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Backyard play sets reach a new level
CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY DETROIT FREE PRESS
DETROIT — It is the kind of tree house that a kid could spend all day and all night inside.
Patrick and Cindy Mifsud's kids have in fact pulled all-nighters in the cedar and pine play set nestled in their backyard in Dearborn Heights, Mich.
The tree house sits a story above ground in an old-growth tree and is supported by beams. The tree was trimmed to accommodate and support the structure as well.
Custom made a decade ago by the Outdoor Fun Store in Canton, Mich., the 10-by-10 foot tree house has five paned windows, a shingled roof and a 9-foot ceiling. The inside, with a kid-sized bunk bed with waterproof mattresses, is made cozier by a television and a fan both mounted into the walls. A ladder leads up to a landing and stairs lead up to the second landing at the door.
A sliding board provides a swift and fun trip from the first landing to the ground.
"Maybe I wanted this kind of a tree house when I was a kid," Patrick Mifsud said with a smile. With two older children who have outgrown the playset, it's now the domain of his 13-year-old son. A custom play set of this intricacy could cost about $25,000, said Dan Wright, owner of the Outdoor Fun Store.
Backyard play equipment is not all slides and swings anymore. Sandboxes are going out of fashion, too, being replaced by spring-free trampolines, ziplines and rock-climbing walls. Modular and custom options are as vast as whatever you can dream up — from swing sets with crawl tunnels or billy goat bridges to clubhouses, "penthouses" or contraptions that could rival the local county park.
Dave Byrum, owner of Kids Gotta Play in New Hudson, Mich., formerly Rainbow Recreation of Michigan, boasts the largest factory in the nation for backyard playsets.
It offers 100 customizable modular sets — which the company refers to as play systems — made of naturally decay-resistant California redwood, western cedar and coast Douglas fir. They run from about $999 to as high as $45,000 or more. The modular equipment grows with the child — pieces for stronger, older kids, such as monkey bars and chain ladders, can be added over time, Byrum said. The typical Rainbow play system runs between $3,000 and $4,000 and costs about $400 to $600 to install.
Sloped or uneven backyards are accommodated with supports and frames to keep the play system level, Byrum said.
Before selecting a design online or from a catalog, make sure to try it. "You've got to come into the showroom and let the kids test it out," Byrum said. "Let the kids loose, see what they like."
Backyard Play Set Basics and Safety
- Wooden playscapes, once typically made of sharp-edged lumber, have been retooled with rounded edges. Bargain hunters and do-it-yourselfers beware of pressure-treated wood because it contains arsenic. Choose cedar instead.
- Platforms, bridges and ramps need guardrails. Children should not play on wet equipment.
- A home play area should maintain a shock-absorbing surface, such as mulch or wood chips, at least 6 feet around and about 3- to 4-inches deep for rubber mulch and 6- to 8-inches deep for wood chips. Be sure to use landscaping fabric underneath any mulch to keep out the grass and weeds.
- Wood chips available at landscaping or gardening stores will suffice. Some play system owners opt for recycled rubber that looks like landscaping mulch. It's offered in a variety of colors from $12.99 to $14.99 for a 30-pound bag.
- Metal swing sets start at about $199 at toy stores or big box merchants. Wooden modular systems can cost $999 and up.
SOURCES: Outdoor Fun Store, Kids Gotta Play


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Franklin refusing to give up on Berry
ARETHA FRANKLIN is refusing to give up on her dream of seeing HALLE BERRY tell her life story on the big screen - the legendary performer insists the actress can lip-sync if she doesn't want to sing in the biopic.
Published 25th January 2011
The soul star is working with movie bosses to adapt her autobiography Aretha: From These Roots into a film, and she's named Berry as her favourite to star.
The Oscar-winner recently admitted she wouldn't feel comfortable taking on a role in a musical picture, saying, "If I could carry a tune, I'd consider it. Someone should tell Aretha that I can't do her justice."
But Franklin is determined to get Berry to sign up and she is urging the actress not to dismiss the part.
In a statement read out on the Wendy Williams Show, Franklin says, "She shouldn't underestimate her own talent... I never expected Halle to sing. She's an actress, not a singer. Many actors have portrayed vocalists by lip-syncing to the artist's original recordings."

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Cambodia effective from 1st March, 2018. He will take a leading role in the development of TOL ministry in Cambodia. Pastor PHAL Thyrith is experienced in church planting during his original post of Head of Church Planting and Evangelism, Cambodia.
On the other hand, I would also like to inform that I accepted Pastor PHORN Phalla's resignation as he raised it for three times with his personal reason. Pastor Phalla has disengaged all duties in Tree Of Life, Cambodia and Doulos Seminary since 28th February, 2018. To our knowledge, he has established new ministry called Dam (Plant) which this does not have any relation with TOL. I would like to take this opportunity to wish him success in the future with the grace and blessings from our Lord.
TOL will keep on the development of Cambodia ministry,please pray for Pastor PHAL Thyrith who will take the burden and be the leader of our pastors.
Should you have any enquiry, please kindly contact me directly on +852 9379 7580.


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Media Decoder | Citing Public Interest, Judge Rules for 'Hangover II'
Citing Public Interest, Judge Rules for 'Hangover II'
By Noam Cohen
May 24, 2011 4:05 pm May 24, 2011 4:05 pm
6:00 p.m. | Updated
A federal judge on Tuesday allowed the movie "Hangover Part II" to be released for the Memorial Day weekend, rejecting a request by a tattoo artist who says that the movie violates his copyright by using a face tattoo he made for Mike Tyson on a central character in the movie.
But even as Judge Catherine D. Perry of Federal District Court in St. Louis gave an important victory to Warner Brothers Entertainment, the studio that is releasing "Hangover Part II," she made clear that her sympathies were entirely on the side of the artist, S. Victor Whitmill.
She said that Mr. Whitmill had a "strong likelihood of prevailing on the merits for copyright infringement" and that most of the arguments put forward by Warner Bros. were "just silly."
Mr. Whitmill made the Maori-inspired tattoo for Mr. Tyson in 2003 in Las Vegas. In testimony on the lawsuit, he described how he had spent four hours conferring with Mr. Tyson and then inking the tattoo face, steering him from a pattern he proposed with "hearts and diamonds around the eye area" to a creation inspired by tribal art.
Shown on Mr. Tyson's face, the tattoo has appeared in numerous movies, including the original "Hangover," which made more than $250 million, and the documentary "Tyson." But in the sequel to "Hangover" the tattoo was shown on the face of another character, Stu, played by Ed Helms.
With the tattoo's use in the movie or promotional items like movie posters, iPhone apps or Big Gulp cups at 7-11, Mr. Whitmill had "lost control over the image he created," Judge Perry ruled.
By her own reasoning, the judge conceded, she should have enjoined the studio from releasing the film -– a decision that could have cost the studio as much as $100 million. But ultimately she concluded that the harm to the "public interest" from stopping the release of the movie outweighed the harm to Mr. Whitmill.
"The public interest does favor protecting the thousands of other business people in the country as well as Warner Brothers, and not causing those nonparties to lose money, and I think it would be significant, and I think it would be disruptive," she said from the bench, rather than issuing a written ruling. "I think that tilts the public interest in favor of Warner Brothers on this because all over the country people would be losing money if I were to enjoin this movie."
The consolation for Mr. Whitmill is that he will be entitled to compensation. "Although the intangibles he's losing can't be completely known or quantified, there is some amount of money that will come close," she offered.
Warner Brothers, in a statement, focused on the good news in the decision: "We are very gratified by the Court's decision which will allow the highly anticipated film, 'The Hangover Part II,' to be released on schedule this week around the world. Plaintiff's failed attempt to enjoin the film in order to try and extract a massive settlement payment from Warner Bros. was highly inappropriate and unwarranted."
The lawyer representing the studio in the lawsuit, Frederick J. Sperling of Schiff Hardin of Chicago, added: "The court's ruling protects the interests of the public as well as those of Warner Bros."
