Make Believe

So yeah, my first listen to Weezer's new album was one of mixed reactions. I had a lot of anticipation built up for this (Blue and Pinkerton are amongst my favourite albums of all time). Still, I wasn't sure what to expect. Though I adored their first two albums, I knew I would probably be a little disappointed with a simple rehash of those albums (though not entirely disappointed as I picked up their anniversary release of Blue, which featured several previously unavailable tracks from the early era that had me skipping around like a puffin with a new hairdo). And so, I kind of hoped for a new direction.

And Make Believe is a new direction. I'm not sure I would even recognize most of the tracks as being Weezer unless alerted to the fact aforehand. And so, my first listen was a mix of excitement and disappointment. It was Weezer and new; yet, it wasn't the Weezer I knew. After finishing the disc, my impression was that (much like Pinkerton) this would be an album that I'd need to let fester and grow on me.

And I was right. Since first hearing the album Tuesday night, my iTunes tells me I've listened to the album fifteen seventeen twenty-one more times and y'know what? I love it. I really do. I don't want to say it's their best, but I won't say it's not. I'm still struggling to say whether Blue or Pinkerton is the better album and to know that I may soon have to choose between three distinct sounds is distressing to say the least.

Still, I miss Matt Sharp's falsetto.

Oh yeah, and if you've already listened to the album a few times, I recommend reading the band's song-by-song commentary on their site.

So a few months back (November 2004), I wrote Blogger with a question. They have proven to be not the best in the arena of response. So now, I turn to The Readership for answers, solutions, and offers of free ice creams. With that, the original letter.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Blogger,

Okay, so I'm curious.

Long, long ago, Blogger (if memory serves) would replace * with <b>*</b> as a result of using The Marvelous B-button. And * would be replaced with <i>*</i> upon utilization of The Likewise Marvelous I-Button.

Eventually, amid rumours of deprecation and a general sense of distastefulness, <b> and <i> reinvented themselves into a hipper, more exciting couple: <strong> and <em>. Though <b> and <i> were easier to type - consisting of less characters as they do - the change was both "happy and welcome." Despite the change, with simple alteration of one's stylesheets, the new couple could be well-endorsed and integrated into any domain.

Recently, in a move that has several puzzled, <strong> and <em> have been disbarred and replaced by the not-remotely-so-genial <span style> duo. Still, I trust that there was a good reason for this change. I am sure that the newfound rigidity serves some happy purpose. And I feel confident that though I am no longer able to affect any detail of the formatting of that which is emboldened or italicized (beyond the obvious emboldeneding and/or italicizing) - I am confident that there is a veritible cornucopia of reasons for this change.

So, uhm, what would those reasons be, exactly?

Yours everlastingly with sugar on top,
The Dane.

So my question to you, The Readership, is this: can you think of a good reason that Blogger would make this change - not that I personally use these shortcut buttons, but I'm sure there are those who do.

Christian Education: A Series

Episode V - 98.3% of All Statistics Are Made Up

One of the chief difficulties in discussing home-schooling vs. public-schooling is that their are no statistics that are worth, well, really anything at all. And why aren't the stats worth much? Because there are no control groups. To compare the average home-schooled child with the average publicly-schooled child is, as the cliché goes, apples and oranges. While this might initially appear as me trying to wriggle out of the awkward fact that the average standardized test scores of home-schoolers beat the average standardized test scores of public-schoolers. This, however delightful a prospect to my detractors, is not accurate.

Please allow for an explanation.

One of the key factors in properly educating a child is quality parental involvement (read this as preview for Episode VI: Concerns Answered). To get real quality control on the stats, you would need to compare publicly-schooled children with good, involved parents with home-schooling parents. In all honesty, I'm surprised that with the preponderance of broken families and non-existent parenting across the public-school spectrum, with the severe lack of parental interest across much of the public-schooling realm - I'm surprised that the discrepancy between the academics in the two systems isn't far greater.

