Saturday, August 28, 2010
Back at it...
Here I am, back at it after a week off for school stuff... I haven't had the time to catch up on the news, but this should give you a laugh...
Friday, August 20, 2010
Reality or Rhetoric? A little humor
From the same episode of The Daily Show that I posted earlier: Team Mohammed vs. Team Jesus
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Extremist Makeover - Team Mohammed vs. Team Jesus | ||||
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Reality or Rhetoric? Part III
I've been thinking a LOT lately about all the buzz surrounding the "Ground Zero Mosque" and it's developers; it's almost a bit depressing, watching our people show the world that we really haven't moved past the bigotry, we've just changed targets. I know, there are some radicals out there who orchestrated terrorist attacks, if someone brings it up one more time I might just be sick. I know, we are fighting a war against the fundamentalist Taliban, I know that there are Muslims out there that commit human rights violations; there are Christians who do bad things too. What it ultimately comes down to, for me, is this: the developers of this community center, not mosque, community center, don't need our approval to build. They don't need our permission, they've used our own system to put themselves in a position to build. We're wasting breath over this, spewing hateful words, accusing peaceful people of harboring terrorists, it's McCarthyism all over, except this time the enemy isn't Communism, it's Islam. When will we accept that we can't change it? When are we going to let go of the anger, or at least learn to show it in a more appropriate, less frenzied manner? When are we going to realize that Islam isn't the enemy, extremists using Islam as propaganda are. Destroy Islam, the radicals will find another way, another form of propaganda. This isn't something that's going to go away, but we can differentiate between radicals and people who are getting a bad name because of them.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition | ||||
| ||||
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Reality or Rhetoric? Part II
The Cordoba Initiative hasn’t begun fundraising yet for its $100 million goal. The group’s latest fundraising report with the State Attorney General’s office, from 2008, shows exactly $18,255 – not enough even for a down payment on the half of the site the group has yet to purchase.
The group also lacks even the most basic real estate essentials: no blueprint, architect, lobbyist or engineer — and now operates amid crushing negative publicity. The developers didn't line up advance support for the project from other religious leaders in the city, who could have risen to their defense with the press.
The group’s spokesman, Oz Sultan, wouldn’t rule out developing the site with foreign money in an interview with POLITICO – but said the project’s goal is to rely on domestic funds. Currently, they have none of either.
“They are in the process of hiring an architect — but here’s the thing, you’re not going to get the architect or the engineer because they don’t want to be involved in this,” Sultan, the new media consultant hired to handle some of the project’s imaging — mostly via Twitter — told POLITICO.
For all its problems, the project does have a solid chance of accomplishing one thing: further embarrassing the president.
But to veterans of New York real estate wars, Park51 provides an object lesson in how not to handle development politics in a city in which, even under the mildest of conditions, construction projects are fraught with potential peril.
Weeks into the controversy, Sultan told POLITICO the project's developers are hoping to get their "talking points" together.
"Give us a little time," he pleaded.
“They could have obviously done a lot better in explaining who they are if they really wanted to get approval,” said publicist Ken Sunshine, a veteran of New York’s development wars. “There’s a real question as to whether there's money behind this."
“As I understand it there’s no money there,” said another prominent business official.
A prominent supporter of the project was blunt: “This is amateur hour,” he said.
“That’s why the idea that this is some big conspiracy is so silly,” said the supporter. “Yes, you could say this is not a well-oiled machine.”
There is, in fact, a textbook for high-profile New York developments, even less risky ones – and the effort by Park51, whose messaging has relied almost entirely on Sultan’s often-snarky Twitter feed, isn’t it.
“They needed to talk to all the right people and they never did. That's a normal part of building any building in Manhattan,” said George Arzt, a longtime public relations man in New York who was Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary
Normally what they would have done would be to get the architect, the PR, the government operation, community outreach all together in a team,” said Arzt. “They would have reached out to elected officials and the community to tell them what they’re doing. Then they would have had an idea about how much resistance they were getting and what they needed to do.”
Sultan said the project is now in the phase of trying to engage with its critics to answer questions. Yet while he joined just five weeks ago, he wasn’t familiar with basic history POLITICO tried to ascertain.
You’d have to talk to Sharif,” he said of the developer, Sharif El-Gamal, who has refused repeated requests for comment from POLITICO.