The lawyer for Mr. Whitmill, Michael A. Kahn, focused on what was to come: "While we are disappointed that the motion was denied, we are quite pleased by Judge Perry's findings. … Judge Perry recognized copyright law protects tattoos and that Warner Bros. had no permission to use Mr. Whitmill's artwork in the movie. We look forward to further vindicating our client's rights at trial in the near future, including a permanent injunction preventing further distribution of the movie."
All signs pointed to a settlement and the judge herself was encouraging those efforts. But the two sides were combative in court on Monday at a hearing before Judge Perry.
Cross-examining Mr. Whitmill, the lawyer representing Warner Bros., Mr. Sperling, said that the other side had "demanded $30 million to settle your claim." Mr. Kahn objected, and the judge agreed. Mr. Kahn later said that Mr. Sperling had been unfair in mentioning that number in court
For all of the discussion and theorizing about whether tattoos — which after all are creations made on someone else's body — could be copyrighted, Judge Perry could not have been more clear cut.
"Of course tattoos can be copyrighted," she said. "I don't think there is any reasonable dispute about that. They are not copyrighting Mr. Tyson's face, or restricting Mr. Tyson's use of his own face, as the defendant argues, or saying that someone who has a tattoo can't remove the tattoo or change it, but the tattoo itself and the design itself can be copyrighted, and I think it's entirely consistent with the copyright law."
As for the "fair use" defense offered by the studio, which argues that the ability to parody the artwork should trump Mr. Whitmill's copyright claims, Judge Perry was equally summary in her judgment: "This was an exact copy. It's not a parody."
"This use of the tattoo did not comment on the artist's work or have any critical bearing on the original composition. There was no change to this tattoo or any parody of the tattoo itself. Any other facial tattoo would have worked as well to serve the plot device."
Mr. Whitmill stuck by view that he had no problem with Mr. Tyson's use of the tattoo, including on a Tyson action figure that Mr. Sperling showed him.
"Because that's his identity," Mr. Whitmill replied. "You know, I'm looking at the action figure here, since 2003, that's what Mike Tyson looks like now. I have no objection to that whatsoever."
Graydon Carter: Children's Book Author
Christopher Meloni to Leave 'Law & Order: SVU'


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Using Gas Prices to Forecast the Unemployment Trend
Previously, we found that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. can be used to forecast what the U.S. unemployment rate will be about two years ahead in time.
Since then, gasoline prices have been rising pretty significantly across the U.S. and are predicted to rise even further, so today, we're presenting a tool based upon our analysis that you can use to anticipate what the jobs situation will be like two years from now.
To find out, enter the latest average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. into the tool as well as the most recently available value for the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which lets us take inflation into account, and we'll project what the U.S. unemployment rate will likely be two years from now.
Now for a quick word of caution. The correlation between gas prices and the unemployment rate is positive, but is only of low-to-medium strength, which you can see in the spread of the data points about the trend line in our chart showing the correlation.
Basic Investment Information
Average Price of a Gallon of Gasoline
Most Recent Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) Value
Projected Unemployment Rate
What that means is that while higher gasoline prices do generally translate into a higher unemployment rate two years into the future and lower gasoline prices translate into lower unemployment rates, the actual unemployment rate two years from now can be significantly different from what the tool forecasts.
As such, our tool is best used to anticipate the general trend in the unemployment rate rather than the specific unemployment rate.
For example, using the default data for our tool, which takes the average retail price of motor gasoline in the United States from 21 February 2011 and pairs it with the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) from January 2011, our tool projects that the unemployment rate will be about 8.3%, which is lower that the 9.0% unemployment rate reported in January 2011, suggesting a mild improvement from now until then.
However, if average gasoline prices rise quickly to exceed $3.50 per gallon across the nation, as they already have in California, our tool would project that no significant improvement in the U.S. unemployment rate will take place over the next two years.
Correlating the Price of Gas and the Unemployment Rate
Why Are Americans Driving Less?
How Much Does Your Commute Cost You?
Should You Move Closer to Work to Save Commuting Costs?
How to Save Money on Gas, Without Driving Less
How Much Are Higher Gas Prices Really Hurting You?
Should You Trade in Your Gas Guzzler?
Is It Worth the Drive?
Do Hybrids Really Save Money?
How Much Do You Pay in Gas Taxes?
Labels: gas consumption, tool, unemployment
Anti-US Fervor in Hollywood
With massive popular uprisings sweeping many of the most politically-repressed nations of the world, Americans are looking toward the upcoming weekend with a mixture of both fear and dread because it's time, once again, for the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards ceremony to be televised.
The primary reason for that is because the Academy Awards ceremony has increasingly become an unbearably abysmal viewing experience over the past decades, as Hollywood feels compelled to produce a spectacle that, well, is doomed to flop, even by our much lower critical standards for award shows.
But another reason why is because of the anti-American political bias of many of the movie stars, producers and directors whose achievements in 2010 will be celebrated this Sunday evening, 27 February 2011, beginning live at 5:00 PM Eastern Time on the ABC television network with hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Because nothing makes for more a more dreadful viewing experience than some highly talented movie stars seeking to exploit the worldwide platform they've been given to show off how much they care about the ongoing tragedy of "fill-in-the-blank," which could be fixed if only Americans cared as much as the movie stars did and demonstrate by their willingness to go far over the allotted time they've been given for accepting their award. Assuming they get through thanking the laundry list of people who worked on their movie that pretty much only they know....
But then we wondered whether Hollywood has a financial motive for being so apparently anti-American? We've previously found that anti-U.S. movies tend to flop badly at the U.S. box office, but what about overseas film markets? How do those anti-U.S. movies do in those foreign box offices?
We decided to find out! We went back and identified the most anti-U.S. movies that Hollywood has produced in recent years to see how they did in both their domestic U.S. market and in foreign theaters. We then narrowed our selection to consider only movies set in contemporary times, the issues related to which foreign audiences would most closely recognize and to which they would presumably be most receptive to sitting through a 90 minute long anti-U.S. screed.
The obvious candidates then turned out to be the anti-"War on Terror" movies that have been produced since 2006. The chart below shows how these movies performed and the domestic U.S. and foreign box office, which we then compared with each movie's estimated production costs.
What we find is that in all but one case, the 2009 Best Picture-winning Hurt Locker , none of the films presented in our chart above earned back their production costs from their U.S. box office receipts. Meanwhile, only two films earned more in the U.S. than they did overseas: Stop Loss , a critically-praised but audience-hated movie that was only released in a dozen countries, limiting its foreign earning potential and The Kingdom , the most politically-neutral of all the films we identified, which perhaps explains its success at the U.S. box office.
Overall, the combined box office take from domestic and foreign box offices was enough for four of the nine films to make back their production costs and for another two films to nearly do so.
Anti-U.S. Film Domestic U.S. and Foreign Box Office Take
Total Box Office
U.S. Box Office Percentage
Foreign Box Office Percentage
28 March 2008 $11,207,130 97.4% 2.6% Released in over 12 nations. Largest foreign box office in Australia ($135,000).
14 September 2007 $29,541,790 22.9% 77.1% Released in over 47 countries. Largest box office take in Spain ($3.046 million) but near tie in France and French-speaking Northern African nations ($3.014 million). Combined total accounts for one fifth of total box office.
16 November 2007 $782,102 8.4% 91.6% Released in over 13 countries. Most popular in France and French-speaking Northern African nations ($363,766, or 47% of total box office.)
The Kingdom*
28 September 2007 $86,658,558 54.9% 45.1% Politically neutral. Released in over 60 nations. Largest box office in United Kingdom ($5.8 million).
19 October 2007 $27,038,732 36.0% 64.0% Released in over 50 countries, largest box office in United Kingdom ($5.3 million, or nearly one-fifth of total box office.)
Lions for Lambs
9 November 2007 $63,215,872 23.7% 76.3% Released in over 92 countries. Largest box office take in Italy ($8,321,849, or over one-eighth of total box office).
15 December 2006 $499,620 10.3% 89.7% Released in 4 countries. Largest box office in Spain ($203,079, or over 40% of total box office).
