaching at Okemos High School three days after we got married. Unfortunately, when we arrived late at night in Okemos, our apartment door was open and there was nothing inside. Turns out, the heavy rains had gotten into the apartment and soaked all the boxes and bookcases and other furniture. Luckily our landlord had moved all our stuff to a new dry apartment. He happened to see us standing in front of the old apartment and came out and explained everything. We traded keys with him and went "home" to find everything piled in next to the door. We had never lived together - we had dorm rooms and apartments at our respective universities, and when we went home for break, we each lived with our own parents, who lived two miles apart.  So the first apartment was a big deal. This was not a good way to start. We were in a drier apartment, but much of our stuff was soaked and hadn't been laid out to dry. We had spent time two weeks earlier arranging our furniture the way we wanted it. The new apartment was shaped differently and would take a while to sort out. And it was 11 PM on the 31st. We had one day (New Year's Day) before I needed to report to Okemos High School on January 2nd. Much of the rest of that winter and early spring are not as vivid in my mind. I know Ann would sometimes get up early (she was waiting to get signed up to do sub jobs at local elementary schools) and cook pancakes and sausages on the electric griddle we got as a wedding gift. We had a 1962? yellow Volkswagen Beetle that we loved. And not much money to live on. And we survived. The next year we moved to the Chicago suburbs looking for teaching jobs and our seven months in Okemos was over. But we remember it fondly for the most part. We were together, happy, and broke - the newlywed trifecta.

 I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these posts in the future. It is a simple way to pass our story on to our kids. Some of the story they have heard before, but some will be new. Other people will see these stories, too, but that's OK because these stories are often their stories as well. A lot of these stories involve our kids, the Lighthalls and/or the Robinsons, and their kids or our families and their kids. They are welcome to fill in any gaps they see or make corrections in the comments. We can talk about what happened. When my parents did this with their friends around the dinner table in the 50's we would call it "green shuttering". "You remember the Murphys; they bought the old Doc Place house two years ago, you know, the one with the green shutters. She was a Hertenstein, I think, Sam's daughter." And on it would go for two hours or more while we kids quietly snuck out of the kitchen to find something to do.

So, Patrick, enjoy your time in Okemos. Make a lot of memories, so that when 2054 rolls around, you can tell us all about it. Well, not us. We'll have our hearing aids turned off to make life simpler in the home the kids put us in. Just talk really loud. We can't hear that either, but you'll feel good, because, like, you really tried.     

Bill Nye Bounces Back

So, Bill Nye may not have been the smoothest operator on Dancing with the Stars last month. He was stiff and his sense of humor didn't translate well to the non-geeky watchers. But it's nice to see him bounce back from his sad dismissal.   

And, just for Mike and Nate, there is a website designed for them called Stuff On A Rabbit, which is exactly what it says it is. Makes you want to go out and buy a rabbit. (Or a box of goldfish.)

Stress

School has started and that means it's time to write our first essay for Mrs. Geiger, my second grade teacher: what I did this summer. Over the next few posts I'll update you on what has been going on, but first I think it's important to let you know that, contrary to public opinion, we retired people do have moments of stress. Mine occurred over the last week as I got closer to retiling the bathroom. Now that doesn't sound like a very stressful job. In fact, as I was taking up tile this past weekend, I realized that I had done that job at least four times before (four layers of old tile came off the floor). Unfortunately, they were all wrong. When we went looking for tile, the nice people at the tile store implied that only a neanderthal would put tile in the bathroom without lifting the toilet and tiling underneath. So that meant a lot more work. It also meant we weren't going with the old standard (cheap) peel and stick tiles. We got vinyl plank tiling that is called floating tile. It doesn't stick to the floor. The two-foot by one-foot tiles interlock with each other on all four sides. That means they can shift as you are working so you always have to be checking that they are in the right place before you measure to cut the next one. 

Now none of that is overly stressful. We needed one extra tile so we had to buy an extra box of tiles. That means I have lots of chances to correct mistakes. I'm not really handy, but I've done a lot of the work around the house just by reading up and watching you-tube videos. And if you give me plenty of chances to make it better, usually the final outcome looks pretty good. I installed a 20 foot X 30 foot wood deck from scratch (with Dave's help from time to time), redid the front porch with all its slats from scratch, and generally feel if you give me enough time, I can probably do the job.  

There's the crucial word: time. Because we had to lift the toilet, it made sense to replace it with a new one that is higher and more water efficient. It was the same amount of effort either way. Unfortunately, we only have the one bathroom. You can't take your time when your bathroom is out of commission. This is the definition of stress.   

Let's see. What could go wrong? The project starts right at noon. 

1. Well, the 25 year old nuts and bolts might be rusted.   After fifteen seconds of turning them, I realized the nut wasn't getting any closer to the top of the bolt, but just spinning in place. Out came the hacksaw and fifteen minutes later the toilet is freed from the floor. I remembered to turn off the water ahead of time and clean out the bowl and the tank, so not much mess there. Ann and I try to take the tank off the back, but those bolts won't move and it's not worth cutting them by hand. It just means that it will be heavier to lift onto the cart and haul outdoors. We get that done and now it looks like this:  

             

I fill in the spots around the hole with old basement tiles to bring it level to the rest of the old tile, which is tan and speckled and we really can't remember it (remember we removed four layers of tile from above the speckled one) so we assume that was there when we bought the house. That means the guy before us cut out the tile around the toilet, too, rather than tile under it. Over the next two hours, I put down the new tile across the room (except for around the vanity which I can do after the toilet is in). And, yes, I'm putting the tile around the vanity and not underneath because we don't need a new vanity and that's a lot more hoses and pipes that have to be redone to make it fit. Laying the tile includes making a nice circular cutout in the tile where it goes above the hole. Probably the most I've used the Dremel tool   

in ten years. Worked perfectly (except for having to put new cutting disks on every five minutes because they broke off and went flying across the garage at 90 miles an hour).  So Ann and I read over the instructions for how to install the toilet, put on the magical wax ring, and together we lower the new toilet into place. Now everything I read implied that the toilet would need to be pushed down to seat the wax ring around the hole. That didn't happen. The toilet landed on the floor immediately. So back to the internet.  

