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JISHOU, HUNAN — I’ve been too busy to post anything lately, and now I’ve got a tidy little head cold, so here’s a couple of cheerful photos.
First, the much-talked-about Navy kiss, from Dec. 21.
 Fire Controlman 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, assigned to the USS Oak Hill, kisses her fiancée, Fire Controlman 3rd Class Citlalic Snell.
From what I understand, each boat’s crew runs a lottery to see who will be the first off the boat to meet their sweetheart, and of course, kiss her/him. Gaeta was the winner.
For some reason, that photo reminds me of this one.
 The iconic V-J Day kiss in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt This couple (actually, two strangers in Times Square) were caught up in the moment following the surrender of Japan on Aug. 14, 1945. The sailor saw a cute nurse, and spontaneously kissed her. (Wiki entry) Eisenstaedt and another photog were lucky enough to capture the moment.
Granted, the circumstances were different, but both couples were celebrating a victory in some sense.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — A few days ago, I wrote about an Orange County, Florida, school board member who took a version of the 2010 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for 10th graders and did very poorly on it: he only got 62% on the reading portion and completely bombed the math section.
Rick Roach, who has two master’s degrees, argues that his results suggest that the test is not really testing what students need to know and that the tests pigeonhole students unfairly.
One could also argue, as a few commenters on that post have already, that Roach’s poor reading and math skills are to blame, not the FCAT. He does admit in an email to educator Marion Brady that his math skills are rusty, but I contend that Roach and his detractors are also not considering the time factor.
For example, 10th graders have 70 minutes to answer 58 or so math questions, and 70 minutes to answer about 45 reading questions, from what I can gather from the 2006 exams available online.. That works out to an average time of 1:12 for each math question and 1:33 for each reading question. If any Floridians can correct my information, please do, because those figures don’t seem realistic.
Anyway, my challenge to people who dis Roach and refuse to criticize the test is this. Try these math questions from the 2006 FCAT for 10th graders and time yourselves. I’ll be generous: you have 2 minutes for each one. No cheating. You may use your calculators.
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 The Moon near the end of totality. JISHOU, HUNAN — I had to Photoshop this one a bit to clean it up. I mistakenly had the Tamron’s vibration control on, and the resulting movement smeared the Moon’s image, but left the star images intact.
This is a 10-second exposure with the lens zoomed to 230 mm, taken near the end of totality around 11:00 pm local time. Everything else is the same: Nikon D60 on tripod, Tamron 70-300 zoom lens, f5.6, ASA 200.
The stars surrounding the Moon are fainter members of Taurus: from top left going clockwise, 13 Tau/HIP23900A, iota Tau/HIP23497, HIP23589, 15 Tau/HIP23883 (closest apparently to Moon here), and L Tau/HIP 23871. Iota Tau is a member of the Hyades star cluster, whose V-shape outlines the horns of the bull. The stars of the Hyades are about 150-160 light-years away from Earth.
How do I know which star is which? It’s not an encyclopedic memory or fancy astronomy equipment. I used Stellarium, a free planetarium application for your computer. Here’s a screen shot of Stellarium showing the same view on my desktop.
 Screenshot of Stellarium view of Moon at 11:00 pm Dec 10, 2001 Stellarium will give you details about any object you click on.
Interestingly enough, 15 Tau, which in this photo appears closest to the Moon, is actually the farthest star of the five from us. It’s 1032 light-years away. That’s some old light there.
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 Alnath (β Tau) and the eclipsed Moon -1 sec exposure JISHOU, HUNAN — I caught the total lunar eclipse about halfway through totality. I didn’t do all the good stuff, like wait for the equipment to cool to ambient temperature (0°C here), because I almost forgot to go out. So, out of 25 shots I got three halfway decent ones. The focus seems to be a bit off, I fear.
The three images here are of the Moon toward the end of totality. You can just barely see it brighten on the lower right edge as it leaves the Earth’s shadow. The star to the left is Alnath (β Tauri), the second brightest star in Taurus. Alnath is a bluish-white B-class star, about 700 times brighter than the Sun, 4.5 times heavier and 5 times bigger. It’s 131 light-years away.
I used a tripod-mounted Nikon D60 with a 70-300 Tamron zoom lens at 70 mm, f5.6, ASA 200. The three exposures are 1.0 sec (above), 1.6 sec and 2.5 sec (below).
 Alnath (β Tau) and eclipsed Moon - 1.6 sec exposure  Alnath (β Tau) and eclipsed Moon - 2.6 sec exposure Totality ended around 11:00 pm here.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Some musicians find fame right away. For others, it takes years. In the case of Boyd Lee Dunlop, he had to wait until he was 85 to get a record deal.
Dunlop played jazz piano back in the 1950′s around Buffalo, NY, but his day job took precedence over his piano playing. Time passed and Dunlop ended up in a retirement home, where there was a beat-up old piano that he would play when he thought no one was listening.
Then he was discovered by chance, and now you can buy his debut album on iTunes for $9.99. Most of the cuts are his own compositions, but one is a standard, the St. James Infirmary Blues.
His playing is effortless and original. For an 85-year-old guy, he still has his chops.
Dunlop’s story in The New York Times.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Here’s a novel idea. A very well educated school board member in Orange County, Florida, took his state’s mandatory assessment test, which tests reading, math, science and writing, and he did very poorly. So, he wonders, how valid are those tests, really?
The board member, Rick Roach, is no dummy. He has two master’s degrees in education and educational psychology, and he’s working on a doctorate. He’s trained 18,000 teachers in 25 states, and served on his school board for four terms.
But his reading score on a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test was 62%, which would have sent him to remediation classes. On the math part, he guessed on all 60 questions, getting only 10 right.
In an email to education critic Marion Brady, Roach wrote:
It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.
Roach went on to note how his life would have much different had he been required to take the FCAT in high school, and done as poorly as he did now.
This is a preview of Florida school board member takes state skills test, says test is crap . Read the full post (883 words, 1 image, estimated 3:32 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
[Cross-posted at the Daily Kos]
JISHOU, HUNAN –Chinese observers seem to draw two opposing conclusions from the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. The more common (state-approved) conclusion is: capitalism is bad, Marxism is good. The more thoughtful conclusion is: if the Chinese government doesn’t deal with widespread corruption, China might see similar protests in the not-too-distant future.
Recently, one of my friends asked me what Chinese reactions to OWS were. So, I’ve spent some time poring over Internet reports and blogs to get a sense how OWS is playing over here. Since my grasp of Mandarin is weak still, and my access to movers and shakers is limited, take my comments here with a grain of salt.
Official Chinese news coverage tends to characterize OWS as a confrontation between the very poor and homeless (the victims of heartless capitalism) and the rich and powerful (heartless capitalist dogs). The Communist Party is using OWS as an object lesson in the superiority of China’s Marxism.
Comments to an article about the clearing out of Zucotti Park in New York City are representative of netizen reactions. Several comments are rabidly anti-American and pro-Chinese, leading other commenters to accuse those writers of being paid pro-government trolls. (The Party reportedly pays people 5 mao, or 0.50 yuan, to post pro-government comments on the Internet.)
The more staid party publication, Global Times, predicts OWS will amount to nothing in the end and China should just wait and see what happens.
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