12 March 2010 $94,875,650 36.9% 63.1% Released in over 53 countries, largest foreign box office in United Kingdom ($8.2 million).
26 June 2009 $49,230,726 34.6% 65.4% Best Picture Winner for 82nd Academy Awards. Released in over 48 countries, biggest foreign box office in Japan ($7.8 million).
N/A $276,391,622 34.2% 65.8% * Total Omits The Kingdom 's Box Office Results
Omitting The Kingdom as a control sample, given its political neutrality, we find that the remaining eight anti-U.S. films earned a combined U.S. and foreign total of $276,391,622, with $94,620,951 (34.2%) coming from the U.S. box office and the remaining $181,770,671 (65.8%) from outside the U.S. In simple terms, Hollywood earns roughly two dollars overseas for every one it makes in the U.S. for these anti-U.S. movies.
The combined total of the estimated production costs for these eight films is $243,292,000. With the total box office take of these movies being $276,391,622, we find that Hollywood did indeed make a profit on these films, earning $33,099,622, or just shy of a 12% profit margin when compared to their estimated production costs.
It seems that Hollywood does indeed has a pretty large financial incentive for being so anti-American. Who knew that good old-fashioned greed could help explain Hollywood's political posturing?
Labels: academy awards
U.S. vs Canada: Suicide Edition
How does the United States and Canada compare with one another where each nation's number of suicides each year is concerned? Sure, the nations share a 3,145 mile-long border (that's 5,061 kilometres for our Canadian readers), but as either Americans or Canadians can tell you, what happens on one side of the border can be very different from what happens on the other.
We'll first consider the total number of cases each year for each nation where the cause of death was determined to be the result of self-inflicted injuries.
In looking at this first chart, we see that since 2000, the U.S. appears to have a rising number of suicides, while the trend in Canada appears to be relatively flat in comparison.
That comparison doesn't take the differences in the size of the population of either country into account, much less how the population for each might be changing over time, so we'll next consider the so-called "suicide rate" for each country - the number of suicides per each 100,000 individuals of population, which will directly address this issue.
Here, we find that on whole, both trends we observed in the earlier chart appear to hold. We also observe that both the United States and Canada sees a similar rate of suicides each year, with Canada averaging 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people and the U.S. averaging just a bit lower at 11.0 suicides per 100,000 people in the years from 2000 through 2007.
So on the whole then, the U.S. and Canada would appear to be very similar to one another where deaths caused by self-inflicted injuries are concerned. If Canada's population were identical to the United States, it would likely see the same number of suicides each year, or actually a bit more than that, given its slightly higher suicide rate.
Things change dramatically however when we consider the methods by which people in the U.S. and Canada have committed suicide in the years from 2000 through 2007.
Here we find that Canada's much more restrictive gun laws significantly changes the preferred methods by which Canadians commit suicide compared to the U.S., where firearm-related self-inflicted injuries represent the majority of suicides. We observe that compared to Americans, Canadians appear to substitute the methods of hanging and suffocation, poisoning and other types of self-inflicted fatal injuries for the use of firearms.
But note that they only exchange the method of suicide - the suicide rate data between the two nations clearly demonstrates that Canada's more restrictive gun laws do little or nothing to affect the number of Canadians who successfully act to end their lives in any given year.
Consequently, we find that the restrictions that a nation might place on gun ownership by its citizens very likely do little or nothing to affect the number of suicides that take place within the nation.
On a final note, we also find that the use of firearm-related death figures that includes firearm-related suicides by gun control advocates is highly misleading. As we can see in the analysis above, the number of suicides a nation will experience in any given year is effectively independent of the use of firearms and any restrictions it has for firearms.
With that being the case, we find that gun control advocates using such figures may be considered to be deeply dishonest. And that's the best case interpretation of this situation. In the worst case interpretation, they could quite legitimately be considered to be monsters, as they would appear to be very much in favor of seeing thousands more people hang or poison themselves when committing suicide, which would be the nearly inevitable outcome of the restrictions they seek to impose upon others.
If perhaps they had chosen to stick with using homicide data, which we'll look at soon, they would have more credibility. But then, they've apparently made other choices.
Actually caring about people just doesn't seem to be among those choices.
Centre for Preventing Suicide. Suicide in Canada: Numbers, Rates, and Methods. 2000-2003. Accessed 20 February 2011.
Statistics Canada. Suicides and Suicide Rate, by sex and by age group. CANSIM Results. Table 102-0551. Deaths and mortality rate, by selected grouped causes, age group and sex, Canada, annual, 2000-2007. Accessed 20 February 2011.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control. WISQARS Database. 2000 to 2007. All Races. All Hispanic Origin. All Sexes. Accessed 20 February 2011.
Labels: demographics, quality
The Math They Forgot or, More Likely, Were Never Taught
According to standards adopted by the California State Board of Education in December 1997 and reposted again in June 2009, secondary school students in the state's public education institutions are expected to take and pass Algebra sometime between the 8th and 12th grades. In achieving that standard, graduates from the state's high schools should be very well prepared to enter college ready to do well because of the role of Algebra as a "gateway" class - one that establishes a solid foundation of basic learning that is a prerequisite for supporting the kind of higher level learning that is highly valued by employers.
So how well are California's public high schools doing at achieving that standard, which the state adopted over twelve years ago and reaffirmed less than two years ago?
One way we can find out is to see how much remedial learning of Algebra is taking place at the state's community colleges. Here, students who attend the state's community colleges are much more likely to have also graduated from the state's public high schools, unlike students who might attend the state's top-tier public universities, which draw top students from California and around the world. As such, California's community college students would represent how well the state's public high school's are doing in satisfying the state's minimum standards needed for students to be prepared to enter college.
Dayna Straehley of the Press Enterprise, a newspaper serving the southern Californian counties of Riverside and San Bernandino (aka "the Inland Empire"), reports:
High schools think they're preparing students for college, but when many graduates get there, they have to take remedial classes, Inland educators say.
Statewide, about 90 percent of California's community college students need remedial math and 75 percent need remedial English.
Almost 96 percent of first-time freshmen must take remedial math, and 82 percent must take remedial English.
It's not just precalculus or even algebra that students haven't mastered. Some high school graduates need remedial arithmetic, according to the community colleges.
At Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, 97 percent of new students need at least one pre-collegiate class, said Cheryl Marshall, vice president for instruction.
As with any government-operated system, the bureaucrats who run it are quick to find excuses:
Students need remedial math for various reasons, Riverside City College math instructor Pamela Whelchel said. Some learned algebra and geometry or even calculus in high school, but didn't study or review for the placement test. Some students forgot the math they once knew.
RCC student Fadi Dib, 19, said he took Algebra 2 in high school but needed a refresher in the subject. He was working elementary algebra problems in Whelchel's math lab recently.
"Math, if you don't keep practicing on it, you'll forget it," Dib said.
Whelchel said the class is comparable to high school Algebra 1, which California expects students to master by the ninth grade.
Chris Contreras, 21, one of her students, remembered the Algebra 1 he took in high school as way easier than the work he was doing recently in RCC's math lab.
Student Chris Contreras may have a point, in that compared to high school classes, which are taught over an entire school year, an Algebra 1 class at the college level would be completed in 16 weeks or less. However, since he would have had previous exposure to the material in high school, that faster pace should not have presented a significant burden. Unless he hadn't been adequately exposed to the kind of math that would be included as part of a college-level Algebra 1 class in the first place.
Which brings up another good question: Is the kind of Algebra being taught in high school different from what's taught in college? As Straehley finds, perhaps it is:
States tell high schools what to teach, so students can pass standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind, which set federal requirements for school testing. But those requirements have been academic minimums, not what students need to succeed in college.
Daniel Martinez, Riverside Community College District's associate dean of institutional research, said California's high school standards just don't line up with college expectations.
