Interesting Choice of Advertisement

On the Metro, there is an advertisement for Juniper Networks, a company that helps people telecommute (or so I infer from the displays). The ads all involve the rat race, and jamming yourself into crowded and dirty subway trains. I'm surprised by the decision by the Metro system to carry an advertisement series that ridicules the Metro. It seems that every person who does telecommute as a result of these ads would be a loss to the revenue of the Metro, especially since the target audience of these ads pay more because of rush-hour fare.

"Making Schools Work"

I love PBS because it has many interesting programs. I'm currently watching "Making Schools Work" which discusses programs that are helping public schools improve their performance in a variety of climates, across a variety of ethnic groups.

The first program that they are covering is an intensive 90 minute reading program. In first grade, every day is started with an aggressive 90 minute reading lesson to the point where teachers were commenting on the amount of relearning and reworking of the curriculum that they had to do. This challenge is good. Students need to be challenged. People, especially kids, have an amazing amount of resilience and ability to adapt. Physically, if you want to get stronger you have to push your muscles beyond their norm and they will be sore the next day. However, after a while, the muscles will become stronger. Likewise, mentally, people need to be challenged. There is the caveat that like muscles, the mind must be rested and there should lots of positive encouragement. However, doling out copious positive encouragement does not preclude copious work.

The second program that they covered dealt with social issues. The related anecdote is that a mother didn't pick up her daughter up from school because she was high. The school hired her as a parent assistant to keep an eye on her. Because the mother was in school constantly, she didn't have an opportunity to smoke up and eventually, she became a helpful staff member. In addition, the school has social workers on-site to deal with anger and depression issues.

All in all, these programs are all good but they all have something in common - more time, more people, more resources. Of all the things to skimp on, why make it education?

Legacy

We all want some sort of legacy when we leave a place. At my last school, I felt like a small fish in a large pond because everyone there was so talented and motivated. I always felt very middling. I wasn't so talented that people would view me as "wicked smaht" and I was definitely not motivated enough to be the type of person who excelled in multiple extra-curriculars. Because of this, I don't think I've been the best alum even though I do owe my alma mater quite a bit (for example, it taught me the meaning of mental anguish).

However, in a recent letter to alums, the new President of my alma mater mentioned two exceptional students as examples as why alums should give back to MIT. One of the alums is a volunteer in a program that I helped to start so when I read it, I felt this warm fuzzy feeling inside. Back then, it didn't seem like much, but the fact that the program is still running after 6 years is refreshing. Now I just have to save up so I can give back to that program.

Making Light of the Situation

There was a commercial recently on Fox for Fox Local News (the news that comes on at 10 PM, not the kind with Bill O'Reilly). The investigative story was for a person who was misdiagnosed and ended up being partially paralyzed. The video clip for this investigative story had clips of the paralyzed lady interweaved with clips of the Fox show House. I know that televisions channel want to hype themselves but this seems somewhat callous. To use a story about a lady being paralyzed by misdiagnosis as a cheap advertisement for the show "House?" Wow...

Statement of the Day

A statement by CEO of the Warner Music Group Edgar Bronfman Jr:
“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue. We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only... We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders. We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple, and others.”

Wow, no wonder people dislike record labels.

Statement of the Day

I always wanted to do this and finally I have my act together enough to find a quotation and write about it.

"We're not aware of everything we've published," Sanfilippo said. "Back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, there were no electronic files for those books." (Associated Press, 9/18/2005)

Tony Sanfilippo is the Penn State Press's marketing and sales directory and he is talking about Google's decision to scan books to be made available for searching via the Internet. Google has said that publisher's can submit a list of books that they do not want scanned and Google will not scan them, in the same manner that website owners can request that Google not index them. While I agree that in light of current copyright law, it's backwards and instead Google should be asking the publishers' permission to scan and display the books, this statement gives a clear example of what is wrong with copyright law. Mr. Sanfilippo is basically admitting that they haven't recently published (or sold) a lot of books from the 50's through the 70's, because if they had recently published them, they would indeed have electronic files on these books. However, because they own the copyright to these books, they can continue to deprive the rest of America and the world the ability to read them, for no good reason other than because they can. It's like that old philosophical question: if you own the rights to a book but don't know what the book is, do you really own the rights to the book?

Total BS

The NFL hosed the New Orleans Saints by having them play in New York for their first "home opener." In the first quarter, the Saints had to call a time-out because the crowd was too loud. Now, there are all sorts of unsportsmanlike conduct flags being thrown on both teams, which is always a cheesy way out because someone had to start the fight. As Michael Wilbon pointed out, there are many other stadiums in the Louisiana, Mississippi, and even the Eastern Texas area but instead the NFL decided to play in New York.