It's 3:35 in Ann Arbor ...

We begin triple fucked week (thanks, Andy) with a bunch of random thoughts and links to avoid having to do actual work. Yes, I'm still working on that feature. No, I'm not procrastinating on a feature that's being used to procrastinate on real work ... We begin with some wishful thinking for Blazers fans. Maybe for an encore they could resurrect the 1908 Chicago Cubs.

I'm not sure about all the uproar that's occurred with the latest steroid confirmations. Come on. We've all known about it for years. And why should this be considered a bad thing? Let's let 'em pump up, hit a few home runs, and die young. Better than reality TV? You bet! (Ultima VII fans, please refer to Further Drug Experiments in Ultima VII.) As a side note, that guy who paid $450,000 for Bonds's 73rd home run must feel a little sheepish right about now.

Here's yet another study bemoaning how Math-Ed in the U.S. sucks. Here's why these studies piss me off. (And yes, I do realize that we do have deficiencies in our school systems. It's just that it's not as dark as some of these reports would make it out to be.) First of all, large-scale assessments of this nature are always dubious at best. It's impossible for a large-scale assessment of this size and scope to actually measure what students from all of these countries really know. That's a giant reliability factor that's not being factored in. The fact is, most of these tests emphasize declarative knowledge that students in Asia are extremely good at. (They say you can walk into any Chinese classroom at any time and know exactly what page the students are on.) American classrooms have long emphasized cognitive development of skills which, unfortunately, are hard to measure in assessments. What's also not taken into account (definitely on the TIMSS, not sure about the PISA) are the students that are tested. On the TIMSS assessment (in which U.S. kids again fell into the lower quartile of the pact), while a good random sampling was made of U.S. children, some Asian countries chose exactly which kids took the test and which didn't. Even non-stat majors know that this isn't good. (And before we bemoan test scores any further, let's remember that Cuban's study showed that there has been no correlation between test scores and economic development in the U.S. during the past 100 years when data has been available.) Okay, end of assessment rant.

Jacques Pepin, he of the most complex Lobster Americain recipe known to mankind, has gotten old and discovered the pleasures of opening up random cans of food and mixing them together. These new recipes are hilariously simple, and most of them are pretty tasty! You should watch his show to, if you can. Some of his opinions are pretty hilarious. (Jacques on mushrooms: I'll leave the small and expensive mushrooms to you, for me, the best type of mushrooms are old, big, and brown white mushrooms -- they have all the flavor!)