The "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" was former President George W. Bush's "signature" achievement in education. Unfortunately for Californians, that federal law had no impact upon the setting of the standards for math to which public secondary schools in the state of California are required to comply. As we've already revealed, those standards were set in 1997, nearly four years before "No Child Left Behind" even became federal law. We also see that they were not altered as a result of the federal law, which we confirm in the standards being reposted, without change, in 2009.
Could it then be a problem of miscommunication between state-run bureaucracies? Perhaps the state's public secondary education schools are unaware of what they really need to be teaching the students attending their institutions so they don't require remedial education if and when they reach a college campus.
Or perhaps not:
The University of California puts out documents of what it expects of college freshmen, but she said high schools have paid little attention. Schools have been forced to focus on state requirements and No Child Left Behind.
So we find that the real standard for math that California's public high school students need to achieve by the time they reach college isn't some mysterious secret known only to an elite sect who dresses in funny hats and robes. Somehow though, despite knowing what the real standards should be, the state's public secondary schools are so busy doing other things that they can't be bothered to adapt to their customers (aka "students") real needs. Somehow, they would appear to be claiming, doing that would render it impossible for them to satisfy the state Board of Education's low requirements for math education as well as the No Child Left Behind federal law which, we've already seen, never affected the state's standards for math education in the first place.
We're not exactly sure how acting to ensure that their students can perform the kind of math at the higher standard actually required at the college level would make it impossible for the school to comply with a lower standard for math education, but perhaps that's something California's educators learn in the graduate education schools they attend as they seek to become fully credentialed.
Now, how does their ability to apply quantitative reasoning skills, like the ones that are supposed to be taught in high school Algebra classes, compare to nearly every other post-graduate major in non-education-related fields again?...
California State Board of Education. Mathematics Content Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Adopted December 1997, Reposted 9 June 2009.
Labels: education, math
Ranking School Smarts by Major, Updated
Are engineers really smarter than business students? How do people studying the social sciences stack up against those studying physical sciences? And where exactly do the people who presumably plan to teach children for a living fit into the relative smarts picture?
Sure, it would be nice to use good old-fashioned IQ-type tests to resolve these questions once and for all, but maybe the next best thing is to compare the performance of students who are required to take the GRE (the Graduate Record Examination) as a prerequisite for entering into a graduate school to pursue a Masters degree.
Here, we can measure school smarts by considering how the students taking the GRE's various component exams, which are designed to assess the prospective graduate student's Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning skills performed on each GRE component. We can then compare the relative performance of students in different majors according to the average results recorded for each graduate major program that the GRE-takers declared they intended to enter.
The dynamic table below reveals the GRE results by major recorded for 2007-2008. Just click the table's column headings to sort the data in the table from either high to low, or again to sort the data low to high, according to the selected column heading category. (Note: The dynamic sorting feature will only work if you've enabled JavaScript on your web browser, and then only if you access the dynamic table directly on Political Calculations - like our tools, it won't work on sites who simply republish just our RSS feed!)
Average GRE Scores by Intended Graduate Major, 2007-2008
Intended Graduate Major
Quantititative
Arts - History/Theory/Criticism
4.7 537 565
Arts - Performance/Studio
English Language/Literature
Foreign Languages/Literatures
Other Arts & Humanities Major
Business Administration/Management
Other Business Major
Curriculum/Instruction
Evaluation/Research
Student Counseling/Personnel Services
Other Engineering
Health and Medical Sciences
Architecture/Environmental Design
Library/Archival Sciences
Religion and Theory
Earth, Atmospheric and Marine Sciences
Anthropology/Archeology
Other Social Science Major
Overall, we find that engineers are indeed much smarter than business majors where quantitative reasoning skills are involved, but only have a small advantage where verbal reasoning skills come into play and are on a nearly even keel for analytical writing ability. Meanwhile, we find that students of the physical sciences outclass their social science peers in quantitative reasoning, but that the social scientists beat them in verbal reasoning and analytical writing ability.
But perhaps most distressingly, the students pursuing graduate degrees in education-related fields, who presumably either teach or plan to teach children for a living, dominate the lowest performing half of the table for both verbal and quantitative reasoning skills.
That probably says quite a lot about the state of education in America today. Especially if we're relying upon people who are among the least capable of applying verbal and quantitative reasoning skills to teach those same skills to America's children.
Previously and Next on Political Calculations
We originally considered this topic in our post Ranking School Smarts by Major , our first look at the relative performance of students from different majors on standardized graduate school admission tests, which summarized 20 years worth of data spanning the years from 1962 through 1982. Comparing those older results with the results that we're presenting today reveals that not much has changed where the relative abilities of individuals entering education-related graduate programs in the nearly three decades since are concerned.
That's especially distressing given that public school systems and education schools have emphasized satisfying stronger credential requirements for teachers, especially to teach subjects like math and science.
If you follow the links in the paragraph above, you'll find that they all consider the state of education credentialing in California, which has had a very active program to increase the percentage of "fully credentialed" public school teachers in that state for well over a decade. Tomorrow, we'll look specifically at the state of mathematics education in California's secondary schools, as it relates to how well the state's increasingly "well credentialed" teachers are doing in preparing their students for the academic challenges they would face in attending college.
Labels: education, rankings
Good News and Bad News for the S&P 500
We've got good news and some potentially bad news regarding the current state of the stock market. First, the good news: stock prices are rising thanks to what seems to be an improving outlook in the market's underlying fundamentals.
We can see this improvement in the expected future level of dividends anticipated by the market, where we can see changes in the fundamental outlook for the stock market by observing how the spread between the amount of cash dividends expected to be paid out in future quarters is changing over time.
Here, we see that since mid-January, the spreads between the amount of dividends expected to have be paid out in future quarters is widening, which suggests that the business situation of the publicly-traded companies that make up the S&P 500 index is improving.
That improving outlook then would lead us to anticipate that the average of stock prices for the S&P 500 in the month of February 2011 will likely fall in a range between 1294 and 1332, at least, if you go by the math behind how stock prices work. This marks an improvement from the 1289-1321 range that we had previously forecast for the S&P 500 at the beginning of the month.
Though 17 February 2011, just a bit past the mid-point for the month, the average of daily closing stock prices for the S&P 500 is 1321.71, with a closing price of 1340.43 on 17 February 2011.
Which brings us to the potentially bad news. With average stock prices now moving significantly above the midpoint of our updated forecast range (1313), not to mention trading above the top end of our updated forecast range for the month (1332), we would describe the current state of the market as being a bit overheated.
That, in turn, suggests a correction is in the offing.
Now, that's no surprise given that we've had another indicator pointing to February 2011 as being a very likely month by which a correction would begin, but we can't predict which day that will happen.
There's another angle to consider as well. If the U.S. Federal Reserve is indeed using stock prices to assess how well their Quantitative Easing 2.0 program is going in setting future inflation expectations, stock prices running hot as they are today would be a signal to them that they need to take their foot of the QE pedal.
That may also have a negative effect on stock prices in the current economic situation, especially if future inflation expectations fall as they did in the interval between the Fed's QE 1.0 program and the current QE 2.0 program to near deflationary levels.
Unless, that is, they've finally been successful in convincing everyone that inflation is here to stay.
Labels: forecasting, inflation, SP 500
Mapping Crime in San Francisco
Doug McClune had a neat idea - visualize the level of crime in a geographic area by giving it an elevation on an otherwise two-dimensional map. The image below provides several different angles of where prostitution arrests are most likely to be made in San Francisco, which cast a surprisingly large shadow upon the rest of the city....
McClune notes:
... the prostitution arrests are peaking on Shotwell St. at the intersections of 19th and 17th. I'm sure the number of colorful euphemisms you can come up with that include the words "shot" and "well" are endless.
I love the way the mountain range casts a shadow over much of the city. There's also a second peak in the Tenderloin (which I'm dubbing Mt. Loin).
McClune also provides topographical crime maps based on the locations of San Franscisco Police Department's arrests for larceny, narcotics, assault, vandalism, vehicle theft, robbery and warrants served!
How GE Became a Basket Case
In the 1980s and 1990s, General Electric (NYSE: GE) was led by one of the most influential corporate chiefs in American history: Jack Welch.
