The heartbreak of RD

In my lifelong search for unique personal qualities, qualities that cause me to stand out from the common herd (in addition, of course, to my bizarre sense of humor and world-renowned blog), I have now hit upon a legitimate medical diagnosis: Raynaud's Disease. This impressive francophone moniker refers to a possibly hereditary condition that makes my fingers often look somewhat like the illustration to the left -- I'm not sure my fingers ever look quite so dramatically horrible, but maybe that's only because they're my fingers and I'm used to them.

I noticed the first signs of Raynaud's Disease (let's just call it RD for short, ok? -- that's the fashion nowadays) when I was swimming at the high school pool during the summer after sixth grade. My hands got numb. I mentioned it to my friend's mother, who said I should see a doctor. In keeping with my usual practice, I avoided talking about numb hands to anyone after hearing that advice.

Symptoms continued over the years. What symptoms? Whenever my body temperature cools off slightly, several of my fingers get numb. On me, it's most often the third and fourth fingers of my right hand, but other fingers are also affected at times. The numb fingers obviously have lost circulation -- hence the white coloration, often tending to yellowish, as shown in the photo.

Today, a New York Times blog made me happy by putting a name -- RD -- to my symptoms. It's a condition, probably hereditary, at least in part, that affects about 5 percent of men, and a slightly higher percentage of women. It's triggered by a cooling of my body core temperature which causes blood vessels in my fingers and toes to constrict. This is a normal result of severe chilling -- the body attempts to save itself by sacrificing its extremities -- but for RD sufferers, blood vessels in a certain extremities overreact to only slight chilling.

My hands and feet can get cold without my experiencing RD effects, so long as my body temperature itself isn't affected. Conversely, my hands and feet can feel warm, but I'll suddenly lose sensation and color in certain fingers when my body core temperature dips slightly and unnoticeably. In winter, I keep the house cool (about 60°) to save energy. With a sweater, I'm comfortable at that temperature (I warm the house for guests!), but RD is apt to kick in. Warming my hands in front of a heater, or in warm water, immediately solves the problem.

What's cool (no pun intended) is discovering that I have an actual medical diagnosis that I can discuss endlessly at parties -- or, in an equally popular manner, in blogs -- a condition with predictable symptoms that poses only a mild inconvenience relative to its impressive glamor. (In severe cases, ulcerations can develop from insufficient circulation, but my condition is much milder.)

So, yeah. Thank you, New York Times.

"Pause Before You Play"

Power must be more than an aphrodisiac. Power must burn so brilliantly that it somehow induces blindness, as well, in the less powerful.

The photo to the left is a mug shot of Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who resigned under pressure from Congress today at the age of 59. He admits that he carried on a "mutual relationship" (I guess that means he didn't rape her?) with an attactive, young married staff member, while at the same time publicly denouncing immoral behavior and arguing that teens should be taught abstinence as the only means of birth control.

Souder and his staffer had appeared together in an "educational" video -- now on display all over the internet -- where she "interviewed" him regarding his firm stand on abstinence education.

No one's perfect, so let's forget about the hypocrisy, forget about the politics, forget about the pain to both their spouses and families, forget about the end to his Congressional career. What then does fascinate me about this whole affair? My mind boggles at what conceivable attraction his young, married protégé -- and in the video, she appears both bright and attractive --could have felt for this self-righteous, overweight, middle-aged (at best) political Bozo?

Such, it appears, is the intoxicating force field projected by even that small aura of power emanating from a minority party Congressman from Indiana.

Music lessons

Let's be honest. I'm not a musician. I did take piano lessons as a kid, and I'm taking them now. I like to listen to music. But I'm not a musician, any more than I'm an artist just because I played with poster paint in grade school and enjoy visiting art museums as an adult. I can't carry a tune worth a bean, and I don't really enjoy listening to a piece until I've heard it so often that it sounds "familiar."

In other words, as the joke goes, I know what I like and I like what I know.

If you've been reading my blog all along, you know that over a year ago I began teaching myself the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique, plunking away even before I returned to taking lessons in February. Last week, my teacher suggested that she'd like to review my progress on that movement today, so I spent a large part of my week's practice time focusing on it. It was still rough, I felt, but I also felt that I was getting so I could play it without significant errors.