El-Gamal and the project’s religious anchor, Imam Feisal Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, have at times offered conflicting information. They don’t have a single person handling their message, and are often setting up their own interviews. Khan, a Sufi who serves on an informal advisory group for the official 9/11 Memorial, casually mentioned to Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a Ramadan event in September 2009 her embryonic dream of the Islamic center downtown, but that was the extent of outreach to City Hall. The Imam is now traveling in Malaysia, and unreachable.
In an interview with the New York Observer published today, El-Gamal told the weekly of the former Burlington Coat Factory, which was damaged in the attack, "I never wanted anything so badly, and it took me four years to buy it." He did so after several aborted attempts in July 2009 for nearly $5 million, a pot of money whose source critics question.
The American Society for Muslim Advancement, another nonprofit founded by the imam involved in Cordoba House, reportedly has assets of less than $1 million.
In liberal New York, the group appears to have reached out to none of the progressive religious groups who would be natural allies, many of whom now support the project, who could have been plausible surrogates to speak to their intentions amid backlash questioning how moderate the Cordoba planners are. Imam Rauf, for instance, sits on the board of the liberal Interfaith Center – but even his fellow board members learned of the project from the New York Times, said the Rev. Chloe Breyer, its executive director.
“They were taken unaware by the response and whether you fault them for it or whether you fault just a rapidly changing and more polarized political environment than anyone expected I don’t think I can answer that,” said Breyer, who backs the project.
Other liberal clerics who might be natural allies told POLITICO they’d heard nothing of the project in advance.
The group also botched its outreach to the families of victims of 9/11, who continue to hold enormous symbolic sway over Ground Zero.
The families Cordoba engaged in advance appear to have been members of "9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows," a left-leaning, anti-war segment that has tense relations with other, larger family organizations.
The Cordoba Initiative’s entire political outreach, meanwhile, appears to have been a call to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer earlier this year, who suggested they visit Community Board 1 merely to measure support. The step was unnecessary – they can build on the site as of right – and was, in retrospect, a mistake.
The hearing gave the impression nationally that there was some kind of government approval required, when in fact it wasn’t the case. A subsequent New York City Landmarks Commission hearing was forced by opponents trying to stop it.
The plan received support from a Community Board subcommittee, but the chair of the board, Julie Menin, advised El-Gamal to hold a larger town hall forum, where nuances could be addressed and broader groups heard from.
He never did.
“If they would have done the town hall from the get-go you would have at least had a real opportunity to get in front of it and explain what they were trying to do and address head-on the misinformation,” she said.
At one of the meetings, the word “mosque” was used, and that gave a hook to the project’s deepest objectors.
It took off in the right-wing blogosphere and in the tabloids, and questions were raised about Rauf’s political beliefs and whether he renounces terror groups like Hamas.
Sultan’s @park51 Twitter feed also drew criticism when it joked in one tweet that an Israeli newspaper would be better off telling Yiddish fables, and in another that a critic who identified himself as Amish should have gone back to churning butter. Both reflected more a snarky New York web sensibility than a dour Islamist threat, but the former produced an apology and a fired intern.
“They can threaten to kill us, you can call us every single nasty name in the book but we can’t have a little fun with it?” complained Sultan.
In printed interviews, El-Gamal has expressed frustration with critics, yet he has, based on behavior, been unwilling to engage in responding at the level the project now requires, including to bat back misperceptions that are shaping national public opinion.
A major piece of misinformation is the idea that government has a role in stopping the center, which is patterned on the $85 million Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side.
The project is a completely as-of-right project, meaning it requires no governmental approvals.
“The mosque has no money, the politicians have no money, the politicians have no say about the money because it's a charitable institution,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who has long observed New York political footballs, who accurately noted that no elected official will give this group money going forward because the outpouring of rage would be overwhelming.
And while New York’s weathered development machine tends to keep its eye on the ball, Sultan’s goals seem almost abstract.
“Part of this is engagement, part of this is building a basement by which we build a community,” he said. “If you build moderate Muslim communities that’s what’s going to fight extremism.”
I saw this in the Politico iPhone app, and thought it was worth sharing. It really makes me wonder what the big deal is If it is a long shot, why are people worried in the first place? It just makes me wonder yet again if people's fear is grounded in reality or rhetoric?
Continu
Saturday, August 14, 2010
What are we coming to?
Fox News and The Associated Press reported the following article:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/14/police-people-shot-fatally-outside-buffalo-ny-restaurant-wedding-reception/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/14/police-people-shot-fatally-outside-buffalo-ny-restaurant-wedding-reception/
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Eight people leaving a party at a downtown Buffalo restaurant were shot early Saturday, four of them fatally, including a Texas man who had returned to his hometown to celebrate his first wedding anniversary, police said.