Throughout his tenure, Welch maintained a tight focus on improving the profitability of each of GE's business divisions. His goal was that GE would either be the most profitable or the second-most profitable company among all competitors in each of its business segments. To that end, he earned the nickname "Neutron Jack" for how he dealt with the poorest performing divisions and managers within the conglomerate, as he stopped money-losing operations by exiting non-profitable businesses either by closing divisions or selling them and by firing the lowest performing 10% of the company's managers each year.
By the time he retired from GE's CEO position two decades later, GE had been transformed from a bloated conglomerate into one of the most successful and profitable companies in the world. Its manufacturing and technology-oriented businesses had grown to become industry leaders and the company's expansion into the financial industry had also been enormously successful, for which Welch was enormously well compensated.
And that's when GE's fortunes permanently changed for the worse, although it would be years before anyone would realize it. Because Jack Welch's successor, Jeffrey Immelt, couldn't compete his way out of a wet paper bag to real success by comparison.
To understand why, we'll need to consider the findings of new academic research into CEO compensation.
Here, Partha Mohanram and Sudhakar Balachandran had asked the question " Are CEOs Compensated for Value Destroying Growth in Earnings? " To answer the question, they tapped the Execucomp database, which tracks the compensation of business executives at some 1500 publicly-traded companies.
What they found is that corporate boards too often reward CEOs too generously for generating the wrong kind of growth from the perspective of creating real shareholder value. Here, many CEOs are effectively being overcompensated by focusing on generating "easy" profits through investment-related growth at the expense of improving the real profitability of their business operations.
Over time, the incentives for higher compensation leads executives to favor investment-related activities too strongly over working to achieve the more organically-generated growth that results from improving their business' real profitability. That leads to substantial losses of shareholder value when the investment climate turns stormy.
In a nutshell, that's what has happened to GE under Jeffrey Immelt's tenure. The financial arm of the company, GE Capital, grew to dominate all its other business segments, as this single division grew to represent 39.5% of GE's total revenues and 42.1% of its total segment profits by 2007.
That worked all the way up until the bubble for easy profits to be made through investment activity in the U.S. popped in 2008 and the investment climate turned nasty. Through 2009, GE Capital's share of GE's total revenues had dropped to 32.6%, while the division's share of total segment profits plunged to 12.1%.
Soon after the bubble popped, mounting losses from GE Capital's lending activity caused GE's earnings to plunge, with share prices following as the market adapted to the loss of value resulting from the consequences of Immelt's too-long misplaced focus on generating "easy" profits through investment activity. Ultimately, even Jeffrey Immelt's compensation followed suit as the company's declining situation forced him to decline bonuses and as the value of his stock awards has fallen. (Note: Immelt's has continued to receive his annual base salary of $3.3 million.)
But that's not all. GE's fiscal situation deteriorated so much in 2008 that it required massive bailouts from the federal government to stay afloat. Beyond that, GE has moved to scavenge itself to raise cash, seeking to sell off several highly-valued business divisions to competitors, sometimes at significant losses.
Even the kinds of business that GE now pursues are perhaps best characterized by their likelihood to receive either special protection from competitors or subsidies from the federal government, relying on close connections to politicians rather than real competitive ability to win new business. For example, in December 2010, GE announced that it would invest in developing high-speed rail technologies. On 8 February 2011, Vice-President Joseph Biden announced that the U.S. government would spend over $53 billion over six years to build high speed rail systems and infrastructure in the U.S.
That $53 billion should really be considered yet another bailout for GE, as the company's high-profile entry into the field combined with the newly announced government subsidy program would seem to be designed to guarantee the company a portion of the revenue to be provided from the federally-funded boondoggle at the expense of competitors, not to mention more economic, efficient and effective methods of transportation for people between cities (aka "every other form of transportation").
Real companies that aren't basket cases don't pursue business strategies whose success hinges on government mandates, protections and subsidies, much less that rely upon fulfilling the outdated visions of dimwitted politicians and bureaucrats. Instead, they focus on improving the profitability of what they do so that both their shareholders and their customers are happy, which is what creates real value for everybody involved.
That kind of focus just happens to be what GE has been missing from its top leader now for more than a decade. Which perhaps may be what Immelt was really trying to confess to the company's shareholders in describing recent times at GE as "The Decade from Hell".
Disclosure: Ironman, as your ecomagination might already tell you, holds no position in GE.
Labels: business, management


With every iteration of the Google Panda update, we see big changes in the SERPs and one of the groups of sites that has been particularly affected is article marketing sites. In this article, we'll investigate whether article marketing sites have been adversely affected by the Google Panda update and, if so, we investigate the question: Does article marketing still work to promote your website or should you try another solution like this ultimate guest blogging solution?
Article marketing has always been beneficial for SEO purposes for two reasons: One, you receive direct traffic from the articles themselves. Two, and more importantly, you get very good benefits from the inbound links, especially from respected article directories. In fact, as an expert eZine author, I have many articles that have attained a pagerank of 3. Thus, I have derived great benefit from the inbound links on these pages.
My initial impression is that the Google Panda Update has definitely affected article marketing directories. For particular searches, I have noticed not only a drastic reduction of articles directories returned in the SERPs but a complete absence of them.
In the past, I knew that if I wrote an article on a certain topic and posted it to GoArticles or ArticlesBase that it would show up on page 1 in the SERPs within a matter of hours. That just does not happen anymore (the same holds true with certain PR directories). Typically, it does not show up at all. As for the the granddaddy of directories, Ezine articles, they appeared to have been adversely affected by Google Panda originally but are now back in Google's good favor. Many pages that I have on eZinearticles still show up in the SERPs where they did in the past.
Google Panda Update and Article Marketing: What Happened?
Many people are upset about the Google Panda Update because it has drastically reduced the amount of money that they were making and can make in the future. However, there is no fighting this trend so adjustments are necessary.
Google is a business and their main business is search engine results. Despite all of the cool stuff that Google produces, they still make most of their money from the ads they place on their search engine results pages. So, if they provide poor results and people use another search engine, Google as a business would be in trouble.
Their goal with all of these Google Panda updates is to weed out bad and/or redundant results. Again, this has angered more than a few and literally robbed some people of their livelihood.
However, the fact is that many article directories are filled with redundant, "spun" content that has no originality and exists solely to generate backlinks. We should not be upset that Google wants to filter these results. They must do this to continue providing quality services.
With Google Panda, is article marketing now dead? I would say "no" but add that most people need to change their approach.
Here is what I will change about my approach. I have always written unique content and submitted this content to just a few article directories. It was always interesting to see which one Google would pick up first. Now, I will narrow my submissions even more, with just a few unique articles going to the most important article directories, and right now that article directory is EzineArticles.
For those who have used article spinners and/or automatic submission of articles, I think this approach is not entirely dead but dying a slow death in the Post-Panda world.
The question posed in the title of this article was: With the new Panda update, does article marketing still work? The answer is "yes", but you you may need to change your approach with a product like Ultimate Guest Blogger.
The world of article spinners and automatic submissions is dying a slow-death with each Google Panda update. However, unique content submitted to quality directories still works very well.
Article Marketing: What Happened and What To Do: This article takes a look at why article marketing with article directories does not work anymore and what the solution is now.
Finally, it should be noted that Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam search team, is not terrible fond of article marketing as he states in this YouTube video. However, do note that he is referring primarily to low-quality articles on article directories.
Very good article. I was wondering if all the backlinks I am setting up to promote my small business directory were actually going to do something. I haven't seen much of an increase in hits and now I can see it is probably due to Panda.
good post about panda. This post make me understood about the article marketing and google panda.
Now a days Google Panda can also update like if your links has comes from side bar or footer then its should be low quality backlinks thus the Google cannot consider as a valuable backlinks.


I am thrilled it's the weekend. This has been the craziest week ever and I am so glad to have a low-key weekend that will consist of serious fall decorating. What are your weekend plans?
I want to have a weekly cider mill trip on the schedule!