So I sat at the piano during my lesson this afternoon, and absolutely butchered it. I made mistakes I never make at home. I hit wrong keys, repeatedly. The piano felt weird, the keys seemed sticky, my fingers felt weak and bumbling. Sometimes I couldn't even depress a key firmly enough to sound the note. I had to repeat whole sections where I'd gotten bogged down and had lost the thread of my playing. I felt I was banging away on the keyboard while playing a movement that should be played softly and delicately. I was mortified.

When I finished, I said, "Well, that's the worst I've played it for a long time."

Amazingly, she said I did great. She said I'd given the piece a completely reasonable and successful interpretation. She said she really had no additional suggestions to give. Obviously, it needs more practice, so I don't keep hitting the wrong keys, but -- as a matter of musicality, from her viewpoint as a teacher -- she said I've mastered the movement. This from a woman who performed the same sonata as a degree requirement at the Leningrad Conservatory.

To me, mastering a piece has always meant learning to hit the right keys, and playing with the proper rhythm. To be told that I have accomplished something beyond that -- before I've even accomplished that -- is an amazing and wonderful thing. A bit unnerving, really. As though I'd churned out a dimestore novel, and then read a favorable review stating that the book had depths of meaning that I'd never intended or dreamed of suggesting.

So I'll keep plugging away at it. Get those notes correct. Hit the right keys. Check the grammar of my Great American Novel, and run a spellcheck on it, so to speak. My teacher says, let's check back in a few weeks -- let me hear you play it again at that time, and see how it's coming along. Cool! Meanwhile, during the rest of the lesson, she held my hand (figuratively), while I tiptoed my way through the first section (Grave) of the sonata's first movement, a difficult movement whose initial playing I plan to make the major project of my summer.

Bearing arms

"Don't doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the Second Amendment," said Palin, a lifelong NRA member who once had a baby shower at a local gun range in Alaska. --AP

"They," in Ms. Palin's speech, are, of course, President Obama and the Democratic party. Thus conjectures the little woman from Alaska, whose lack of intelligence, knowledge and good judgment have become the marvel of civilized people on six continents, and of all the penguins on the seventh.

Ms. Palin cites nothing to show that the Obama administration has the slightest interest in "gutting" the Second Amendment. She's just firing up the troops, apparently, saying whatever pops into her mind that might get her audience's political juices flowing.

I, myself, on the other hand, would happily gut the Second Amendment. It's a relic of a frontier society that had minimal resources for law enforcement, and of a new nation that had just fought free of the yoke of colonialism by the use of "well regulated militia." While criminal activity is still a problem in today's society, combating such activity is the responsibility of organized police departments. The last thing this country needs is a shooting war between armed criminals and armed victims -- that cure would be the "cure" of anarchy, and would create far greater problems than the criminal acts that it sought to combat.

But personal defense against criminals isn't really what excites the NRA fanatics. Stated or unstated, the true appeal of the Second Amendment to the true believer is the concept of a free citizenry standing up to an oppressive government. To these zealots, the federal government in Washington is the modern equivalent of King George III, and they themselves -- with their carefully maintained cache of automatic rifles and rounds of ammunition -- are the stout-hearted yeoman of Merry Olde England, or the minutemen of the American Revolution.

If we still believe in some form of natural law, we probably agree that every human being has a natural right to fight against an unjust government. But no government, just or unjust, has any duty whatsoever to promote its own destruction by force of arms. The American government, whose Constitution provides ample means for change in both its policies and its structure, should not be required to fuel the fires of revolution lit by those discontents unable to persuade their fellow citizens to bring about desired changes through readily available political processes.

The Constitution defines "treason" as "levying War against them [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Behind all the talk about the joys of hunting and the need to defend oneself and one's family -- goals that many gun advocates no doubt sincerely embrace -- there is a more powerful undercurrent among the true gun fanatics, the ones who insist on the right to take guns into National Parks, city parks, beaches, shopping centers. This undercurrent is the right wing extremist's intense fear of all authority, and his resulting need for the tools to resist American government, now or in the future, by whatever it takes, including gunfire.

In the past, the Republican party has frequently denounced its political opponents as traitors to the American republic. In its passionate embrace of the NRA, the gun lobby and gun kooks in general, the GOP now, ironically, finds itself in bed with a sect of highly organized potential traitors. As a favorite icon of the extreme right wing once proclaimed: "None dare call it treason."