2. Although it doesn't say anything in our instructions, it turns out the top of the hole needs to be at least a quarter inch above the floor to catch the wax ring. With the new tile, which is a lot thicker than press and stick tile, covering the area where the toilet used to be, the top of the hole is at least a quarter inch below the level of the tile. On the positive side, this meant we had to go to the hardware (which has restrooms - Yay!!). We buy extenders which will raise the top of the hole up to the right height, caulk to keep water from seeping through around the extenders, and a new magical wax ring. Ann and I put it all together, lift the toilet into place, and sure enough this time the toilet doesn't touch the floor (which is good). That means it is resting on the wax ring. As you push down on the toilet and tighten the nuts, the toilet gradually comes down to floor level. Pray with us that it doesn't leak.  

3. The next thing that can go wrong is that the tank which sits on the back of the toilet and holds the water doesn't fit. Well, luckily that didn't happen. It takes us a while together to figure out the instructions and tighten it enough that the tank is snug on the toilet base, but eventually we get there. There's not a lot of room in that bathroom. Add two people tightening screws and it gets pretty crowded. But we're still speaking to each other, so, so far, so good.  

4. Turn the water back on next to the toilet and let it fill up. Except you can't do that if the new toilet is higher and the old hose doesn't reach the bottom of the tank now. Luckily, we saw that one coming and picked up a new longer flexible hose at the hardware on the last trip. Those nuts aren't rusted, so that installation is really pretty easy. So now we can turn the water back on and let the tank fill up.  

It's nice that the hardware inside the tank that regulates the water level is already installed. I've done that before and I really don't enjoy it. Ann has to do some adjusting to get the water level in the tank right, but eventually we can't delay any longer and we have to flush the toilet and see if there are any leaks. Amazingly everything works the way it is supposed to. Once the toilet seat goes on, it looks perfect. I guess they were right when they told me that replacing a toilet is pretty easy. It's 6:30 now, so the whole toilet project takes only six and a half hours and required only one trip to the hardware in the middle. Even better, no animals (including us) were harmed during the completion of this project.   

The next day, I finish tiling - there are a lot of cutouts to do so it takes quite a while. Luckily Ann is gone most of the day so only Whimzy gets to hear me talk to the tile when it doesn't quite fit. All in all, though, it goes pretty well. I only make one mistake on the tiling that makes me redo a whole piece. I forgot to check the tabs on the side of the tiles where they interlock together and I cut a piece that had the low tab on the wrong side of the tile. I still end up with ten tiles left over (from a box of twelve). A little more hassle putting the new trim in place at the bottom of the bathroom walls and the project is pretty much done.   


And now, back to my normal level of stress.

First Day of the New School Year

Today marked the first day of school in Wauconda, an institute day for teachers, so I had the honor of being the first speaker up to welcome everybody back. It gave me a chance to use some of the information from some of my recent blog posts to talk a little bit about why education is so important.
Enjoy.  

It seems that lately my world has been overrun with things that make no sense to me.  

Last week, a survey by the University of Texas and the newspaper The Texas Tribune showed that only 35% of those responding agreed with the statement “Humans developed from earlier species.”  Only 41% disagreed with the statement “Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.”  I keep seeing in my mind the Lewis Black video where he now realizes that, for a large number of people, the Flintstones was a documentary. 

And a story popped up in the news about how vaccinations lead to all kinds of serious problems, including most notably, autism.  I thought this nonsense had been put to rest, but every so often it pops up again. The most recent major study published in the New England Journal of Medicine followed half a million children through their vaccinations and showed without much doubt that there is no link whatsoever between vaccination and autism. The doctor who started this whole antivax scare has been discredited, his medical license revoked, and his research labeled an elaborate fraud by the British Medical Journal. This whole discussion is reminiscent of the advice given in the 1940’s that children should not eat ice cream because it leads to polio. The feeling was that polio cases increased in the summer at almost exactly the same time that children started eating ice cream. Therefore “one of those must cause the other.” Luckily within ten years, researchers had isolated the polio virus and were well on the way to developing a vaccine that has worked very well. In that case misled parents may have withheld ice cream from their children, which has no long lasting consequences.  However when parents withhold vaccinations from their children, they are putting not only themselves, but also all the other children their children come in contact with in danger.  

And a third story made even less sense when I saw that coming in in 6^th place on the box office results this week with a total of $47 million dollars in ticket sales was Smurfs 2.  

Folks, it’s a scary world out there and the level of irrationality has grown to an all time high. And that makes it even more important that we provide our children with the most rigorous education that we can provide. Not because of No Child Left Behind or because of Common Core, but because an education is the surest way to provide for an informed and rational citizenry. Aristotle said, “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.”   

So, the pressures on you as teachers have never been higher. And in some areas the support has never been lower. I have mentioned in the past the results of the Phi Delta Kappan survey on public education that says,  

“Public education – it stinks and teachers are terrible – well, not at my kids’ public schools. Their teachers are great and my kids love it there, but, you know, public education stinks.”   

