This episode of the X-Files is so potent, you might...

I'm watching an episode of the X-Files with a youngish Jack Black in it. I'm guessing this was before "must feature at least one scene in which I run around in tighty-whities" showed up in his contracts. Kyle Gass is not featured. Giovanni Ribisi is the weekly bad guy.

Hits A Nerve

via Brian Micklethwait

"The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature."

Boy, that says it all. I will say flat out that my blog entries are generally just strings of thoughts, not essays. But this article is dead on. Of the classes I had in high school, very few outside of English had so much as a "long answer" portion of an exam, and no essays. English had the "long answer" and fairly regular 2.5 page essays. And yes, it was symbolism, themes, etc. And of course we were taught writing such that any sane person would have fallen asleep halfway through the first page. I think what agitated me most was the complete lack of objective criteria for, say, an average score. Assuming perfect grammar, punctuation, and proper organization, and a certain range of relevant facts that must be explained to a certain level of detail, I would have liked to have passed more. This was English, though. That was also the only research paper I had to write (1 per year). I did a little better on these since I was allowed to form my own conclusions and explain my own facts rather than regurgitate "facts" about literature learned from my English teacher.

Anyhow, I could bitch about that worthless English teacher for years. Frankly, the only useful stuff I got from him was the proper MLA formats and rules. The typing and computer class was of much greater value. As Scott Adams said once, I'm Typing Right Now.

Back then, I would have like to never do another research paper (8-12 pages) or 2.5 page essay ever again. Boy was I in for it! Nowadays I can spit out 2.5 pages without taxing a neuron, mostly due to lack of focus in my writing. But research papers... Lord. My degree is in Political Science. This involved, as you may imagine, quite a few Political Science classes, only the first three of which did NOT require a 12-15 page research paper. I believe I did three of these in one semester, and no fewer than 2 a semester in my last couple of years. I did one for a sociology class, my stupid English Composition class (just as left-wing as you've heard, even at Texas A&M), and probably a couple more here and there. Hell, I got good at it. I could use the 3270 terminal with my network account (Internet access, still largely in the public, university, and incredibly wealthy company domain at the time) to the library card catalog to find sources (including location), go and check them out or make copies, locate citations, and write the paper in a day or so. The Internet made this easier--not for cheating, but for finding sources without having to go to the library. PolySci professors were, shall we say, flexible about formatting--whereas in high school every period, comma, and tab was accounted for, more than once we had to pin the professor down on what he was looking for. And I daresay we all stuck with the MLA standards.

I'm glad I did that, and wish I had done it more in high school. It would have sucked, but you know, you can work your way up to 12-15 pages. Hell, how about 5 pages and minimum 3 sources? Dunno. There's a way to do it, but these things are hard to grade and even harder to nail down cheating these days.

The State's Own Mouth

I performed an experiment on myself today. While I generally listen to AM 1200 WOAI (The Clear Channel flagship station) on the drive to work and while getting ready for work, today I grew tired of Charlie Parker's voice and endless man-on-the-street soundbites related to current events.

So I changed the channel to (sigh) Texas Public Radio to see what they had to offer. In San Antonio, that's 89.1 FM. For one, the audio is a lot clearer. For two, there is actual reporting of the day's events. Mind you, it's not just liberal media, it's public radio. I suspect the various organizations and experts providing comments on the day's news were of the leftist stripe. NPR, this is your albatross. But let me tell you--it's actual reporting and actual news. I believe this was a show called "Morning Edition". OH! And not a word about sports! Boy, talk about a few spare minutes of real news when you're not dealing with sports.

The drive home met me with "All Things Considered". I've heard of this show and approached it with a wary ear. My wary ear was rewarded with a interview with a bunch of teachers in some battleground state that, Oddly Enough, were mostly going to vote for Kerry. One of them based their decision on the fact that Kerry, what was it, "believes things!" Oh dear God! Seriously--he believed things and thus this teacher was going to vote for him. Hell, I can believe things at you all day long, are you gonna put me in charge of the military and every federal employee everywhere?

And yet I still listened! Hell, NPR actually lets these people talk. They talked for maybe 30 seconds each. Sure, it was a bunch of liberal (not rabidly left-wing, just liberal) jibberjab, but you could hear entire, if flawed, thought processes.

I'm gonna try it out for a while. NPR is very addictive, like the History Channel and C-SPAN. Lots of talking and it really gets your dander up.

No, I'll not be watching PBS anytime soon. The private sector whipped their ass in each and every aspect of their programming a few years ago. There's just no good reason to watch it. But there's a good reason to listen to NPR. A few good reasons not to, but in my case the good reasons won out.

Give it a try. Yes, you still get traffic reports. You don't get the feeling that the anchors/reporters/whatnot are just impatiently waiting until they can talk about sports again. The voices seem specifically crafted to be soothing, but crisp. No crufty old men "boiling down" every issue to mega-church Sunday School level.