Yes, Ms. Palin. While President Obama does not, in fact, agree with me, I would cheerfully repeal the Second Amendment and outlaw the possession of all guns except, perhaps, those rifles designed specifically for sports hunting. Other civilized nations have such laws and rely successfully on their police force for protection against crime. They maintain law and order quite satisfactorily, and provide their citizens governments and societies as free as any in the world.

High school accomplishments

Props to Seattle's Garfield high school. During the past week, the school's jazz band won first place in the prestigious, international "Essentially Ellington" high school jazz competition, held annually at Lincoln Center in New York. Garfield has won the competition an unprecedented four times in the past decade. (Seattle's Roosevelt high school, which itself has won three times in the past decade, took fourth place.) And ten of the Garfield group's members won individual awards, more than any other competing school.

Also in the past week, Garfield's soccer team won the regional 4A championship. The school took the title despite the fact that four of its players, including its senior captain, did not arrive until the second half. The four players' plane from New York -- where they had been performing at Lincoln Center as part of the jazz ensemble -- had been delayed in arriving.

I know I've criticized American high schools and American students, and serious problems certainly exist in American education. But there are great kids out there, accomplishing some amazing feats. And Garfield is a great public high school, producing graduates with outstanding academic and musical skills.

Full Disclosure: Garfield is the high school serving my own neighborhood. Go Bulldogs!

The play's the thing

Between the laid-back urbanity of Portland and the edgier urbanity of San Francisco lie two long rural and agricultural valleys -- the Sacramento valley in California and the Willamette valley in Oregon. These valleys are separated by the Siskiyou mountains, which straddle the border between the two states.

Roughly halfway between the cities, on the northern edge of the Siskiyous, lies the town of Ashland, Oregon, population about 22,000. Back in the day, a southern branch of the Oregon Trail brought settlers through this area, on their way north to fertile Willamette valley farmlands; the direction of migration reversed after 1849, when the Gold Rush lured Oregon prospectors south to California. In 1887, Ashland became a stop on the original Southern Pacific route between Portland and San Francisco.

The discovery of lithia (Li₂O) in a nearby source of water attracted health seekers, and plans were made to develop Ashland as a health spa. The spa never materialized, but the town's hope of becoming a resort encouraged intelligent preservation of the tiny river that runs through the center of town. Lithia creek became the center piece of today's attractive Lithia Park, designed by the architect of San Francisco's Golden Gate park.

All of this tedious padding is but preface to my observation that today's Ashland is a shining example of small town civilization, a mini-Athens rising above its rural setting, a rural setting that, while beautiful, is "cultivated" only in an agricultural sense.

Ashland's a cool place to visit.

Ashland's transformation from being merely a pretty little town, railway whistle stop and source of lithia water began in 1935 with the local staging of Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, supported by a city appropriation of "not to exceed" $400. Today, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival performs eleven plays (only four of which this year are Shakespearean) in repertory each year from February through October. The plays are performed on three attractive stages adjacent to Lithia Park. One stage is an authentic Elizabethan theater in which, this summer and fall, three of the plays (all Shakespearean) will be performed.

The festival today is one of Ashland's largest employers, second only to Southern Oregon University (another town asset, which like the festival also contributes to the youthful electricity, and eccentricity, sensed by even the most casual visitor).

This little travelogue has been prompted by my return yesterday from a four-day visit to Ashland. I met up with Jim B., a friend from grad school whom I last hung out with two years ago during a prior visit to Ashland. Jim was once more seeking ways and means of constructing the perfect bicycle from scratch -- taking advantage of a local expert who offers two-week, hands-on courses on the subject -- and appeared happy to take a break mid-way through his studies to catch up on our friendship.

We spent our days hiking in the hills surrounding Ashland, and our evenings enjoying the local theater. Of our three day-hikes (one of them unexpectedly a couple of miles through snow in tennis shoes), the one that most appealed to me was a seven mile round trip trek on the Rogue River National Recreation Trail. The narrow trail is cut -- a bit precariously at times -- into the cliff far above the river. Our path was liberally ornamented on each side with shiny poison oak bushes, but we apparently escaped unscathed. The trail runs downstream for 40 miles, but we had lunch and turned around at Whiskey Creek, where the trail descended to a sandy boat landing. We were greeted by a number of rafters who came ashore for a break as we basked in the noonday sun. The scenery -- pine and fir, with deciduous trees coming into leaf, and with breathtaking views of the river far below -- was memorable, and the hike just vigorous enough to energize us without leaving us comatose during the evening's performance.