The Board of Education would like to welcome you to the start of another school year and most importantly, we would like to thank you for the tremendous service you are doing for the children of District 118 and to recognize publicly the significant positive impact you have had on the students who have passed through District 118 schools.   

Thank you very much and have a great year.    

Texas? Really?

I know every state in the Union has issues of some sort or another. When it comes to my state, Illinois, I know that one of the things we lead the nation in is governmental corruption. At one point, I think we had three consecutive governors spending time in jail for various offenses committed while they were governor. Yay, Illinois. So it is hard, in general, for Illinois people to poke fun at other states. But this is just too much low hanging fruit to ignore.

A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey shows just how destructive a politicized right-wing curriculum can be. A large number of Texans polled said they still don’t believe in evolution and are convinced that humans and dinosaurs co-existed:

– 51 percent disagree with the statement, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”
– 38 percent agree with the statement, “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.”
– 30 percent agree with the statement, “Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Another 30 percent said they “don’t know” whether the statement is true.

This would be comical if it weren't for the fact that these same people are again in charge of choosing science textbooks to use in their schools.The Texas State Board of Education is looking to set state standards for science teaching this year. And the creationists on the board are looking to set the children of Texas back a hundred years in their education. Most of the people involved in this tragedy think they are doing it for religious reasons. If so, their interpretation of the Bible is seriously flawed.

Take, for example, Kenneth Miller, a Roman Catholic professor of biology at Brown University and author of one of the nation’s leading high school textbooks. His biology textbook, fully in support of evolution, is among those the Texas state board is considering for adoption this year. Or consider Francis S. Collins, an evangelical Christian and head of the Human Genome Project. From a Time magazine piece about Collins in 2009:

“Science can’t be put together with a literalist interpretation of Genesis,” he continues. “For one thing, there are two different versions of the creation story — in Genesis 1 and 2 — so right from the start, you’re already in trouble. Christians should think of Genesis not as a book about science but about the nature of God and the nature of humans," Collins believes. “Evolution gives us the ‘how,’ but we need the Bible to understand the ‘why’ of our creation.”

You would think that the overwhelming (let me say that again - OVERWHELMING) basis for evolution would sway some people. Unfortunately, creationists have proudly rejected out of hand the  scientific evidence behind evolution. They have reveled, as former Texas state board chairman Don McLeroy infamously said, in “standing up to experts.”

What can you say to that?

I'll leave it to an "expert" to get in the last word. Warning, some explicit language is involved here. If it bothers you, you may want to skip this.

Today's Math Lesson: Braess's Paradox

So, it seems like this whole summer around Wauconda we have been practicing merging from two lanes down to one. A six mile stretch of Route 12 is in the process of being repaved and each day they block off a new section to fill in all the potholes. I assume they want the road fairly level before they install the new surface. During one of these interminable waits, I happened to recall a problem from network theory (with some connections to game theory) that I remember talking about with my advanced students fifteen or twenty years ago. It took a while to find it, but it turns out it appeared in the New York Times in December of 1990. It was probably used in a talk that I heard at a math conference sometime after that and I knew my students would be interested in it.    

It is called Braess's Paradox, first described by Dietrich Braess of the Institute for Numerical and Applied Mathematics in Munster, Germany in 1968. To understand the paradox, we need the diagram below (from Wikipedia):   

Assume that there are two roads leading from START to END, one that passes through A and one that passes through B. For the moment, ignore the dashed line that is a road from A to B. The travel time in minutes for the passengers on the START to A road is the number of passengers (T) divided by 100 and the travel time from START to B is a constant 45 minutes. As you can see the times are flipped for the next section of the trip (A or B to END). To do the math, let's assume there are 4000 passengers who want to make the trip from START to END. For A passengers, the START to A to END trip takes A/100 + 45 minutes, and the START to B to END trip for B passengers takes 45 + B/100 minutes. For any one person (who cannot by themselves affect what A or B is to any extent) both paths look pretty much the same. Since A + B = 4000, it can be shown that the optimal solution is to just randomly pick a path with the result that A = B = 2000 (roughly). Then the total time to travel from START to END would be 2000/100 (which is 20) + 45 for a total time of 65 minutes regardless of the path you picked. Even if you are a selfish driver, there is no incentive to pick one path over the other. (For you econ and game theory buffs, this is called a Nash equilibrium, after John Nash, the mathematician profiled in the movie A Beautiful Mind.)    

Braess's paradox has to do with what happens when you try to ease the congestion by adding another road that runs from A to B that has a very short driving time (think 0 minutes for the purpose of the problem). Now when a single driver looks at the choices from START to the middle, even if all 4000 drivers go to A, the driving time is 40 minutes (4000/100), which is less than the 45 minutes to go from START to B. And similarly when they get to the middle, every driver sees that they can save five minutes by switching from from A to B. That makes each part of their drive 40 minutes for a total driving time of 80 minutes, 15 minutes longer than the time without the road from A to B.  From a game theory viewpoint, when everyone in the game acts selfishly, then everyone suffers.    

In an inverse way, that's what prompted the New York Times article. In the late 1980's, the Earth Day celebration in New York caused a lot of traffic congestion. In 1990, the Traffic Commissioner decided to lessen the car traffic congestion by closing one of the streets - in fact, a fairly major street, 42nd Avenue, which is always congested. Everyone thought it would be a disaster. In fact, traffic flow got better that year. Braess's paradox in action. When the streets are crowded, sometimes traffic improves when there are fewer streets to choose from.     