Managers had decided to close the City Grill in the city's business district after an altercation inside. The victims were leaving at about 2:30 a.m. when a man who had been inside began shooting, police said.
"There were verbal things going on. Management apparently chose to close down and have everybody leave the restaurant," Chief of Detectives Dennis Richards said. "People were leaving when this shooting happened."
Keith Johnson, 25, of Buffalo was charged Saturday afternoon with four counts of second-degree murder, but a prosecutor later told the Buffalo News that he intended to go to court Sunday morning to seek dismissal of the charges.
Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III told the newspaper he was making the move after reviewing video and photos from the scene and interviewing additional witnesses, noting that the evidence showed "certain discrepancies of people and clothing."
"We are having serious second thoughts," Sedita told the newspaper. "I have serious reservations about whether we have the right guy here."
Sedita declined comment when contacted at his home by The Associated Press early Sunday, other than to say he planned to be in court.
Police spokesman Michael DeGeorge did not immediately return cell phone and e-mail messages seeking comment early Sunday about the newspaper's report.
Johnson was in custody late Saturday afternoon and unavailable for comment. Police didn't know whether he was involved in the earlier altercation and asked witnesses to speak up.
"We need people to come forward," said Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda, who estimated there were 100 people at the scene when police arrived.
The group was attending a party in advance of a more formal anniversary celebration scheduled for later Saturday, authorities said. The couple, Danyell Mackin, 30, and his wife, Tanisha, married in Texas a year ago and had returned to celebrate with Buffalo-area friends and family, authorities said. Tanisha Mackin was not hurt.
"An occasion that should have been a joyous one, a happy one, turned tragic," Mayor Byron Brown said Saturday near the restaurant, a popular stop for office workers during the week and people attending theater and sporting events at night.
The Mackins, who grew up in the same neighborhood, had been friends since they were 13 and started dating in 2001, according to a website created to commemorate their marriage and provide details about the celebration.
The couple, known as "Dee" and "Tee," have a 6-year-old son, Danyell Jr., and a 7-month-old daughter, Destinee, who was scheduled to be christened on Sunday, the website said. The family had moved from Buffalo to Austin, Texas, in 2006, and the Mackins worked for a local bank.
The reception was to be held at a community center in Buffalo, and the couple said online that it was "dedicated to the people who meant so much to us and that we lost."
Police identified the other three victims as Willie McCaa III, 26; Shawnita McNeil, 27; and Tiffany Wilhite, 32.
"A senseless, random killing," said Wilhite's father, Raymond Wilhite, who returned to the restaurant a few hours after the shooting. "This kind of thing just has to stop."
McNeil was Wilhite's cousin.
"There's no words to explain how I feel," McNeil's mother, Ruby Martin, said. "She got along with everybody. She knows a lot of people. She didn't deserve to be killed. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended for her."
Demario Vass, 30, remained in critical condition Saturday night, DeGeorge said. Two men, James Robb Jr., 27, and Shamar Davis, 30, were in stable condition. And 27-year-old Tillman Ward, who was shot in the elbow, was in good condition.
Tommy Dates, 35, of Buffalo, said he was at the bar area of the restaurant with his friends when he noticed a party had broken up. He said people started leaving the restaurant but rushed back inside a few minutes later.
"A lot of people were real upset, just trying to get out of the way," Dates said at the scene about two hours after the shootings. "Everyone was in a panic."
Johnson lives in a two-family house about six miles from the restaurant, near the University of Buffalo's south campus. No one responded to a knock on his door Saturday night, and a woman who answered the door of the other family's home said he lives with his mother and that she also left with police when Johnson was taken into custody.
The restaurant posted a statement on its website Saturday expressing condolences to the victims and their families.
"We at City Grill are deeply saddened by the tragic events," the statement said.
Three covered bodies lay in front of the restaurant for several hours, one of them on the sidewalk across the street. About 20 people stood behind yellow crime scene tape, some trying to console grief-stricken relatives and friends.
"It was horrible seeing members of our community lying in the street," the mayor said.
The window of an office next to the Main Street restaurant was shattered, as was glass at a light-rail stop across the street.
"Nobody knows why," Martin said. "Somebody else was just shooting in a crowd."
After reading this my big question is: What in the world are we coming to? What kind of society have we made for ourselves, where an argument at a party gets heated enough to cause a business to close? What kind of society have we made for ourselves, that people shoot each other on the streets? How and why has it happened?