We had advance tickets for two of the festival's plays -- a dramatization of Pride and Prejudice, and a performance, in a modern setting, of Hamlet. Hamlet began unconventionally, with Prince Hamlet -- dressed in a dark suit and tie and wearing dark glasses -- sitting alone on stage, staring at his father's coffin, during the entire time that the audience was filtering into the theater and finding seats. The palace guards were armed with automatic rifles; the "play within a play" was performed in hip-hop. While I have qualms about such attempts at making classical plays "relevant," the acting was outstanding and the "modernization" less intrusive than I feared. In fact, it was the most captivating performance of Hamlet I've ever watched.

The festival obviously has effects on Ashland that go beyond its economic impact. The entire city seems alive to theater. Posters advertising a number of non-festival dramas were seen everywhere. Jim and I occupied the one evening that we had free by attending Ashland high school's student performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. The acting by 16 to 18 year old students was phenomenal. The plot is farcical in nature, but requires crisp delivery of lines, in a British accent; portrayal of highly eccentric characters in a consistent manner; and excellent stage presence and movement. The kids carried it off flawlessly. I'm embarrassed to contrast their performance with the plays that my own high school proved itself capable of performing.

Ashland makes an excellent overnight stop while driving between the Bay Area and either Seattle or Portland. I recommend the stop. I recommend a walk around town and through Lithia Park, luxuriating in the human ambience of creativity, intelligence and good humor. And I recommend checking out the festival's website to see which plays have tickets available during your stay.

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Afterthought: As a courtesy to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which provided me such an enjoyable weekend, I'll list this year's plays. The three plays marked with an (*) are to be performed in the Elizabethan theater (which I have yet to visit): Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, She Loves Me, Well, Ruined, Twelfth Night,* Henry IV (Part One),* The Merchant of Venice,* American Night, Throne of Blood.

Apologia

Yeah, I know. Postings have been few and far between these past couple of months. And this post doesn't really count as an essay -- it's merely an assurance to my puzzled readerdom that Rainier96 may be still, but he still exists.

One reason, among several, for my first starting this blog was to provide myself an outlet to express ideas and thoughts that -- sad experience had shown me -- caused friends' eyes to glaze over when brought up in conversation. With a blog, those same eyes may still glaze, but I don't have to watch the disheartening reaction in person.

My problem now -- after three years and 301 posts -- is that I seem to have run out of thoughts that I need to express. I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon. A transient psychological quirk: writer's block as a brief spasm of the brain tissue.

Of course, I'm not reassured by the life of E. M. Forster who, after writing five excellent novels, culminating in Passage to India in 1924, lingered on Earth for another 46 years writing nothing else for publication.

Instead of writing, I've been practicing. The piano, of course. I'm taking lessons through a Seattle non-profit organization that provides teaching for all the ordinary musical instruments. My own teacher is an immigrant to this country, ultimately from the U.S.S.R. (where she was educated at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music), by way of Israel (where she taught music in Tel Aviv). She's patient with my essential doltiness, and determined to infuse my desiccated attorney's soul with some small degree of Russian passion.

Admittedly, it's a bit like trying to teach ballet to a truck driver.

I shyly laid before her my rendition of the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique sonata, which, as I've discussed in earlier posts, I insisted on teaching myself before returning to formal lessons. She's been trying to show me, ever since hearing those fumbling efforts, that Beethoven actually didn't just string a bunch of random notes together, notes which it's now my job to pound off on the piano -- as though I were a court reporter reading back testimony. Old Ludwig's music, it appears, is fairly nuanced and complex, and expresses nuanced and complex emotions. She'd like my playing to display some recognition of this fact.

But my lessons apparently haven't left her in suicidal despair. After a couple of lessons, she asked me to begin working on the third and final movement of the sonata, a movement that, on my own, I'd considered too difficult to even attempt. And this week, she tells me that she wants me to begin work soon on the first movement, the longest and most difficult of the three movements. I'm guardedly pleased that she has more confidence in my abilities -- at least, under her guidance -- than I do myself.