From the Times article:   

Dr. Joel E. Cohen, a mathematician at Rockefeller University in New York, says the paradox does not always hold; each traffic network must be analyzed on its own. When a network is not congested, adding a new street will indeed make things better. But in the case of congested networks, adding a new street probably makes things worse at least half the time, mathematicians say.     

Something to think about the next time you are stuck on Ohio Street, trying to get to the Garrett's popcorn store on Michigan Avenue.   

Typical summer day in 1960: played Home Run Derby until dinner; then rode my bike home, ate dinner, and read a book.

The 9 - 14 year olds who belong to National Public Radio's Backseat Book Club have nominated tons of books for NPR's Booklist of best books for the 9 - 14 set. A set of experts then chose the top 100 from those nominated. This is a diverse group: the 9 year olds are in 3rd or 4th grade, the 14 year olds are just starting high school, So these books are not for everyone in the entire age group. They do, however, give a remarkably wide range of books for kids to choose from. Ann and I went through the list tonight - she did better than I did, but there were still a lot of books that I have read from the list. And it's not too late: a YA book can be just as well written as an adult novel, and more interesting. I found several that I need to look up on Amazon for my Kindle.

Here they are; the books in green, red, or  blue (depending on my excitement level) would be high on my list:

Watership Down, by Richard Adams        (described by the editors as The Aeneid with rabbits)
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
The Chronicles of Prydain series, by Lloyd Alexander
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie  (part of my literary summer)
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda series, by Tom Angleberger
The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate
Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater
Poppy, by Avi
Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
Oz series, by Frank Baum
The House With a Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume
Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
Ramona series, by Beverly Cleary
The Dark is Rising series, by Susan Cooper
Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech
The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis
Catherine, Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
Matilda, by Roald Dahl
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo
The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau
Half Magic, by Edward Eager
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, by Julie Edwards
The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright
The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich
The Hundred Dresses, by Eleanor Estes
House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer
Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
The Lincolns, by Candice Fleming
The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
Eleanor Roosevelt, by Russell Freedman
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
Julie of the Wolves, by Jean CraigheadGeorge
My Side of the Mountain, by Jean CraigheadGeorge
Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry
Bunnicula, by James Howe
Redwall series, by Brian Jacques
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, by Jeff Kinney
The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler, by E.L. Konigsburg
A Wrinkle in Time series, by Madeleine L'Engle
Inside Out and Back Again, by Thanhha Lai
The Earthsea Cycle series, by Ursula K. Le Guin   (well-written fantasy makes children think)
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
The Chronicles of Narnia series, by C.S. Lewis
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin
Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan
The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
Anne of Green Gables series, by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Borrowers, by Mary Norton
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brien
Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell
Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen
A Long Way From Chicago series, by Richard Peck
The Twenty-One Balloons, by William Pène du Bois
The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett   (Can a book get any better than this?)
His Dark Materials series, by Phillip Pullman
Where The Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls
Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, by Rick Riordan
Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling
Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan
Holes, by Louis Sachar
Okay For Now, by Gary Schmidt
The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick   I bought this right after the movie came out      
Bomb, by Steven Sheinkin
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
The Bone Series, by Jeff Smith       (a graphic arts novel (we called them comic books))  
A Series of Unfortunate Events books, by Lemony Snicket
The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare
Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli
When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead
The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Arrival, by Shaun Tan
The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, by Maria Tatar
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor
All-of-a-Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers
Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White
The Sword in the Stone, by Terence Hanbury White
Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia
American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang

Glad to see Bunnicula and the Redwall series make it. I'm never sure they are on the expert's radars. Sorry that The Westing Game didn't make the list. Hope these books made your childhood more enjoyable and more imaginative. What are your favorites? I think I know someone who would put  The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler near the top of his list. 

Let's Save Some Lives ! !

August has become Blogust to the UN Foundation's Shot @ Life campaign. This marvelous campaign seeks to 

"educate, connect and empower the championing of vaccines as one of the most cost effective ways to save the lives of children in the world’s hardest to reach places. "

Each day of this month, a guest blogger tells us why vaccination is important. Today it was Amanda Peet, an actress from one of my top ten rated TV shows (Let's go, Marshmallow Fight), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Amanda in her post talks about her five year old daughter and what a health milestone worldwide 5 years old is.
She is joined in the campaign by Walgreen's, which is sending one vaccine oversees for each comment left to each of the 30 blogs done in August, up to a maximum of 50,000 vaccines.

A comment from Shannon as simple as     Yay for vaccines     has earned a vaccine for a young boy or girl.

A child dies every 20 seconds from a vaccine-preventable disease. We can change this reality and help save kids’ lives!   Stay connected with Shot@Life at www.shotatlife.org, join the campaign on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. 

I sent a $20 donation as well. My $20 "gives a child a lifetime of immunity to protect her from pneumonia, diarrhea, polio and measles."

So send what you can. Comment on the blog posts during the month and help Walgreen's make good on its promise to sent 50,000 vaccines.

Sign up here for a daily email so you can quickly and easily comment every day during Blogust.

It really is an important step in helping that toddler make it to her fifth birthday party.

Thanks.  I knew I could count on you.

The Good, the Bad, and ....

The Good:

What an amazing finish to an amazing season! Two goals in the last minute and 20 seconds to go from behind by one goal to ahead by one goal and win the Stanley Cup. They made hockey fun to watch and I didn't think I'd ever say that.   




