World Series

Did you ever wish it was possible for both teams to lose a baseball game?



I have.

The Black Swan

I just finished reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan.

Lots of very interesting ideas: He's basically opposed to the use of Gaussian "Bell Curves" and related statistical tools in making economic and social predictions. He includes a very interesting discussion of the use of fractal-based mathematics to account for "highly improbable events" which are unpredictable, but likely to occur at unexpected times.

I love all of the discussion about "domain-specific" knowledge (i.e. "right" answers which are only "right" given extremely specific sets of circumstances: formal theory as opposed to real-life application). Personally, I have always suspected that schools do students a disservice by training students to think about problems specific to one area without encouraging them to make connections between content areas. If you want students to think about a mathematics-oriented question when they're in music class, or to recall some historical event, for instance, as a teacher you almost have to explicitly tell them something like "it's like a math problem in math class" or "just like on the social studies test you took last week". That's my experience, anyway. It seems almost like we're training kids to "segment" their thinking, turning parts of their brain on and off depending on whom they're speaking with or in what room they're sitting.

But I digress. The book itself has nothing to do with education; it does address social science research models.

It's a good book, check it out.

NCLB: the music teacher's point of view, here we go again . . .

Here's a link to an article about increasing anxiety in young students preparing for high-stakes tests. I first read it on the same day that a beautiful young fourth grade girl stopped me in the hallway, crying her eyes out first thing in the morning last week. Long story.

School has become, in large part, testing preparation. I'm talking about the schools where I work, K-6. I imagine my experience is not much different from that of other teachers working in low-income regions. The district is under so much pressure to "show improvement in test scores" that all they really do is test now. Large swaths of instructional time are devoted to taking tests to prepare for taking more tests. Real instructional programs are being cut. Good, experienced teachers who are hired to perform a specific service (music specialist like myself who are meant to develop performance programs, ESL teachers who teach foreign-born students how to communicate in English, reading specialists who are supposed to be able to help students below grade level to "catch up" with their decoding skills) all have to fight to get any measurable instructional time with kids. "Advocating for your program" is the way I refer to it, but it's really a battle for instructional time and space.

Enough for now. I'll try to make some time to blog next week.

Or later.

scary video

This is horrifying, but I can't stop watching.

Please don't miss the "heel kick" at 1:54.

Oh, and make sure to turn the volume up as high as you can.

Time marches on

An online acquaintance of mine once said he "felt like a bear that just awoke from a long hibernation" upon finding out about some web 2.0 phenomenon having something to do with social networking for librarians.

I feel the same way, scratching my hairy backside and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Where have I been for the last seven or eight years?

A more apt metaphor for me might be "the prehistoric caveman discovered frozen and awakened in a new world".

What brings this on, you ask? My record player broke last week. Yes, you read that right: my record player - the same one I've had since I was twelve years old, twenty two or twenty three years ago, broke. The iPod, and emusic, have taken its place. I just figured out how this stuff actually works before starting this ost about a week ago. I can't believe I haven't been doing this forever.

I'm sitting here listening to the London Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven VII. If I want , I can switch immediately to Gary Karr playing the Downey Concerto, Yoam Goilav's recording of the Koussevitzky Concerto, or Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Or one of the fifty or sixty hours of music that's already on the ipod (unbeknownst to me, my wife has been uploading the CDs I bring back from the public library for the last couple of years, so we have tons of music already on there). Or, I can go search out something I haven't listened to before on emusic (I signed up for a 75 download per month plan, which ought to be enough). I can do this all while I'm lying on the couch.

This is crazy.

Who knew?

Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Haskins.

By the way, emusic is great. they'll give you twenty five free downloads when you sign up for the service, while you're trying it out. They have a huge collection of classical, jazz, independent, indie-rock, punk, world music . . . it's all very exciting. ONce you download the track as an mp3, you own it, and are able to burn CDs or share the music with no restrictions, all for a reasonable monthly fee. Worth every penny. So, I'll be trying to sell you on signing up for emusic. Here goes:

Emusic

I'm trying this one out to see how it works -

About the same time I started this blog, I also started searching for the "best" subscription music service. I've used several, and for a while I was happy using Rhapsody. Recently, I found that the links I spent time building were no longer active - I also felt they were searching for different customers than I could refer as an affiliate.

Let's see how Emusic works out. Here's an example - If you want to hear these collected symphonies of Mendelssohn, click the "buy" button on the bottom. You should be referred to a "free trial" of Emusic. You should then be able to search for other selections for download.

Yes, I receive a commission every time someone does this, and yes, I am very greedy.

If anyone tries this out, please let me know how it works via comment (button below post) or email

I'm hoping this service works out well: they seem to have a good catalogue, and I'm tired of shopping for subscription services. I will, by the way, be trying the service out myself, and I am, as always, a skeptic.

MENDELSSOHN: Complete String Symphonies Nos. 1-12 MENDELSSOHN: Complete String Symphonies Nos. 1-12

Break time

I won't be posting any blog entries for a while.

I wanted to post this out of consideration for those who have been checking back on a daily basis: I'll let you know when I have something worth looking at.

Thanks for reading!