So that's what I've been up to. There is absolutely no reason why I can't write and practice piano at the same time. Well, not at exactly the same time, but you know what I mean. My writer's block must have some other cause, perhaps related to temporary fatigue with our nation's contentious politics, and to the fact that I haven't read any good books or seen any good movies recently. I really should get out more.

Don't give up on me. Something irritating or fascinating or baffling or delightful will soon ignite a spark within. This blog will once more burn brightly, once more a beacon of reason and hope, illuminating a dark and troubled world.

Hella-cool

Sometimes as a wee tad, when my teacher's voice began to drone on interminably, I'd turn listlessly to the inside cover of my arithmetic book. What peculiar information I'd find there! How many pecks in a bushel! How many feet in a rod! Dry ounces and fluid ounces. Furlongs, fathoms and nautical miles.

The conversions were all so arbitrary -- fascinating to my immature brain -- and the units so wonderfully named. But the system was impossible to grasp in any manner other than by sheer memorization. Who, for example, ever decided that there should be 437.5 grains to an ounce?

On the other hand, set out beside these weird measurements was a different system. The metric system, of course, but at that age no one had ever explained the metric system to us. I knew about feet and miles and quarts and pounds, just from daily life. I didn't know about meters and liters. The conversions from English measurements to metric, and vice versa, were even weirder than those within the English system. But the metric system, viewed within itself, was beautiful -- everything in multiples of ten.

And even more fascinating to me -- novice connaisseur of words that I already was -- were the prefixes affixed to units of distance, weight, and everything else. Deci-, centi- and milli-, as things got smaller. Deka-, hecto-, and kilo-, as they got larger.

That was the extent of the metric system inside the cover of my fourth grade math text. Later, I learned even more beautiful terms. Micro, nano and pico -- for a millionth, a billionth, and a trillionth. Mega and giga for a million times larger and a billion times larger. Today, of course, even cheap computers have gigabytes of memory.

And despite education in physics, that's really where my knowledge of metric nomenclature remained. Until today. This week's edition of the Economist points out the usefulness of two additional terms. While "gigameter," for example, would be 10⁹ meters, a "yottameter" would be a much greater distance -- 10²⁴ meters, or 10¹⁵ gigameters. Similarly, at the other end of the scale, a "yoctometer" is 10^-24 meters -- a fairly short distance, by anyone's reckoning.

Why would anyone be interested in a "yocto-anything"? The actual subject of the article was experimentation that has permitted scientists to measure a tiny force of only 174 yoctonewtons. A "newton" is defined as the amount of force needed to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at the rate of one meter per second per second (although the Economist -- a British rag addicted to typically English definitions of measurement -- whimsically describes the newton as the approximate force exerted by the earth's gravity at the earth's surface on one of Sir Isaac Newton's apples).

"Yocto" also is useful in measuring mass. A proton has a mass of about 1.26 yoctograms.

So far, yocto and yotta mark the upper and lower limits of the metric system. No one has any need for a unit representing 1/1000 of a yocto-anything, or 1,000 yotta-anythings.¹ Linguistically, however, as the Economist observes, we're ready if science creates the need. Terms for 10²⁷ and 10^-27 logically should be based on the Greek root "ennea" (meaning "nine" times three zeros).

But an undergrad from California (where else?) has reportedly started a campaign to scrap the Greek nomenclature when we reach that next level, and adopt the prefix "hella" for 10 to the plus or minus 27th. Cuz, dude, that would be either hella big or hella little.

Hella good idea, I'd say.

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¹Fans of humongous numbers will recall, of course, the proposed "googol" as representing 10¹⁰⁰, or 1 followed by 100 zeros. And the later refinement, the "googolplex," defined as 1 followed by a googol zeroes. (Mega-behemoth Google derives its name therefrom.)

Since there are only about 5 x 10⁸⁷ elementary particles in the known, observable universe, the googol -- let alone the googolplex -- seems of limited utility. (Estimated particle numbers, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

My desire to fully describe large-number nomenclature requires that I also acknowledge the Facebook page, "Shitload" is a Standardized Unit of Measurement," to which 847,456 fans now subscribe.

On the trail

Of all recreational activities, one of the coolest and most rewarding has to be also the simplest -- walking. Just putting one foot before the other. Watching the scenery go by.