The Bad:  

It was reported last night that science fiction and fantasy writer Richard Matheson had passed away at the age of 87. Matheson wrote 25 novels, many of which were made into movies, including The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend which came out just a few years ago as a movie with Will Smith. I remember him mostly as the author of several TV screenplays, including the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" which starred a young William Shatner, and the classic "The Enemy Within" episode for Star Trek.  His Twilight Zone episode "Steel" was remade last year as "Real Steel" a movie starring Hugh Jackman about boxing robots.   

He was to be honored on Wednesday by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films with the Visionary Award. In 1910, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. If you are looking for something good to read, try I Am Legend. None of the three movie versions do it justice.  



 And the ...

The Cubs announced Tuesday that Carlos Marmol has been designated for assignment, meaning they have 10 days to trade or release him.They brought up an outfielder from Triple A Iowa to take his place. The last straw seems to be the blown save on June 16 when he entered the game with a 3 - 0  lead in the ninth and left two home runs later with a 4 - 3 loss to the New York Mets. He made the 2008 NL All Star Team, but had difficulty finding the plate in the last couple of years. Good luck to Carlos, and I think I speak for all Cubs fans when I say, "This should have been done last year."    

Literature?

If you know me at all, you know that the best part of being retired is that I don't feel guilty staying up all night reading. When I was working, reading until 3 AM, then getting up at 5:20 AM to go to work made for some long days.  Now, though, I can sleep in or nap if I have a really good book. I don't have a broad range of books that I like: when I go to the library once a week, I look for science fiction first, then mysteries, nonfiction about math or science, maybe an interesting biography. Another major category for me is books about words: their origins  ("happy as a clam?"), grammar concerns like 'who' vs. 'that' (if the pet has a name, we say, "Morris is a cat who knows what he likes," but otherwise, "There's the dog that catches frisbees"), and books on how to write (they help with the graduation speeches).    

I do not, by and large, however, choose books that might be called "literature."Much of that stems from reading lists in high school and college that attempted to force me to read books that were considered "literature".  Ten pages of Les Miserables was enough to cause bad dreams even now, Hugh Jackman notwithstanding.   

I have changed recently, however, with the purchase of a small kindle ebook entitled "Start Here  - Read Your Way into 25 Amazing Authors"  by Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Schinsky. These editors have found people in the book world who have a manageable passion for a certain author. Nicole Perrin, for example, is an editor, reader, and a blogger at Bibliographing. In "Start Here", she writes about what are the three best books to choose to start reading Herman Melville. The "Start Here" idea is that these experts will give you a place to begin to understand what the author is trying to say. That way, you won't start with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Start with some essays  to see what he is about - "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again',  then move up to short stories - "Girl With Curious Hair", before tackling the 1079 pages of Infinite Jest.   

The twenty-five authors are a very eclectic group, so it is fun to read across several genres. Although most are currently writing, there are a few oldies: Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe are included, but for the most part the writers are current. So I decided to try literature again with the help of "Start Here". And so far, I feel like they have made good choices for me. On my most recent trip to the library, after picking up a Raymond Feist three book sword and sorcery series which was excellent, and a new Robin Hobb book I have been looking forward to, I went over to the regular fiction section. I had decided on three authors to begin with and because of the small size of our library, was prepared to have to take the second book on the list if the first one was not available.    

First up was Sherman Alexie. Alexie writes about the Wellpinit Reservation of Indians in Washington State where he grew up. My small library did not have in stock The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (although they will order it), so I went with the second choice Reservation Blues from 1995. It is the story of the short life of the Coyote Springs rock and roll band. Funny at times, very depressing at times. The novel can be hard to follow as he dips in and out of dreams with the characters. I did enjoy it enough that I am planning to go on to the other novels listed in the book.   

The second author I chose was Margaret Atwood, a Canadian author highly decorated as a poet, story writer, and critic. The starting novel was The Handmaid's Tale, written in 1985. This dystopian novel shows you a community where women's rights have been suppressed severely. In many ways, the novel foretells some of the antics of the past election where various congressman spoke out about things they knew nothing about: Todd Akins, Missouri - "Victims of legitimate rape rarely get pregnant, so maybe the pregnant women were not legitimately raped,"  along with many other knucklehead opinions that have no basis in fact or science. As recently as this week, Senator Chambliss, of Georgia, addressing top military officials about the incredibly large number of sexual harassment incidents in the armed forces, said: "The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22-23. Gee whiz -- the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur." Luckily,  Rep. Mike Turner, co-chairman of the military sexual assault prevention caucus, issued a statement saying criminals, not hormones, cause sexual assaults. But that attitude, that women are partly to blame for rapes, and it's just boys being boys, permeates the culture of old white men, particularly in the South. The number of bizarre laws coming out of South Carolina and Mississippi curtailing women's reproductive rights is incredibly scary. I have not finished The Handmaid's Tale yet, but so far it is well written, but pretty bleak.    

My third foray into respectable literature is the author Cormac McCarthy. The starting book suggested to get into McCarthy is All the Pretty Horses, written in 1992. I have not started this one yet. I am hoping it is not as violent as No Country for Old Men, which is second on the list. After that, I have Bernard Malamud to look at, Richard Russo and Alice Munro, Italo Calvino and Zora Neale Hurston. I hope to get to Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami which is in the "Start Here" book and was on Mike's top ten books list on Marshmallow Fight.

I am excited to be reading these books and hope that they give me a wider perspective on life in general. As long as I can find a Philip K. Dick or Ray Bradbury story to read along with them, I'm happy.     

Want to Play Catch?