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text:
A Joke
Part of my purpose in writing this blog is to show the similarities and familiarities between our two supposedly different cultures (Whatever the lines you may draw are...The West and Islam, Imperialist America and Poor Controlled Turkey, The U.S. and the Middle East, Clash of Cultures, the New Crusades) Anyway, this joke reminds of jokes West Virginians tell. Temel is the name of the Black Sea bumpkin people love to make fun of. Think 'Bubba'. The grammar mistakes are in the original
Temel's dad passed away. One of his friends came to the funeral and asked Temel:
How did it happen?
Temel: He fell from a thirty story building.
Man: Oh dear God, what a tragic death! To fall...
Temel: Oh he didn't die. He fell onto the awning in the store below and bounced right back up!
Man: And then he fell even harder from an even higher place! Dear God
Temel: Naw. He landed on the awning of the store across the street and then went bouncing on over to a neighboring building.
Man: And this time he slammed into the roof and died?
Temel: No no, he rolled off the roof into an ol' electric wire!
Man: No! He was electrocuted?
Temel: Oh no, them wires made like a bow and arrow and whipped him into the air. 600 feet up!
Adam: So he fell from 600 feet and died! How terrible.
Temel: No no he bounced off the same awning again.
Adam: And then he died?
Temel: Naw. From there it was over to the awning on the butcher's...
Finally the man couldn't take it any more and shouted,
'Damnit how in God's name did this man die??!!'
Temel: Well, we watched all this time and he wouldn't stop, so finally we done shot him and put an end to it!
Posted by Jeff Gibbs at 12:45 PM
Labels: Humor, Translations
Sabahattin Story Translation and the Moda Hounds
I was running the other day along the Moda waterfront. I passed a group of yuppyish looking people each with a pure bred dog frolicking about their feet--collies, poodles, the ever present pit bull, pugs, Boston terriers, and a little Pekingese. Like dog lovers everywhere (at least in Tucson and Boston), no one felt the need to keep their little bundles of joy on a legally mandated leash (there are signs!) and expressed mild surprise when Feefee or Muffy gave chase to the hapless runner. "Oh, she doesn't usually do that, do you, mama's sweet little baby? Take your teeth out of the man's eyes darling." A few yards away stood another group of dogs, masterless, but eyeing a homeless guy sleeping on a bench with a hangdog look that was mildly hopeful. They were a gang of Istanbul's strays, ratty eared and mangy, bony and looking as drunk as the homeless guy they pinned their hopes to. They glanced from him to the group of pure bred's down the way. Forlorn eyes blinking slowly, sighing with resignation every few seconds. I think, ahem, they were barking up the wrong tree with the homeless guy.
Dog class wars.
It reminds me of a story by Sabahattin Ali, which I've translated here. Ali was a writer back in the early twentieth century, one of Turkey's first to break away from the old literature about royalty and nobles, and write about the poor. A kind of Turkish Dos Passos. He was definitely a leftist, and like any decent Turkish writer, was arrested a couple of times. Getting a little weary with the arrests, he tried to flee Turkey in 1945 but was assassinated in the attempt at a town called Kirklareli.
I tell you, being assassinated tells you your culture views you as important. How many writers has America assassinated? Hmmm? Here's the story....
The Lucky Dog,
by Sabahattin Ali
translated by Jeff Gibbs
Why must I always write such dark stuff? My friends--the delicate ones--don't like it. "Do you only see the bad and ugly things?" They ask. "Will you always talk about hunger, nakedness and pain? About the street urchins who sell newspapers at night and gather cigarette butts, about the people who kill each other for one inch of land or one drink of water, about the people whose souls are slowly withering away in prison, about the people who can't find a doctor, or who are forever denied their rights? Don't you have anything else to write about? Is there no good, beautiful thing left? Why do all the people in your stories have such wan faces and heavy hearts? Isn't there at least one human being in this whole country who smiles? Who is lucky?"
Is it possible? One must be found! But to do this, I don't want to go poking into dark corners and scrounging the edges of society. Everything is right out in the open, right in front of our eyes. There aren't just smiling, lucky people, no! There are even smiling, lucky dogs. I've decided. This time, I'm not going to write about hunger and hatred and misery. I'm going to talk about comfort and love and fullness.
In the neighborhood where I live, the streets are paved and wide. They are lined with trees that give them a beautifully dappled shade, though each tree has been raised with enough money to pay for the education of one poor child all the way through high school. In the mornings, young mothers in chic outfits walk their children in colorful baby carriages. The babes wear faces that radiate a cowlike complacency born from being so well raised, so robust, so white cheeked and healthy. Many different kinds of toys are scattered over their silk blankets. As they ring a small bell in one hand, they blow a whistle with the other; meanwhile in front of them stroll their older siblings explaining something to their be-permed mothers who keep tossing their luxurious curls back over their shoulders. From time to time, the young mothers gather together on the sidewalk and while talking sweetly of little nothings, leave the watching of the children to the clean servants who follow four or five steps behind. In a sandbox in a small park just off the street, little ones with shovels and pales build castles and rivers, which they then destroy with the swipe of a fist. To the side sits a white-scarfed governess reading a book in a foreign language. One covered lady is trying to distract a crying child, while on the next bench over, four pretty mothers are knitting and gossiping about their friends. Everywhere is brightness and comfort. Except, on everyone's face there is a vague expression of unease. This unease raps them in a light but sturdy net which they will never be able to rip themselves free of nor ever take in hand. It shows itself in the way that their laughter has a hollow echo, in the way it seems not too touch in any way the coldness in their eyes. It's as if both speaker and listener are, at that moment, thinking of something else entirely, although they are actually thinking of nothing at all. But they would never complain about this, in fact, they don't even notice that there's anything amiss. Even if they're not happy with their situations, even if their laughter is empty, they do not want one single change made in their lives.
Every day on this street, a man walks a little dog. He ss a huge handsome man who, from his high collared tan wool uniform, is clearly someone's servant, or butler, or houseboy. The little dog has light brown fur and long ears that hangs to the ground. It couldn't be more than a few inches tall. In its leather collar and leather harness, it trots behind the man. The man adjusts his steps to the dog. If the dog stops, he waits. And when the dog's whim has been satisfied and he starts to walk again, the man follows suit. When the weather is cool, the dog wears a tan wool sweater with navy blue ribbon on the edges. It passes over all four legs and has buttons running down his belly. Judging from the design knitted on the back. it's obvious that it was made by an expert tailor--it glitters in the sunlight just as the little dog's clean and coiffed fur glitters.
When the creature, to answer the call of nature, pops beside one of the trees lining the road, the servant (who seems strong enough to hoe ten acres of farmland in one day without getting tired) or butler, or houseboy, or whatever he is respectfully waits for the animal to finish his business. Then he slowly hits the road again. This sweatered little dog never answers the growls of other dogs they pass on the street. Even if a huge beast somehow frees itself from it's master's leash and runs growling and howling to its side hungering for a fight, even if it leaps on top of him, the little dog pays no attention whatsoever and keeps trotting along. The house boy takes care of it for him with a shout and a kick. And if there are several attacking dogs, the house boy picks up his master's beloved, brushes the dust off his fur and sweater, and wipes away any dirt or stain. And there is a fear in the man's eyes that he cannot hide. The dog, certain that it is free from all danger, looks straight down, licks itself, and while wagging its long-haired tail watchs as the house boy frantically checks every spot on its body to make sure that nothing has happened to his charge.
I saw the man who walks the dog in the butcher shop one day. He was looking at the packages of sheep organs that hung in a line. At last, one package took his fancy.
"Weigh this!" he said. While he was counting his money, he started making friendly small talk with the butcher. "I simply cannot understand why you don't sell the liver separately. Our dog will not eat the lung or hearts or anything of the sort. We always place before him only the best cooked liver. Even if there's one little piece of lung mixed into the meat, he will not touch it and leaves it just where it is. It doesn't agree with his stomach, I'm told. The other day our vet paid a house call and said so. Animals know. Even if you try to mix the smallest fraction of ox meat into a beef meat ball, he will know. One cannot fathom the work of God, as they say."