Walking, in its purest form, requires no equipment other than a pair of shoes. You can walk through your residential neighborhood, observing your neighbors as they live their lives, enjoying the fresh air, admiring the trees and landscaping. At a slightly higher level, you can get out of town and hike the trails: lowland trails along rivers and lakes, or mountain trails through forests and alpine scenery. With a bit more planning, and a little more equipment, you can backpack -- bearing your world on your back and sleeping in the wilderness for a night -- or for a week or for ten nights.

Mountain trekking (and climbing) such as I did last fall in Nepal combines the simplicity of a day's walk on a trail with the advantages of a longer escape from civilization. Freedom from a backpack's encumbrance comes at some cost to your self-respect, however, as you shift a burden that is rightfully yours onto the backs of native porters.

Reliance on porters -- or pack animals, for that matter --is convenient, but requires complicated logistics. It also arouses feelings of guilt from asking poor people to do the dirty work of hiking while you enjoy its pleasures. Your sensation of guilt varies inversely with your degree of exhaustion. It's also somewhat irrational -- you are, after all, providing employment to men who are grateful for it, and whose jobs are considered desirable, even prestigious, within their own society. But the feeling, to some degree, remains. And beyond this "sahib-guilt," there's the added suspicion that you're not quite pulling your own weight, that you've taken one step away from the pure simplicity of the act of walking and one step closer to powering a trail bike up the path.

Next summer, I'm planning to do an eight-day trans-England walk, from sea to sea, following Hadrian's Wall from hamlet to hamlet across the "waist" of Great Britain. This hike, again, isn't quite the pure, self-sufficient walking experience that I've been trying to extol -- I'll be carrying only a day pack each day, while a concessionaire's truck carries my baggage from one hostelry to the next. I'll sleep in beds and eat at inns.

As rewarding as the trek in Nepal certainly was, and as I anticipate the hike along the Roman wall will be, something in my soul urges me to simplify further, to get away from supply trucks, porters, mule trains, and other forms of "assistance" that only complicate the walking experience. Therefore, I'm also hoping to spend some time this summer -- even if only a long weekend or two -- returning to the kind of hiking that I did in the years just after my days as an undergraduate. Backpacking. There's a peculiar satisfaction to be derived from camping in the mountains, out of sight and earshot of other campers, knowing that your own legs provide your only means of transportation, and the pack on your back provides your only source of food and shelter.

Whether alone or with a friend or two, for a few days I want to feel myself once more a part of nature, seeing the world about me as it was seen by pioneer explorers over a century ago.

So, I look forward to a little backpacking -- walking the mountain trails of the Sierras and the Cascades.

Perspective

From outside the United States, many of our nation's political fears and conflicts seem weird and difficult to understand. While I was in Thailand, dependent on sketchy news in the foreign press and occasional reports on the international programs of CNN and the BBC, Congress finally pulled itself together and passed some version of Obama's health care reform bill. It was an exciting moment for me, but obviously not for the non-American world.

To overseas news services, Republican laments that America had gone socialist seemed quaint, just one more peculiar feature of American politics. They felt the same about Democratic exuberance over passage of the bill. Outside our own borders, universal health care, in one form or another, is taken for granted by virtually all developed nations. The foreign press was interested in the story only as representing a political triumph by Obama over the Republicans. They had virtually no interest in the actual provisions of the bill itself.

Travel is broadening in many respects. One quickly realizes that human happiness flourishes under many forms of political system. (So does political conflict, as the "Red shirt" demonstrations in Bangkok illustrated while I was there.) Excellent medical care and good government can co-exist -- do widely co-exist -- with health care programs far more "socialistic" than anything Congress has legislated, or even considered legislating.

And from a foreign perspective, calling Obama a "radical" or a "socialist" appears laughable. But I return home to a world where right wing fanatics clearly aren't laughing.

Closure advisory

The Northwest Corner will be closed for regularly-scheduled maintenance until April 7, 2010.

Repairmen will also check plumbing and ductwork for clogs that may have limited the frequency and clarity of posts during the past few months. Will re-open with a fresh paint job, and with spruced-up landscaping surrounding the Corner's perch overlooking Puget Sound.