When we moved into this house 34 years ago, this silver maple tree was already pretty big. We had the dead branches removed and the tree topped about fifteen years ago.  Unfortunately, its prime has passed and it was time for it to come down. Most of the branches away from the house were dead, which meant all the weight of the tree was in the branches that hang over the house, just one more reason it's hard for me to sleep at night. So last week, Gilberto from Carpentersville and his crew came to town and put on a show. It is very enjoyable to watch a group of people who really know what they are doing. On the downside they started at 6:40 (yes, I'd forgotten, but they have one of those in the morning, too), but by 10:00 they were done and gone. The big pieces of the tree were in our front yard, where a power lift truck came by in the afternoon and picked them up, the stump had been ground down to below the surface, and they had cleaned up our yard and our neighbor's yard of all the leaves and sticks that had fallen. They were a very professional crew: the two or three that were bringing the tree down and sawing it into movable pieces were just enough to keep the three younger guys who moved it all on to the front yard with hand carts working steadily. Some of the pieces were still pretty big; it required all three of them to move the cart to the front yard. Their rope system worked very well; all the pieces were lowered carefully from the tree and, other than a couple of divots in the grass, we had no damage to the house or garage. The second picture below shows them getting ready to bring down the trunk; all five of the people not sawing were on the rope to make sure it came down where they wanted.  

I'm sure if the boys were to spend much time thinking about it, they may be disappointed we didn't do this twenty-five years ago. Our back yard is not that big. This tree with its low hanging branches, made throwing a baseball or football in the back yard an aggravation. And the roots are so close to the surface that you could get a pretty good bump as you went down the Slip-N-Slide if you didn't position it carefully. Most of our playing was done in the front yard or in the street, although the baseball fields at Lagoon Park and the playgrounds at Larkdale Park were both within easy walking distance (or running or biking distance) so that they could go there with their friends. The back yard looks very different with the tree gone; I'm sure the kitchen will be warmer this summer without the tree to shade it for much of the day. We lasted a day before we went out and bought an umbrella for the deck to give us some shade during the day as we watch Whimzy run around the back yard. I decided not to put up a picture of the back yard with the tree gone. You are just going to have to come visit us if you want to see how it looks. We'll have the lemonade cold - feel free to stop by.     

WHS Commencement Address, 2013

It's graduation season again! Wauconda High School's Commencement was Sunday afternoon and we just finished the Wauconda Middle School / Matthews Middle School Promotion ceremony tonight. Once again I had the privilege of addressing both groups to offer my take on what it means to move on to the next level. The High School address is posted below. The middle school address was a recycle of one from two years ago.  I had a speech for them pretty much ready to go this weekend, focusing on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. But after reading it through again, I decided it was probably too dark a topic for middle schoolers and their parents. I did include the 50th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak in the same speech, but that didn't really lighten it up much. So at the last minute I punted and went back to the 2011 address. Probably the right thing to do. If the parents are crying at graduation, it should mostly be because they are happy, not sad. And the grandparents at the ceremony wouldn't be listening anymore, just thinking about where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot. Which is what I did when I realized that it was fifty years ago this year.  So, enjoy the high school speech. If you have a topic for me for next year, let me know. I depend on Ann to think up topics for me now. This idea was hers. Although it was my idea to use a quote from Judy Garland, which may be a first for graduation speeches. And for the people in charge of graduation, their only requirement is that it not go too far past five minutes.  Nailed it!   

Commencement Address

May 18,2013

Wauconda High School

John Armstrong

Parents, friends, faculty, and members of the graduating class of 2013:

On behalf of the District 118 School Board, I welcome you to the 97th annual commencement of Wauconda High School.

The American writer Ambrose Bierce loved definitions. He said an egotist is someone who is more interested in himself than in me. And an acquaintance is someone you know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.

If you are a math geek as I am or a math teacher as I was for a long time, the notion of a definition is a very important concept. For example, we all know what a square is: a four sided figure with equal sides and four right angles, but different geometry books use different definitions. You could define it as a rhombus with a right angle or as a rectangle with adjacent sides equal. I don’t know if anyone ever asked a square what definition it wanted, but that is what I would like to ask you about yourself today. All through grade school, middle school, and high school, you have been defined, often by other people. You may have been the arty one, or the jock, or the math geek. You may be defined by some action good or bad that you did in school: you may have been the person who did so well in the school musical, or you may be the person who accidentally kicked the ball in his own goal during the playoffs. Those definitions have been attached to you for some time by your family or your friends, or maybe by people that weren’t as friendly as they could have been. But starting today, you move into a new phase in your life and the question I have for you is, “How do you want to define yourself?” 

I have a good friend who makes her living as an artist. She has described to me how in her early art classes, the students would go to a museum and draw a copy of another artist’s work. It was a way for them to learn the techniques of the masters. As she grew in her art, she began to develop her own style, but she still does copies from time to time. “Sometimes,” she says, “I just hope some of their magic rubs off on me.” But in order to sell her work, she has to be able to be herself as an artist, with her own perspective and her own approach to painting.

We live our early lives like that as well. We see another person who is interesting or popular and we think that we could be like that too. We adopt his or her mannerisms or speech patterns and try very hard to be them. And we generally find that it doesn’t work.  I found that when I started teaching. I would be invited to sit in on another teacher’s class. But when I tried to teach the way they did, it usually didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. That’s not to say that we don’t adopt qualities from others we admire. I learned from watching other teachers that I could be more supportive, more understanding of failures, and more patient in my listening. But, just as my artist friend did, I needed to find a way to implement those traits in a style that was authentic to me and not just copies of them.

That well known philosopher Judy Garland said, “Always be a first rate version of yourself, instead of a second rate version of somebody else.”

