Some crematoriums are sort of cool-looking.
Flickr: Adjustafresh
Conor Clarke wants to get rid of summer vacation. Conor Friedersdorf does not. Conor C. wants to make sure Conor F. knows that it really is a bad idea. Conor F. has a video rebuttal.
Two such worthy combatants really should at least pick different spellings.
Digressing, I fall down mostly on Mr. C’s side, though not entirely. He makes an interesting point, that is patently obvious, but I had never thought about in this debate:
Small though it may seem, one of the most profound ways in which class differences express themselves is over the summer vacation.
This is because wealthy parents can afford to given their children all sorts of edifying summer experiences that downscale parents cannot. And this, as researchers at Johns Hopkins have found, leads to backsliding: Educational advancement across classes tends to be fairly even during the school year. But downscale students actually decline in educational achievement over the course of the summer, while upscale students remain relatively stable.
Mr. C. goes into more detail on the economics of summer vacation here. Mr. F, while acknowledging (and promptly) disregarding the economic equality problem, disagrees:
I disagree! [Ed Note: Told you so.] High performing kids at intense schools are stressed enough as it is — there’s more to life, and especially more to childhood, than test score achievement. I wouldn’t trade the summers of my youth for a better competitive edge today against the average Japanese worker.
I’m all for addressing that inequity, but I’d prefer a method that doesn’t rob the wealthy kids — and the middle class kids if my childhood summers are any indication — of those edifying summer experiences.
Mr. C responds by proposing a shortened summer vacation, with other vacation days spread throughout the year (Mr. F is incorrigible). This seems rather sensible to me, for a reason beyond the brain drain that occurs from 3 months out of the classroom: August sort of stunk. My great childhood memories, and perhaps this was family-specific, came in the first 2/3 of summer, when I was excited to be outdoors, to have freedom, to do whatever I pleased. But at some point, when the pools became quieter and the tennis matches less numerous – and the Midwest weather got so darned hot – I was bored. And probably dumber. Send me back to school
So there you go: cut summer to 50 days, add a fall break, and be done with it.
I had five sumptuous favorites from this list of the most beautfiul words in the ephemeral lagoon of vocabulary that is the English language. Of course, despite the considerable brooding required to produce such a list, one can see right through such a diaphanous proposal.
And argle-bargle is a funny word.
This week’s best profile wasn’t a written one. Four minutes spent with Tom Rose of Athens, Ohio was as moving as the past decade’s celebrity profiles combined:
I knew nothing about her, but I liked what I saw…We were happily married for 63 years, before she died. Death is so final. It’s like turning off a light switch. Your mind is going a mile a minute, hoping…that’s where reality sets in again. She’s gone.
It’s supposed to get easier, but it better damn well hurry up and get easier cause I can’t take much more.
(Via Freakonomics)
Merlin Mann – who appears to be some sort of creative-inspirational-something person – just about sums up the blog at the 19:30 mark of this speech on being creative.
It’s a musical day here at Meanderings. Amazon is selling the 3rd best album of last year – For Emma, Forever Again, by Bon Iver – for five bucks. You should go buy it.
This reminds me of a public service announcement I’ve been meaning to make: the Amazon MP3 store kicks the iTunes Store’s digital ass in every way. There’s no DRM, it downloads straight into iTunes or whatever you WANT to use, and more often than not, it’s cheaper. They have great deals like this, but more generally, you’ll probably save a buck or two per album: if you bought the three non-Michael Jackson albums on iTunes’ Top Ten (Black Eyed Peas, Regina Spektor, and the Transformers soundtrack) on Amazon, you’d save 10 bucks.
Make the switch.
The Millions found the phrases that are auto-completed when typing each letter of the alphabet into Amazon’s search box. “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” beat out the original.
It inspired me to waste time by doing the same for iTunes, while wasting further time watching this video of John Hodgman finding flaws in Obama’s nerdiness (“Do you happen to remember, sir, what was the name of the god that Conan the Barbarian worshipped?”). I stuck to just the top artists, and came across a few things worth noting: Michael Jackson wins both his initials (but would he have a week ago?), you should start your band’s name with a D or an O, and Jackson, Queen, and U2 are the only artists that were playing music in the 80s.
iTunes
A – Akon
B – Beyonce
C- Coldplay
D – Spirit – Deluxe Edition (Leona Lewis’ album; no artists in the ten items listed)
E – Eminem
F- Flo Rida
G – Green Day
H – Hannah Montana
I – T.I.
J – Michael Jackson
K – Kanye West
L – Linkin Park
M – Michael Jackson
N – Nickelback
O – Twilight – Original Soundtrack (See “D”)
P – P!nk
Q – Queen
R – Rascal Flatts
S – Sean Kingston
T- Taylor Swift
U – U2
V – The Veronicas
W – Weird Al Yankovic
X – XTC
Y – Young Jeezy
Z – Zac Brown Band
Here’s a new feature we’ll be starting: the best recent profile I’ve read, every Monday, for your leisurely enjoyment during the week.
This week, it’s not the New York Times Magazine’s ill-timed cover story on Rafa Nadal. It’s the one in Texas Monthly that includes this passage:
As a juvenile, Erin could not be taken directly to the sheriff’s office for questioning, and so she appeared that afternoon before a justice of the peace. “After everything we had heard, I was picturing a monster, for lack of a better word,” said Sergeant Vance. “Here was someone who had dreamed up a scheme to murder her family and manipulated people into carrying out her plan. And then in walks this tiny, meek, blond-headed girl who couldn’t fight her way out of a wet paper sack.” The judge informed Erin of her rights and asked if she would be willing to speak with investigators. She declined to meet with the Texas Ranger or Detective Almon, electing to make a written statement instead. The brief account, put down in her girlish handwriting, echoed what she had told Chief Sanders: There had been smoke and strangers with swords, and she could not remember much else.
Why did this Texas girl have her family murdered?