He suddenly whirled on the assistant who was about to wrap the whole package of organs.
"Didn't you hear me? What's wrong with you? Don't wrap all of it. Separate out the liver. The rest you can just throw away for all I care!"
He took his purchase and left.
Another day, I saw him standing in front of the gate of a flower garden holding something in a warm soft blanket to his chest. He was about to get into a huge car. When I noticed the blanket twitch and heard a little whining noise, I couldn't resist and sidled up to him.
"What's that?" I asked. "Has something happened to your dog?"
The houseboy gave me the once over, then answered.
"Certainly not, thank God. He coughed a few times today, that's all. It's always like this in the Spring, but Madam panicked. She wants me to take him to the clinic and have him checked."
Then, taking care that the dog did not bump his head, he carefully slid into the huge car, which then sped away and disappeared.
The next day I saw the same house boy entering the same garden. This time he held the leash for a long-nosed, white-haired dog. Next to him was someone else who wore similar clothes. I was curious again.
"What happened? Have you changed dogs?" I asked.
He eyed me up and down, clearly not remembering me as the man who'd asked him about his dog the day before. Still, he didn't leave me without an answer.
"Could I possibly do such a thing?" he said. "Inside. In the club. Listen, you can hear his voice."
It was true. Just on the other side of a large mansion, in the space of the gardener's house came the little dog's voice in sporadic outbursts from the chic, pale green clubhouse.
"What in the world?" I said. "Your dog never barked."
"Ah, he's in heat," he answered. "He's looking for a female." He looked into the face of the man next to him and smiled. "This one is exquisite. When they're in the mood, even an animal cannot control themselves.
He'd been very cranky, you this. The Madam immediately put him in the car and ran him to the vet's But I said, you know, the problem is this. I mean, it will be no easy matter to find one suitable for our baby. The Madam did not want a dog with no pedigree. It would put him in a bad mood, she said. So I went from mansion to mansion, until I found one suitable for him, an animal with a proper bloodline. A noble bearing. Our master had a talk with the master of my friend here and deemed everything suitable. I will take ours to them, and they will bring theirs to us."
He pushed the gate of the fenced garden with his elbow and turned to his friend.
"Come along," he said. "Let's go see if they will take to each other." Like a shy bride, he entered the gate with the fluffy white dog following coquettishly behind him.
Now, I love animals. I love all living creatures, and life, and beauty, and bliss. A lucky dog such as this fills me with joy. I did not come into this world to talk only of morbid things. I am burning with the desire to tell warm, joyful, sweet tales. And look, if everyone in the world found the same comfort as this lucky little dog, could I ever speak another word again about suffering or hardship?
Labels: Translations, Turkish Literature
Last of the Alevi Stories.....
Here's three more...and the last unless people start writing and demanding in mass more and more and more AND MORE!
Foulmouthed Pirzo from the last batch I translated pops up again. There are lots of stories about the same characters. Also, in the second story there is a conflict between the enlightened ones (erenler) and the living beings (canli). In the one Alevi ceremony I went to, the dede made a point to say there were no men or women here, no hierarchy of any kind, just "canli"--living things who were all equal in the eyes of God. The erenler, or enlightened ones, would be the elite, the fancy pants, the better-than-thous.
The old style Turkish Aga
In Kangal, all the agas gathered and decided they needed some entertainment. Again, Pirzo came to mind and they sent for him. The news reached him that he was wanted, and since the orders came straight from the top, he had no choice but to set out on the cold, icy winter roads. When he arrived at the place they had invited him to, his moustache had completely iced over and the top of his head was crowned with snow. As soon as walked in the door, one of the agas started to harass him.
"Well, well, if it isn't the polar bear we've been waiting hours for!"
When he heard this, Pirzo turned to the aga and said,
"What are you afraid of boss? I mean, what's one little bear to a bunch of vicious mad dogs like you?"
Speedy Ali
Speedy Alishan was an Alevi from the province of Tunceli, but now he lived in Germany, in the town of Solingen. He was known for playing jokes on people. In fact, he loved pranks. In Germany, any news about Alevis came out of his mouth first. To people who reminded him of this peculiarity of his, he had this to say.
"I swear, just between us, I love to gossip. I have a lot of free time, you see. I've raised my girls. They're running the travel agency now, so I have even more time for gossiping. When I set to work in the morning, if there are no juicy little tidbits coming my way, I open up my little black book, and start calling everyone I know--in order. Something always turns up. Then I put whatever I find on this on-line system they've got nowadays and spread it to everyone I know."
Speedy Alishan really gets off on playing pranks.
Years ago, the United Alevi Federation wanted to establish a fund for Alevis living in Germany. This fund would enable their bodies to be sent to Turkey for funerals which would be conducted according to Alevi beliefs. But the president of the federation at that time was deadset against this and the fund was never set up. On top of that, the Dede who had been so opposed to the establishment of a company for funerals, established a company on his own, together with his children, called "Funeral Homes of the Enlightened." This enraged Speedy Alishan. In order to make the Dede lose a few nights of sleep, he told everyone he was going to build a rival funeral company of his own and establish branches all throughout Germany. He was going to name it "Funeral Homes for All God's Creatures," and create a slogan.
"All God's Creatures Will Meet Again in Heaven."
On top of this, he said he was going to start a promotion campaign.
Whenever he mentioned this promotion, we laughed. "How in the world is going to have a promotion for a funeral!?" we thought. "There's no way."
So we asked.
"Easy!" he said. "Buy 10 funerals, and your own funeral is free!"
In order to hang out with Pirzo, the agas of Kangal agreed to invite him to dinner.
The agas, seeing how hungry Pirzo was, started to stuff chunks of Turkish delight into his mouth, one after the other.
"Here is one for the love of your dear Ali," they said.
"Take this one, it's the great Uthman."
"And here's one for the great Abu Bakr."
For a finale, they stuffed one more piece of Turkish delight into his mouth "for the love of Umar".
After swallowing the last piece, Pirzo let rip a fart that the whole room could hear.
The agas laughed and came up to him.
"Whoa, Pirzo. What was that, for the love of God? It sounded like a bomb."
Pirzo was quick to answer the laughing agas.
"That's what happens. When those other bastards showed up, Ali was not about to hang around and got out as fast as he could."
Posted by Jeff Gibbs at 9:00 AM
Labels: Alevi, Kurdistan, Translations
More Funny Alevi Stories and a Prettty Picture
THE MURDERED HUSAYN
Some background for the rest of these stories. Careful, its gets all historical, and it's much more complicated than this, but basically....
As far as organized religion is concerned, Alevis are most closely bound up in Islamic tradition, and Mohammed is, of course, the most respected and loved figure in Islam. When Mohammed died, many people believed his son-in-law and cousin Ali should have replaced him. Ali had been one of his first and most faithful disciples after all, and was family. But due to some political maneuvering, the position went to a man named Abu Bakr. He was the first "caliph", or replacement for Mohammed.
When he died, Umar became caliph, then the position fell to a guy called Uthman. These three are considered thieves in a way (by the Alevis at least) as they stole the position from the rightful heir, Ali. Alevis in Turkey will traditionally not name their children Omer (The Turkish version of Umar), Ebubekir (The Turkish version of Abu Bakr), or Osman (Uthman).
Ali eventually became the fourth caliph, but it was too little, too late. A ruler of Syria refused to accept Ali's authority and openly rebelled against him. This led to all sorts of civil war type ugliness. Basically the Syrian guy was trying to get his son Yazid installed in Ali's place. Yazid was power hungry, and wanted to establish a family dynasty, which most considered completely contrary to Islamic teachings. To eliminate the competition, Yazid sent his army to massacre Husayn, one of Ali's sons and the only living blood relatives of the Prophet Mohammed. They did this--killed some women and children too after making them suffer a while in the desert. This whole thing happened at the Battle of Kerbala. After Kerbala, Yazid then had Husayn's brother Hasan murdered for good measure.