If you are a parent, one of the most disheartening things to deal with is when your child is bullied. There are few things that make you feel more powerless as a parent. Our school district, through its adoption of PBIS (Positive Based Interventions and Supports) is attempting to reduce the amount of bullying by changing the school climate and by educating students on how to deal with it when it happens. A bully is all about defining who you are. As an adolescent, when you’re not sure yourself who you are, a bully can have a lot of influence on how you see yourself. We hope as parents we can instill in our children the words of Robert Frost, “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”

As you move into the next stage of your life, you will have opportunities to decide how you want your life to unfold. What qualities will people remember in you? What traits will other people want to emulate? What defines you? I hope you take time as you move on to reflect about why you are the way you are. Is it a choice that you are making? Or are you being defined by someone else?

Mushalam Zusya was a very influential rabbi in Poland in the late 1700’s. The story is told that while on his deathbed, a student asked him, "Rabbi, what worries you about your death? Surely you will be welcomed into the gates of heaven."

The rabbi sighed. "My son, I am not worried that God will ask me, ‘Zusya, why weren't you more like Moses?'  I am worried that God will ask, ‘Zusya, why weren't you more like Zusya?'"

We get sidetracked sometimes from being the best that we can be when we try to be somebody else or try to be what somebody else wants. Congratulations on completing this stage of your life and I hope that the rest of your life will be whatever you define it to be.

Thank you.

It's Been Thirty Years

No, not since I last posted to this site. That's only been two months and it has been a nice vacation. But now it is time to go back to work. It has been thirty years since these guys started on TV.   

Fraggle Rock was a big deal when it opened thirty years ago. It gave Jim Henson and his Muppet factory a new outlet for his puppets and a whole different setting than Sesame Street. It introduced us to three new species (Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs) and a all-knowing talking trash heap named Marjory. And it encouraged us to "dance your cares away." If you can't find it on TV anymore, according to vulture.com, Parks and Recreation is Fraggle Rock with live characters. I don't watch the show, but if Leslie Knope is really Red, I may have to start.   

Last year, the Fraggles came out to help the Ben Folds Five musical group with their video "Do It Anyway."  You can watch it below. Remember "worry's for another day."    

Time to Move?

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a map up on their website that shows the life expectancy for men and women from 1989 to 2009 on a county by county basis. That means you can look for your county and find out, on average, how much longer you've got based on where you live. For Lake County, Illinois (next to Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin border) the life expectancy for men is 79.1 years and for women 82.3 years.  So I have about 18 years to go if I'm average. Although the number for Auglaize County in Ohio is 76.1 and my dad is 91. So maybe I still have some time to write that novel.   

There are a number of interesting details on the map. You can stroll through the years one by one and see how things have changed for your county. When you click on your county, it also tells you how far behind the top county you are (2.5 years for me). The top county for men is Marin County, California. It's also interesting that counties in the northern half of the United States are nearly uniformly higher in life expectancy than those in the southern half, especially in the southeastern part of the U.S. Several counties in Mississippi are more than 14 years behind the top county. But the way I understand it, time moves more slowly down there, so maybe it all balances out.  

I can't afford to move to the California coast to get those extra two and a half years. By that time the Illinois state legislature will have eliminated my teacher pension completely and we'll be living with Nate or Mike (probably on a rotating basis - No! It's your turn), so I'll leave it up to them.   

3/14 is Pi Day - Let's Celebrate

Every year, math teachers around the world celebrate Pi Day on March 14 (as in 3/14 or 3.14).We sometimes say that pi is 3.14, but we really mean that pi to two decimal places is 3.14. In fact pi doesn't have a decimal expansion that terminates (1/2 = .5) or repeats (1/3 = .33333 repeating forever). Pi is an example of an irrational number - it cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. There are some interesting irrational numbers:

i) pi - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (about 3.14);
ii) e - the base for the natural logarithms and an important constant in population growth (about 2.718);
iii) the square root of 2 (about 1.414);

but there are a lot of irrational numbers that are just random collections of digits without any particular purpose. That would be OK if it didn't turn out that there are so many of them. In the late 1800's German mathematician George Cantor was turning mathematics upside down with his study of infinite sets. He stated that even though we can't count all the elements in an infinite set, we can assign them a "count" by putting them into a one - to - one correspondence with another set. From there he postulated that infinite sets come in different sizes. The smallest infinite set is the set of natural numbers -  1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. He used the Hebrew symbol aleph for counting infinite sets and assigned the size of the natural numbers to aleph null (here null is like zero).
That's where it started to get a little weird. Unlike finite sets, infinite sets don't behave well when you add elements. For example, suppose we looked at the set of integers: . . ., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . You might think this set is roughly twice as big as the natural numbers. But Cantor said that this set is the same size as the natural numbers. And he showed it by matching up the two sets

naturals       1     2      3     4      5      6      7      8      9     10     11      . . .

integers       0     1     -1     2     -2      3     -3     4     -4      5      -5      . . .