Best team money can buy

Tennessee and Kentucky are two highly-seeded teams in the NCAA tournament, which started today. Kentucky graduates 31 percent of its basketball players; Tennessee graduates 30 percent. The U.S. Secretary of Education has suggested that any team graduating fewer than 40 percent of its players should be barred from post-season play. "If you can't graduate two out of five of your student-athletes, how serious are you about the academic part of your mission?" he asks, rhetorically.

A good question, I would have thought, but Tennessee's coach, Bruce Pearl, doesn't see it that way.

If he wants to fix it, fix it at the high school level, fix it at the middle school level, fix it at the elementary school level. I'm an educator, I'm a teacher. I share the pain in not having student-athletes graduate. But I don't want to deny the opportunity to student-athletes who are not prepared. I'm going to stand up here and I'm going to fight for student-athletes who come in who aren't as prepared.

Does anyone besides me find anything odd about this argument?

Pearl does not want to deny students the opportunity to play college basketball merely because they do not have the academic preparation to attend college. And this means, necessarily, that young men should not be denied the opportunity to play college ball merely because there's no way in hell they'll ever graduate from college.

His argument makes sense only if we view college basketball as a collection of semi-professional conferences, each member team being associated for sentimental reasons with a college or university. In that case, it would be unreasonable to deny a high school graduate the opportunity to play for a member team simply because he was not interested, prepared, and/or capable of handling college-level work and, ultimately, graduating. Such teams would be licensed to use an affiliated school's name and logo and provided a place to play on the school's campus. No one would care -- it would be totally immaterial -- whether any athletes actually chose to avail themselves of the opportunity to enroll at the school while they happened to be living in the area.

Such an arrangement may be closer to the reality of today's world than anyone in academia wishes to admit. Outside the Ivy League Conference, few if any college basketball teams are made up of a bunch of college kids who simply enjoy shooting hoops and who take time out from their studies to engage in good natured competition with rival universities.

I know. You've heard it all from me before, back when I was rhapsodizing over the basketball-shooting engineers from Cal Tech. Whenever I explain my views to even my most rational and sympathetic friends, I find them nodding quietly in agreement, in the same way they'd agree with some abstruse mathematical argument I proposed, one that had no discernable relationship to the real world.

Then they begin discussing the Huskies' recruiting prospects for the coming season.

Oh well. WTF. Washington (29 percent graduation rate) plays Marquette in the first round of the NCAA East regionals, coming up shortly at 4 o'clock .

GO DAWGS!!

Plunging to earth

I skydived solo once. After a few drinks, friends often find me willing to give an elaborately detailed account of my experience. My narrative continues until I notice my audience drifting away, as they invariably and unaccountably do. My dive was from a small plane about 3,000 feet high, with no more than ten seconds of free fall. It's a hard experience to forget.

A gentleman named Felix Baumgartner is also planning to "skydive." Not from 3,000 feet, however. From a balloon, 120,000 feet (about 23 miles) up in the stratosphere. He will find himself in free fall for about 5½ minutes, long enough to mull over the joys and sorrows of his life to date. Within the first 30 seconds, he will have reached a speed of 600 miles per hour.

The point of his endeavor is to "see what happens" when a human body, virtually unprotected except for a pressurized suit, breaks the sound barrier.

Felix isn't a completely crazy cat. Serious scientists and science are behind his stunt. Actually, an Air Force pilot did something similar, from 100,000 feet, back in 1960. Unfortunately, he went into a spin of 120 rpm and blacked out, not waking up until his chute automatically deployed near the ground.

My first reaction to reading all about this in the New York Times was to wonder how Felix would be able to exceed the terminal velocity for a human body, usually put at around 120 mph. But that figure assumes the falling body's arms and legs are extended. Terminal velocity increases if the diver pulls his extremities in and up close to his body, and falls head down. Also, the customary figure for terminal velocity assumes normal atmospheric pressure. During much of his fall, Felix will be plunging downward through an extremely tenuous atmosphere, almost a vacuum. As you fall, terminal velocity decreases one percent for every 525 foot loss of altitude. With this information, terminal velocity at 120,000 feet can be readily calculated. The calculation is left as an exercise for the reader (as my math books used to so frustratingly put it).

Also fascinating -- to me, at any rate -- is the meteor effect, although the scientists must have reasons for believing this not to be a problem. The atmosphere protects those of us on the earth's surface from having to dodge a daily shower of space debris. The friction through the air as rocks fall towards earth causes them to vaporize long before they reach the surface.