Might I suggest that one possible cause is the degraded standing of the family in our society? The home is no longer the main place to learn morals and values for many in our society. Our youth idolize rap musicians that glorify sex, drugs, and violence. They developed a distorted world view in which fear equals respect, money is power, and power means everything.
Please, let's not leave the moral education of America's youth up to the school teachers. Let's stand up and take the reigns back from the rappers, the professional athletes, and others that are less than superb role-models for today's youth!
And Educational Moment: The Eleven Period Day
Todd Fallis is my studio teacher at Utah State University, where I am majoring in music education. This is a scheduling idea he published in "Teaching Music" in 2003 that I think would be a wonderful alternative to current scheduling practices,
The Eleven Period Day
Scheduling time for the arts is a problem in many schools. Todd Fallis offers some thought-provoking ideas and a personal solution to the challenge of tight schedules at the high school level.
IN the 1970s, many high schools operated on the forty-five-minute, eight-period day. What a great schedule it was for students: a reasonable amount of class time with more than enough periods to take any course that interested them. But it meant that most teachers had seven class preparations (preps). At all levels, teachers generally prefer fewer, smaller classes, so school administrations, unable to pay teachers what they were worth, compromised by changing schedules so that teachers would have fewer preps each day Couple this with overcrowding (ever seen portable classrooms erected next to a brand new school?), which brought on year-round schools and trimester schedules, and school systems began whittling away the choices students could make because there were fewer class periods.
The eight-period day became the seven-period day, which then became the six-period day, which in some places evolved into the trimester: a five-period day with periods of seventy minutes each (down to 4 preps). Make the school year-round and now only a couple of portable classrooms are needed.
What's left? Well, we know that the arts are often among the first subjects to go when cuts are made.
Almost all teachers would love more preparation time, but the best interests of the community and the students might be better served by creative scheduling. I'd like to see local schools (encouraged by the real student union—parents) be more responsive to current realities, such as two-career families, the need for students to have jobs (as is the case in many immigrant families), and greater need for sleep by adolescents. The eleven-period day offers creative solutions to help face some of these challenges.
Greater choice might lead to enhanced student involvement in learning, and thus, to better performance. Classes offered later in the day might give over-stressed and overtired working students a better chance for higher academic achievement. Although I don't advocate students working during high school, it's a reality for many young people.
THE ELEVEN-PERIOD DAY STARTS AT 7:30 A.M. and ends some time between 5:00 and 5:30 P.M. (see figure 1). Classes run daily, roughly 50 minutes in length. Students and teachers are tracked by thirds. One-third of the students starts early, at the beginning of the day, and depending on their schedules, finishes somewhere around the sixth period. A second group of students begins the day near the third period and ends the day by, say period eight. The last group or third of students begins the day in or around the sixth period and ends the day at period eleven. Teachers divide the day similarly having teacher's schedules mimic those of the students. Teachers would be given five preps covering six consecutive periods each day. As long as tenth-grade English, for example, was taught by various teachers in each section or track of the day students could easily enroll within their own scheduled school day.
Early risers with afternoon jobs could enroll in the earliest part of the day. Folks who can't function before noon could enroll in the latter part of the day. Although many adolescents can't be easily pried out of bed, some are motivated and responsible enough to get up on their own. Perhaps, to make scheduling simpler, all high school seniors could start the day on the early track, while juniors could be enrolled in Track 2, and sophomores in Track 3. In any case, scheduling for both teachers and students would need to be creative.
The benefits of such a plan would far outweigh the negatives. First, overcrowding in schools would be alleviated, since all students would be on campus simultaneously only during the middle two or three periods of the day, say, five, six, and seven. These three periods could serve as the lunch periods for each of the three tracks of students and teachers. Second, most schools have late buses, which certainly could be used to a greater extent. The early bus would deliver Track 1 students. A later bus would deliver Track 2 students. Track 1 students would go home when Track 3 students were picked up. An afternoon bus would deliver home Track 2 students, and a late bus would deliver home Track 3 students. The two afternoon buses would be abridged routes depending on need. Many high schoolers drive, car-pool, or are driven by parents as well. Some take public transportation. Either way, this would be the one large cost associated with an expanded day.
Third, schools would stay open for business all day long, which would result in fewer unsupervised students. A longer business day for schools focuses more attention on the school being a center of the community, as events happen throughout the day with students and faculty coming and going based on their own schedule and not necessarily based on the schedule of the school. Fourth, many more course offerings would be available to students with an extended day. Fifth, traditionally after-school or before-school programs such as athletics, marching band, swing choir, vocational training, clubs, and so forth are scheduled into the eleven-period day instead of relegated to extracurricular status, often thought of as secondary to the core curriculum. Finally, students could enroll in eleven classes per day, if they so desired, never having to choose AP math over orchestra, debate club, cross country, or track and field. At the same time, teachers would still be at school for their allotted six periods each day.