Neither set is going to run out before the other one does, so there is a one - to - one correspondence between the two sets. Therefore the sets are the same size. Cantor went on to show that the set of all rational numbers, i. e., fractions like 2/3, 17/5, -6/11, and so on, is the same size as the natural numbers as well. At that point, we might be forgiven if we think that, OK,  all infinite sets of numbers are the same size. It turns out the irrational numbers are a bigger set than aleph null. Here's how we show that. The key to matching up to the natural numbers is to put your set in some kind of order. If you look up a few lines, you can see that's what we did with the integers. We found a way to list them in an order that could then be matched up with 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Suppose we had some kind of order for all the irrational numbers.

first:        .328123986512970245 and so on
second:   .776823919374529476 and so on
third:      .554376920472539402 and so on
fourth:    .019283524377253628 and so on

It doesn't matter what the order is, just assume we have one and every irrational number is somewhere on the list. We can now make a new number that can't be on our list. We do that by making a decimal that is different from the first one in the first decimal place, different from the second one in the second decimal place, different from the third one in the third decimal place, and so on. Let's arbitrarily go one bigger each time with a 9 rolling over to a 0. Looking at our ordering, a new irrational number would have a 4 in the first decimal place (one bigger than the 3 in the first number), an 8 in the second decimal place (one bigger than the 7 in the second number), a 5 in the third decimal place (one bigger than the 4 in the third number), and a 3 in the fourth decimal place (one bigger than the 2 in the fourth number). Remember each irrational number keeps going to the right forever and our list keeps going down forever. So we keep up the process we outlined above. The new number we make is different from the first number (4 instead of 3), different from the second number (8 instead of 7), different from the third number (5 instead of 4), and so on forever. So it's a new number that wasn't on the list. So our ordering can't include every irrational number and the set of irrational numbers must be bigger than the set of natural numbers.Ta da!

Unfortunately, Cantor raised almost as many questions as he answered. The set of real numbers, which includes the rational and irrational numbers together, is commonly called the continuum, and the letter c is used to stand for the size of the set of real numbers. They couldn't use an aleph name because they didn't know if it should be aleph - one or aleph - two or whatever (remember aleph - zero was the natural numbers). So the continuum hypothesis is that c is really aleph - one, that is, the real numbers form the next size of infinity up from the naturals. Unfortunately nobody has been able to prove or disprove this in the 120 years since the question was first posed.

So, enjoy Pi day. I prefer apple or pecan or cherry pie myself, but it's the thought that counts. You may not be a pie person, but there are a lot of them out there. For example, as Nathan would tell you, if you hang around with World War 2 veterans for any length of time, you're going to eat a lot of pie.

HAPPY  PI  DAY !!!

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Scientific American writer Davide Castelvecchi posts the following clip from a newspaper article about how much we Americans hate mathematics.    

 

What more can I say? I could offer my math tutoring services, but I mostly tutor high school or college calculus students, not 3rd graders studying basic fractions. I would hope we wouldn't need a full hour to go over this. Maybe instead of the library where I usually meet the students, we could meet at a pizza place. Hands - on manipulatives would probably help.     

Big Fish, Again

Back in 2011, when Marshmallow Fight was asking people to list their top ten movies, I had Big Fish at number 9 on my list.It has always been a movie that makes me tear up, because its all about family, fathers and sons. It is a Tim Burton movie, but don't let that stop you from watching. Some people aren't big Burton fans like I am, but this movie has just the right touch of the fantastic. And Ewan McGregor as the young Edward Bloom is great.    

              


On my top ten movie list, I included this exchange from Big Fish between old Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) and his son Will (Billy Crudup):  

Senior Ed Bloom: You are in for a surprise.
Will Bloom: Am I?
Senior Ed Bloom: Havin' a kid changes everything. There's burping, the midnight feeding, and the changing.
Will Bloom: You do any of that?
Senior Ed Bloom: No. But I hear it's terrible. Then you spend years trying to corrupt and mislead this child, fill his head with nonsense, and still it turns out perfectly fine.
Will Bloom: You think I'm up for it?
Senior Ed Bloom: You learned from the best.   

What brings the movie back to mind is that the original novel Big Fish by Daniel Wallace is being turned into  a Broadway musical. And, as many of them do, it opens in Chicago for five weeks first to get the bugs out. And, I now have tickets for the show on April 30th. Ann and I are treating it as a delayed 40th wedding anniversary outing. I think Nate and Dana are going with us. If anyone else would like to join us, please check at Broadway in Chicago for tickets. We're in center orchestra section, row U. Let us know if you are coming. We'll find a good place to eat afterwards.   

And on a related note, it is time for Marshmallow Fight to come up with a new list. So far, we have done songs, movies, and books. If you have a suggestion for a new list, let me know. Top five foods, vacation destinations, dog names (Barf Bag is still my favorite), whatever you can think of. Once we get a topic, we'll let everybody know to start sending in lists.  Thanks.    

The Disappearing Middle Class

Came across this video on YouTube that had been highlighted on Dan Ariely's blog on behavioral economics. Thought it was really interesting.  





In many ways, I think my generation is probably the last to have a legitimate chance to aspire to a true middle class. Ann and I were both public school teachers. We enjoyed what we did and felt we made a difference to our students. Because of that, we passed on the chance to get rich. But we did expect (and were able) to make a decent living, buy a house, provide for our kids, and have a comfortable retirement. The next generation is finding that a more difficult task. The amount of money available to the middle class is significantly smaller than it was thirty years ago and a much larger number of people are going to be in that lower middle class where home ownership may be a stretch. It will be much harder to make the kind of living that we took for granted. And it is taking longer for them to reach the stage where they can be truly independent. I talked to a mom today whose daughter is 27 and living at home because she can't get a job that would allow her to be on her own. Notice I didn't say "Can't get a job." She has what we would have considered a good job: assistant editor at a local newspaper. Unfortunately, it pays $27,000 a year. Even with a roommate, rent and utilities would take 35 to 40 % of her take-home pay. That wouldn't leave a lot to pay for groceries, car and insurance (needed to work in the suburbs), health insurance (not fully included in her job) and other essentials, let alone save for buying a house. So I worry about where our kids and their kids are going to end up in thirty years.