Another jolt of feel-good to start your morning
/One year ago today:
I'd be tempted to trick-or-treat as Simon Legree, in blackface and a sombrero, wearing a skirt and suicide vest and waving an ISIS flag.
/A reader sends along this cautionary message from the University of New Hampshire. God save us.
Nice gesture from Sam Bridge
/I like the postscript, saying that they're wiping out the email list created for supporters. Not that I mind receiving mail from the Bridges, but I like the idea that they're not using the addresses for future business notices.
Good people.
And if it hasn't quite burned down yet, this back country home's price is heading in that direction
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Very much not to my (or, obviously, the market's) taste, 5 Wyckham Hill Lane, listed at $4.350 million in 2015, is, as of today, asking $3.150. This was not one of Greenwich's finest mid-80s developments, but at somewhere in the $2s, this place, located on the north side of the street and thus a bit removed from the Merritt noise, and adjoining the Babcock Property, might be considered a deal.
California has wildfires, Back Country Greenwich holds fire sales
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24 Highland Farms Road, 11,000 square feet, 5.5 acres, listed in 2015 for $7.795 million, has sold for $3.350.
If the Pilgrims had been this indecisive, they'd have starved
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Or I could have just invited one of Walt's girlfriends over to do the honors
So I'm sitting at my kitchen table, blogging, drinking coffee, and I notice that the local flock of wild turkeys has reappeared in my back yard. I'm stuck: do I go with the shotgun which is standing by the door, with two turkey loads ready to go, or use the cross-bow? One is bound to alarm the neighbors a bit with its noise, but it's a sure kill, while the other, though silent, may require me to go chase a flopping bird across the yard next door. I finally decide on the bow, but by the time I retrieve it from the garage, locate the bird-point for a shaft, cock it and return, the birds have wandered into the woods. Still a doable shot with the gun, but the bow might be dicey. While I consider a bit more, they've gone. Sheesh.
They've been showing up most mornings at this time, so check in tomorrow. I'm thinking shotgun, but both weapons are now ready.
I've made this argument many many times before, but it bears repeating: learn a trade, make a living
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Who knew that specializing in post-modern African poetry wouldn't pay off?
A decade or so ago I sold a million-dollar home to a great guy from Byram who left GHS to attend Wright Technical School in Stamford, went on to be Mercedes of Greenwich's top mechanic and then moved up to Mercedes of Manhattan, where he oversaw 85 people. When he asked me to inquire at GHS whether Mercedes NY could donate their "obsolete" 3-year-old diagnostic computers to the tech-shop, we learned that the school had long since closed it.
Why our town thinks that training all our students to become cubicle-sharing corporate drones instead of helping some of them learn useful skills that will enable them to make a great living is beyond me.
As my friend/client told me, "I hated school, but I loved working on engines". There's not only nothing wrong with that, but if we encouraged it, a great number of our kids could be set on fulfilling, well-paid careers. It's the feminist dance theory majors from Vassar who are destined for the barista line, not our plumbers and electricians.
Dos más dos es igual a tres
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You may each have two
There are no "facts", only socio-constructs, and math is just another example of white privelege lording it over ignorant children of color.
Rochelle Gutierrez argues in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
Gutierrez claims that the importance of math skills in the real world also places what she calls an “unearned privilege” for those who are good at it. Because most math teachers in the United States are white, white people stand to benefit from their grasp of the subject disproportionate to members of other races.
“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, raising the question as to why math professors get more grants than “social studies or English” professors.
“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, claiming that minorities “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”
To resolve the intelligence gap, Gutierrez calls on math professors to develop a sense of “political conocimiento,” a Spanish term for “political knowledge for teaching.”
She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”
Love it, love it, love it: keep it up, and 2020 is ours
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Such a fun story to start the day with
Deranged lefties organizing a national "howl at the moon" event on the anniversary of Trump's election.
Thousands of anguished libs in Boston and Philadelphia will be taking part in scream fests on Nov. 8 to commemorate the anniversary of Donald Trump's election. Liberals in other cities around the country are likely to step up to the crazy plate as well as the big day draws near.
Over 4,000 Facebook users in the Boston area have RSVP'd to attend the event they're calling "Scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election." Another 33,000 have expressed interest in attending the event at the 383-year-old Boston Common.
"This administration has attacked everything about what it means to be American," Johanna Schulman, an activist and one of the organizers of the event, told Newsweek. "Who wouldn't feel helpless every day? Coming together reminds us that we are not alone, that we are part of an enormous community of activists who are motivated and angry, whose actions can make a difference."
It was a tax all along, so what's the beef?
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Latest CT budget proposal would divert $100 million from the "renewable energy surcharge" to pay for state union pensions and health care. Dress it up as they like, any money extracted from citizens is a tax: the money is fungible, and dumped into the redistribution pool to be doled out to Democrat favorites; state employee unions, welfare recipients, teachers. I'm so old that I remember when gasoline taxes were pledged to road maintenance and highway development. They were hijacked in the early 70s, and never reappeared.
Malloy said Republican legislators and others who opposed formation of the Green Bank in 2011 argued it was a tax, even if the ratepayers’ funds were invested in programs that could reduce their home energy costs.
“But if you’re taking money from ratepayers … and then you say you’re not going to use it for the reason it was actually raised— which was to make ourselves more (energy) efficient — then it really is a tax,” the governor said.
Duh.