Even tiny rocks, not much bigger than a grain of sand, can be clearly observed as meteors as they heat and burn. Why wouldn't the same happen to a human body? It would be an awesome way to go, if you had to go. Streaking across the sky, a ball of fire, observed by millions. Almost worth it.

At least better than having a heart attack while tending your virtual garden on Farmville.

Discharged

Nokia has reportedly filed for a U.S. patent for a "self-charging" cell phone. The cell phone converts the kinetic energy of the owner's daily movements as he walks about into electrical energy stored in the battery.

The phone is designed to permit small internal movements within the device as it's jostled about -- for example, while the owner carries it about in his pocket. The movements back and forth cause compression of piezoelectric crystals, crystals capable of creating electric current when compressed or bent. The current charges a capacitor, which in turn can charge the phone's battery.

Very interesting. Of course, only the United States has citizens so sedentary that even their technologically advanced self-charging batteries will discharge as they lie sprawled out inert on the living room couch, gaping at the TV.

Good teachers: made, not born

Looking back at high school, I'm impressed by the incompetence of so many of my teachers. The elderly woman who taught my required senior course in American government -- a topic that had fascinated me since at least sixth grade -- managed to extract every last drop of juice and interest from the course, relying on a lesson plan that required rote memorization of dry facts. Facts that I'm sure, for 90 percent of the class, were forgotten the day after the final exam.

At least she ran a taut ship. No one clowned around while her steely gaze was upon them.

I've mentioned before that teaching at one time interested me as a profession. I suspected back then, however, that not only would I be incapable of transmitting my enthusiasm for any subject to the majority of my students, but that I'd be wholly incapable of controlling a classroom of typically restless kids.

And yet, some teachers do succeed. Some did, even in the intellectual and economic backwater that was my hometown. How did they do it?

Newsweek discusses the problem in this week's issue, and concludes that the solution is merit pay for good teachers and the sack for bad teachers. These solutions may improve the teaching in some schools, but they do not enlarge the pool of competent teachers. A more careful discussion of the problem was provided in yesterday's magazine supplement to the New York Times.

The NYT article discusses two on-going studies devoted to the question: "What makes a good teacher?" These studies are not abstract and theoretical. In fact, the article implicitly criticizes many present courses at American schools of education for being abstract and theoretical, often taught by professors who have never actually tried to teach a class of elementary or high school students. The studies discussed in yesterday's article are empirical, based on close observation of successful teaching techniques as used by successful teachers -- observation of actual classrooms and of videotapes of actual teaching.

The first study, by Doug Lemov, consultant and author of the forthcoming book Teach Like a Champion, has generated a list of 49 proven techniques to control the classroom -- ways to capture the attention of the students and get them to follow instructions. The study suggests that a successful teacher can have any type of personality -- Lemov describes himself as an extreme introvert. Successful teachers are those who have learned the appropriate techniques in leading the class, not charismatic figures with inborn talents.

The second study is one originating independently at Michigan State. Teachers may have developed exceptional abilities to control the classroom and interest the students -- but still not have the ability to teach their subject. The work at Michigan State recognizes that a solid background in the subject matter being taught is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good teaching -- the teacher's own knowledge is important only insofar as he or she has the ability to convey that knowledge to the student. Again, this is a skill that can be taught.

The Michigan study was aimed specifically at developing methods for teaching mathematics. A Stanford professor is now attempting to develop similar techniques for teaching English.

If attained, the goals of these two studies -- engaging the students and transmitting the subject matter -- should together permit schools of education to produce exceptionally strong teachers. Although evidence of success to date seems primarily anecdotal, the examples discussed by the NYT article provide hope that these approaches actually work. Anyone interested in new approaches in American education should read the article -- and perhaps the studies on which it's based.

A fairly bashful kid, such as I was, may in future years have less hesitation in choosing to be a teacher, knowing that Schools of Education actually are capable of teaching him how to engage and educate real students -- not just ambitious kids from middle class families, but "problem" children from broken homes and dysfunctional street cultures. Like new doctors and lawyers, new teachers might then bring an arsenal of proven techniques to their new jobs -- rather than finding themselves thrown into a hostile classroom with no idea of how to meet the horrific challenges they're often forced to encounter.