If the school is open for business all day, the staff would be on two or more shifts. Assistant principals could open and close the school, whereas the principal would work during the middle part of the day. Security, in this post-9/11 era, would be a special concern, but with careful management and clear rules, safe schools, even with multiple tracks, are a realistic goal. Perhaps the extended day would, in fact, work toward greater security, since the building would be occupied by staff for a longer period each day.
SO WHERE DOES MUSIC FIT IN? Right in the middle of the day when all the students are on campus at the same time. In addition, music students could certainly take advantage of the longer school day They would likely be at school early to take care of required subjects, there in the middle for the ensembles, and there late to take advantage of marching band or AP theory Music teachers have always given their schools a great deal of unpaid time, and their preparation is constant. Adding a madrigal choir has never meant taking away the concert chorale. The more music courses, the bigger the program, and the bigger the program, the more successful the overall music program becomes. Music teachers are interested in making sure that all students have the opportunity to enroll in every class, music or not, for which they have an interest. In any event, music teachers would probably contract for Track 2, and they might be hired to stay later, into Track 3 if necessary, for special small ensembles, lessons, and events.
Many teachers argue that, for example, five seventy-minute periods give much more time for instruction. In reality, some teachers devote the additional twenty minutes to homework head start. (When I taught both music and math in the public schools, in math classes, I devoted twenty minutes to math homework review, twenty minutes to new material, and ten minutes to homework head-start.) Ironically, the teachers who benefit most by sixty- and seventy-minute periods are the ensemble directors; ironic because the five- and six-period days that are necessary for such class time allotment may limit the number of students who can enroll in such classes.
HAS THIS ELONGATED SCHEDULE ever worked before? Yes—it's called college. It can certainly work for secondary schools. Sixth graders are often taught how to “change classes” by moving from classroom to classroom for each subject, preparing them for secondary-level course work. High schoolers can certainly handle taking a bit more responsibility for their school day.
In the 1970s, split shifts were used as a scheduling answer for school overcrowding brought on by the late stage of the baby boom. (For example, Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie, New York, went to split shifts to alleviate overcrowding in 1977.) Split shifts used two tracks instead of three. In high schools, ten periods were common, with juniors and seniors starting the day and finishing after period seven. Sophomores entered school fourth period and finished at the end of tenth period. Music students, regardless of level, often started early and ended late.
Expanding the day and the schedule would take work finessing teacher contracts and student schedules, much in the same way that it is done for colleges and universities. Administrators might need to split up the day as well. Why have we ever needed a principal and two or three assistant principals in the school building at the same time? Added expenses for busing and for physical plant would need to be lobbied for. But with sitebased management on the forefront of the minds of teachers, administrators, many parents, and the government, why not pilot a program in, say, a metropolitan area with decent mass transit? Those responsible for scheduling the high school day need to keep their minds open to new possibilities.Think of the eleven-period day as college prep for the next level of education—a level more and more essential to the future successful careers of our children.
FIGURE 1
Eleven-Period Day: Sample Schedule
Period Time Subjects Track
1 7:30–8:20 All Required Classes* 1**
2 8:25–9:15 All Required 1
3 9:20–10:10 All Required 1
4 10:15–11:05 All Required, Electives 1,2
5 11:10–12:00 All Required, Electives, 1,2
Lunch 1, Fine Arts Core
6 12:05–12:55 All Required, Electives, 1,2,3
Fine Arts Core, Lunch 2
7 1:00–1:50 All Required, Electives, 2,3
Fine Arts Core, Lunch 3
8 1:55–2:45 All Required, Electives 2,3
9 2:50–3:40 All Required, Electives 2,3
10 3:45–4:35 All Required, Electives, 3
Extracurricular
11 4:40–5:30 Same as period 10 3
* All required classes denotes state core required course work.
It does not mean that all core classes must be taught each hour.
** Students may elect a six-period track, but are not limited to
taking courses in only a single track.
PHOTO (COLOR):
PHOTO (COLOR):
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By Todd Fallis, Todd Fallis is director of music education at Utah State University in Logon.
Teaching Music; Feb2003, Vol. 10 Issue 4, p48,
Teaching Music; Feb2003, Vol. 10 Issue 4, p48,
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