DV for Teachers

I am sick of the false economy of punishing schools and schoolchildren because politicians don’t have the guts to ask people to pay what things actually cost. Year after year, school budgets get hammered and kids suffer, and then teachers and school systems get the blame.

Teacher Layoffs Cause Concern Over Turmoil in Schools – NYTimes.com.

But school superintendents say the consequences of sweeping layoffs are often overlooked in the policy debate. Layoffs, they say, hurt school cohesion, undermine student achievement and rupture ties with parents.“I’m getting nauseous just remembering,” said Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who as the Cleveland superintendent in the last decade had to make draconian teacher cuts. “The result was devastating for our classrooms.”

That’s where I’ll be all day tomorrow! Much more to come, including much more regular stuff here on this very blog. No, really.

We procrastinate when we’ve forgotten who we are.

Listening now to Georgia State Universitys Dr. Mark Becker give his (and GSUs) first such address. Weve been a research university since 1995, and its time to move to the next level with that. Ill link to the promised audio of the address as well as any news that comes from it.

Go Georgia State!

I stayed home yesterday, and I was able to watch the inauguration and much of the following festivities. I was moved by the historic and inspiring spectacle. Today, for President Barack Obama, the job for which he worked so hard begins. I am moved to renew my commitment to do the best work I can, at the office and at home and here on this little blog. There’s a boatload of work to do. Here we go.

Macintouch this morning points to Thomas Tempelmann’s Find Any File application—

Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver’s fast search operations.

This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (use Spotlight for that)!

Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn’t, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are excluded from Spotlight search (i.e. system files).

And Find Any File is fast. Not always as fast as Spotlight, but faster than other, similar file search tools you might find for the Mac.

I need something like this. Good to find it.

Why did Textile italicize the two middle paragraphs in the block quote above?

I voted this morning in the Georgia primary. Coming to work, I pondered a bit on how things have gone here in America since last I voted. I thought about who would win—I believe that many of my neighbors and I have different political inclinations—about who would win the metro Atlanta area, how the entire state would go, and who would move on toward the nomination and the presidency. Ultimately I hope we get less of the same, but that whatever we get it’s less divisive than what we’ve gone through for the last generation. The high turnout in the primaries and caucuses up to now indicates that lots of people want something different.

Once on the train I remembered I had some appropriate music with me, so I listened to the great Who’s Next. Specifically, to Won’t Get Fooled Again. Of course, the lyric is actually

I get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again.

So do I, brother. So do I.

I found this little Post-it by the elevators this morning… depends on how one defines “useful,” I suppose.

Whew. Smashing Magazine’s 50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006 inspire me to crack those CSS tutorials and improve the design of my sites. These are nice. Take a look and get inspired yourself.

I often used to link to Charles Wiltgen’s PlaybackTime, but he stopped posting more than three years ago. Thanks to a post here at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, I found out he’s back, and has been since January. And it’s nice to find him as ornery and well-informed as ever in his response to a Cory Doctorow piece against Apple’s DRM in iTunes.