In short, it is impossible to discover from the statistics whether it home-schooling is what is academically beneficial or whether its just having involved parents that does the trick; without a control group, the stats are only mirages masquerading as tangible fact.

The problem, then, is that this leaves us all being able only to speak from anecdotal evidence. That is, I feel about home-schooling in a certain way because the majority of home-schoolers I know exhibit certain qualities or deficiencies, yet person A, who feels the other way about home-schooling thinks I'm nuts because she doesn't know any home-schoolers who exhibit the particular tendencies and attributes I mentioned, and in fact (!), she's more likely to see those things in public-schoolers. This is one of the several reasons why this can be such a difficult issue - there is no shared sample and all the data is skewed. We're dealing almost exclusively in hypotheticals based on the poor sampling made up from our personal experience.

This is why I think it's important to the discussion that we do not simply dismiss any of the concerns mention in Episodes II and III. The thing of it is: none of the concerns are ironclad. None of them cannot be overcome. None of them are, in the end, worthwhile objections. But they must all be answered, if only for the nonbelievers, for the skeptical. Are you going to home-school your child? How are you going to insure your child's success? Are you going to public-school your child? Well, how are you going to insure his success? We need to get away from stats and stereotyping and start dealing with specifics.

So question. Have any of you used CafePress on either side of the equation (as seller or buyer)? I'm interested in makin' stuff, but I'm unsure of the quality and I'm unsure about how the creation process works - like I see that for images on the front of a hoody, the dimensions are 10" x 10", but is it possible to just make an image 5" x 6" instead ('cuz really, 10" x 10" is freakin' huge)?

Incidentally, I have just discovered incontrovertible proof linking the 7th Day Adventists to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Look on and feel the horror:

Christian Education: A Series

Episode IV - An Admission

It may be of interest at this point in this monologue to note that the public education system failed me utterly when it came to academics. From sixth grade onward, I learned very, very little. I wouldn't say Nothing, but the academic knowledge I accumulated from that time until graduation was very little. My mother even openly mocked my poor vocabulary - and with good cause.

The typical response to such colossal underachievement generally points to a child's lack of challenge in his educational environment. This was not my problem. True enough, I did consistently test in the 99th percentile in every subject, but it wasn't the lack of a challenge that stalled my education. It wasn't public-schooling per se that caused this failure either, for I suspect that I would have had the same (or at least similar) difficulty learning in a private- or home-schooled environment.

The problem was this: after six year of excelling academically, I decided I'd rather pursue other interests. Mastering algebra, trig, calc? Boring. Reading Dorian Gray, Dickens, and whatever else was on the plate? Sigh. I couldn't be bothered with these things when life confronted me with more important things. Things like: drawing, reading comics, boogie boarding and skim boarding, wandering around, and basically cultivating my imagination.

Since I wasn't planning on going into a field related to math or any of the applied sciences, I had bigger fish to fry. And no, I wasn't going to let anything so wasteful of my time as an education get in my way. So I indulged my creative side to the languishment of academics. Of course I continued learning - but only the things I wanted to learn and I learned them in my own time, my after-school time.

So, after six years of indulging myself in non-academic pursuits, I decided it was time to learn again. After all, I graduated high school being unable to write a coherent essay, being unable to speak in front of an audience (I was fantastically shy, the picture of an introvert). It felt like the time was right to overcome these issues, so I taught myself to write and decided to shed my former introversion.

And here we are. Had I continued to apply myself academically, I might now be a lawyer or rocket scientist, but really, where would the fun be in that? Sure, I would be making money hand-over-fist in comparison to doing web design for a non-profit organization (as I do), but really, what a waste that would have been. Instead, I get to create.

In the end, the only reason I mention this is to give some background - so it can be realized that though I will fight tooth and nail for parents to be allowed to publicly school without the condemnation of their Christian peers, I recognize that academically speaking, the system didn't work for me. Though I still don't think any system would have worked for me - since I have a natural tendency to work poorly within a system (this will be an important factor in Episode VII).