Apt. 11D

Happy Halloween!

At work today, my goof-ball colleagues walked around with Cousin It wigs and Ronald Reagan masks. Steve took off from work, so that we could go to both Halloween parades at the kids' schools. The other parents at his job ditched early to go trick or treating with their kids. It's a day when family trumps work. A good day.

Here are my kids. Ian is Obi Wan Kanobi. Jo is a barbarian. To be very specific, Jonah is part Vandal, part Viking, and part William Wallace.

What did your kids do?

This is what happens when you food shop with kids...

Saturday Morning at the Diner

Lurkers v. Commenters

A recent study finds that 90% of participators in online communities are lurkers. Only 1% are heavy contributors.

Are you a lurker or a heavy contributer?

I'm working on a paper on differences in online use. If Halloween doesn't eat up the next two days, I'm going to get back to it. Meanwhile, here's a great paper by Eszter.

Special Education Vouchers

Amy P sent me a link to a NRO article on Sarah Palin's speech on special education. The editors at NRO conclude that vouchers are the solution for the inadequacies in special education in public schools. While I very much appreciate the national attention to issue of special education, I strongly believe that vouchers for special education would be a very bad idea.

The main problem is politics. Special education costs a lot of money. My district has to spend a small fortune to ship my kid out-of-district to a program that is set up to deal with his very special needs. The program that he's in has a very high teacher to student ratio. The teachers and aides receive special training. He's very bright, but can't focus in a large group setting. So, he and two other students are pulled to the back of the room where they go through a normal first grade curriculum. He gets special help with his speech and handwriting in a one-on-one setting. Another expert teaches him how to control his frustration and respond appropriately to daily demands. And we've seen real results from all this attention. When he's able to improve his focus and reduce his frustration, he'll be mainstreamed and will have the same shot at a fulfilling life as any other kid.

However, all that attention is very pricy. How pricy? I'm not going to tell you. If the public was aware of how expensive his program was, there is no way that they would agree to pay for it. It works in our favor that the dollar amount for his education is a closely guarded secret among administrators. The seniors in our town continually vote down every school budget. They would explode if they knew the price tag on my kid's school. All those people who think that disabilities are the product of bad parenting would never agree to spend more on his education than any other kid.

There are other smaller problems. I don't want my kid in a private school. Right now, his program is located in a regular public school and he interacts with regular kids during lunch, recess and library. I don't want him hidden away in a private school somewhere, where he would be isolated and forgotten.

While I'm no fan of Palin, I am a big fan of Trig. I want that little boy to be embraced by the community in a common school and to have the fullest attention from a range of teachers. I believe that vouchers for special education would mean a cut in funding and isolation.
 

Spreadin' Love

Jonah's soccer coach just announced that tonight's soccer game is canceled due to soggy field issues. I can't tell you how happy I am at the moment. I'm not going to tell Jonah until he finishes him homework. He rushing to finish in time for the game. heh.

I worked non-stop for the past three days, so I'm rewarding myself with lots of computer time. I might take a break to make the kids a burger in an hour. If they're lucky.

Some goodies in the blogosphere:

Dan and Henry on Bloggingheads. I gave a lecture on economic policy in my Public Policy class today, so all that came in handy.

Before; After. Awesome.

It's really corny, but touching, too. The post-boomer generation, their concerns and policy interests. Is it too corny (and biased) to show in my policy class?

Obama's text messaging and YouTube efforts may count more than robo-calls.

The Onion and Cindy McCain.

Another celebrity/political you tube video. It's getting old.

(more as the afternoon of child neglect and surfing continues...)

Music Shaped by Work and Parenthood

Nick Hornby puts together his list of songs that shaped 2008 for him. He writes, "Music plays a big part in my leisure time, but the songs that will always come to define my year have been thrown up, as it were, by parenthood and work. I’d love to tell you that for me, ’08 will always be about TV on the Radio, or Justice. Instead, it’s going to be the Troggs and Britney."

The music that will remind me of 2008 will definitely be shaped by the kids. It's all about Eskimo Disco. Ian picked this up on the Pingu website and we're addicted to it.

The Decline of Journalism and the Cesspool of Useless Information

David Carr writes about the deeply depressing state of journalism. More layoffs at the Trib, Star-Ledger, Bergen Record, the Times, on and on.

At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings.

But in this case, it wasn’t an old journalism hack lamenting his  industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.

Barack's Infomercial

Obama is running a half hour infomercial on prime time tonight. My first thought - money to burn. Second thought - it better be better than Perot's infomercials with the dumb charts.

Speaking of money to burn, the Obama camp has been embedding ads in video games. I really doubt that Steve's old roommate, Tiny, is going to put down the bong and his wii remote to go vote. I'm not sure if this the best use of advertising money.

I am rather pleased that Google ads has finally stopped running McCains ads on this blog and we're getting Obama ads. I, by the way, have no control over the advertising content on this blog.

Self Destruction

So, I guess Sarah Palin is being too mavericky for the McCain camp. She's going off-script in her defense of her wardrobe. Because one can be a maverick, but only when the maverick consultants write the talking points. It's in the dictionary. Look it up.

Several McCain advisers suggested that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue." ...

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

They're calling her a diva and a rogue. Because mavericks are team players. McCain people are privately putting down Palin's credentials. This isn't coming from Tina Fey.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

Oh, this is getting fun.