Remembering the betrayal of Ali, and also remembering Kerbala, the suffering of Husayn, Hassan, and their families is an important part of Alevi tradition and ceremonies. The pictures of all three men hang in most Cem houses (the place where Alevis conduct their ceremonies). A guy on a baglama sings a song about the event and the whole congregation starts crying.
In the following story, the so-called "bigwigs" of Islam would be (according to the mainstream Sunni Islam which dominates Turkey) Mohammed, the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, and then of course Ali.
One last thing, an Aga was the all-powerful landowner in Turkey's old feudal system. The title is probably equivalent to lord, or in the old Southern sharecropping system, "Massah".
So What's Left?
In the town of Kangal in the state of Sivas lived a man named Pirzo. Pirzo was an Alevi, you might even call him a hardheaded fanatic. Even so, he was also well known for his smart remarks and especially for his foul mouth.
He made his living as a sharecropper, working with the Aga. The biggest amusement of the mayor and Aga of Kangal was to hang out with Pirzo. One day, then the mayor came to visit the Aga, he said,
"Hey, let's find out where Pirzo is and bring him here. We'll hang out a little and have some fun with him."
"Come on, Mayor," protested the Aga. "What do you want with Pirzo? You know what a dirty mouth he has. He'll end up hurting your feelings and offending me, too."
But the mayor insisted and they had someone bring Pirzo. Pirzo came to them and after making all the proper inquiries about his health, the mayor asked in a deeply serious voice.
"Pirzo, do you know why we had you come here?"
"No, sir. How could I possibly know, Mr. Mayor, sir? You summoned me, and I hurried as fast as I could. Your word is law, sir."
"I want to divide up the bigwigs of Islam with you. You take two and I'll take two. Would that be okay?"
"Well, Mr. Mayor, sir, I don't know. Who knows what might happen if you share such high faluting things with me."
"Oh please, Pirzo. What could you possibly do? Come on, let's share."
"Well, sir, you know best I guess."
"But first, I pick."
"Of course, Mr. Mayor. You always take precedent, sir. Please, go ahead, pick."
With a mischievious little smile, the mayor named his choices.
"I will take Mohammed and Ali. There, now it's your turn."
It was clear that whatever Pirzo had been planning was ruined. He started shrieking.
"Ah hell, you left me with all the fucking shitheads. Take them, too, goddamnit. They're yours!
They're looking for the killers!
Two Sunni Muslims wanted to become Alevis and so they went to an Alevi Dede and asked for his help. The Dede told the two hopefuls that they'd have to pass a preliminary test and called them one by one into his presence. To the first one he said,
"So you want to become an Alevi? Well first, I need to see if you have the basic information necessary, so I'm going to give you a little quiz. Now tell me, who killed our teachers Hasan and Husayn?"
"I swear on my mother's soul, sir, it wasn't me."
"Sorry, no go. Get out of here and call your friend."
The one who failed his test ran out in an awful hurry. Of course, his friend wanted to know what had happened inside and nervously asked him about it.
"What in the world went on in there. Tell me!"
"Man! They're looking for the guy who killed some dudes named Hasan and Husayn. Let's beat it before they blame falls on us!"
He still hasn't vented all his rage!
(This story is a lesson against simplistic belief and superstition...I think)
An Alevi shepherd was tending his sheep on the mountain when a wolf attacked his herd. Helpless to stop the wolf from tearing his flock to pieces, he called out to the Dede.
"Help me, O Wise One!"
Just at the moment when the shepherd had lost all hope, an enormous sheep dog appeared out of nowhere, tore out the wolf's throat, and saved the flock. The wacky shepherd, believing the dog had been sent by the Dede, was overjoyed and ran quickly to town to thank him. He was out of breath when he arrived, and taking both the Dede's wizened hands in his, began to explain.
"O Wise One! A wolf was killing my sheep one after the other and I called out to you for help. Just when I had lost all hope, you took the form of a giant sheep dog and ran to my aid. You grabbed the wolf by the throat and ripped him to pieces, saving all my sheep!"
The Dede, miffed that this silly shepherd had thought he was some stupid dog, began to mutter and swear under his breath.
"Will wonders never cease!" said the shepherd. "Just look at my Dede! It's clear that he couldn't vent all his rage against that evil wolf. He's still growling in anger on my behalf!"
Posted by Jeff Gibbs at 11:41 AM
Labels: Alevi, Humor, Translations
Alevi Mizah Translation 2
Five Cents for a Keg of Wine
Intro: This one reads like a fable or a bad Irish joke. As I mentioned in a previous post, people from Thrace (Trakya) are famous for the drinking.
An Alevi dede from Thrace and his friend hit the road to sell some wine they had made. They put the keg on top of their donkey. Before they set out, they made an agreement. They would sell a cup of wine for five cents, and if even if one of them drank a cup, then he would pay the other five cents. After they had traveled a ways, they decided to have a rest in the shade of a tree. Feeling a little down, the dede took the keg off the donkey, pulled five cents from his pocket, and handed it to his friend. "Here's my money, hit me up with a cup of that wine," he said. His friend took the money and dropped it in his change purse. As he watched the dede drink, smacking his lips with delight, he felt his own appetite grow. Once the dede had finished, his friend returned his money to him, and filled a cup for himself. Afterwards, the dede took the same five cents and paid his friend for a second cup. The money passed back and forth between the dede and his friend until they had drunk the whole keg. Both of them, smashed out of their minds, lay down in the shade of the tree. The dede started to laugh and called out to his friend.
"You know what, man? I've never drunk such cheap wine. Five cents for a whole keg! Take it with our blessing, even if I do say so myself."
Someone Build Me an Ark
Last week, it was Israel's killing of the Turkish activists. It set the city on fire--or at least at certain times of the day; protests erupted everywhere, especially in the Fatih district, a rather conservative, religious neighborhood where bellowing boys were unfurling Palestinian flags and shrieking for "vengeance."
This week, the disaster is the flood. Four straight days of heavy rains and two more to come. It rolls in down from the Black Sea in black clouded wave after wave after wave. Streets turn into rivers, rivers into lakes, and schools are closed...well at least most schools. Not Fenerbahce Sports Penitentiary and High School.
I took the bus this morning, as did every other human being in this city of 15 million. The water was sluicing down in huge sheets when I got to school. It was a half foot deep at the gate and racing down the hill like a muddy waterfall (We're on the city's highest 'mountain'). My shoes, socks, and pants legs all got soaked as I hopped toward the entrance.
As soon as I entered school, a gaggle of women closed on me demanding I take off my wet clothes. "You'll catch your death of cold!" I couldn't argue. (Though on the whole, as I've mentioned before, Turks are paranoid about the elements--air and water are the enemies of every fragile man or woman child who walks the earth--contact with either means certain death). Upstairs, a salesman had left samples for next year's school uniform in the school's library. I went up and changed into a pair of blue and yellow sweats and a Fenerbahce T. The students giggled when I emerged.
"Oh, Jeff," said Mete. "You look like a student."
Mete, of the infamous class 9B, is one of the biggest pains in the ass at school. I've perfected an imitation of him that other students ask me to do when he's not around. It's not hard, you just have to glaze your eyes over, let your mouth hang slack, and talk like a movie zombie, kind of like a slightly undead version of Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
"Why don't you just go home, Mete." I say. "Lie. Say you're sick. Please."
"You are so funny, hoja," he says. "You are looking so hot in those clothes."
"That's true. Please. Tell someone you're sick. They'll believe it. It's raining outside for God's sake. Rain kills."
Behind him his friends are trying to get me to mimic him, mouthing "Do it! Do it! Do it! Pleeeeease!"
My clothes hang in every free window of the teacher's room, trying to dry.
Puddles and small lakes are everywhere. The construction site for the gym that will never be built is a grey sludge of mud water. The parking lot reflects back the sky, pecked with endless rings of water from the falling rain. On the school's soccer field, there is what looked like an army of seagulls--about forty in all, big and bright white, milling casually through the puddles in the grass and turning their heads back and forth as if mingling over drinks while waiting for someone to call the meeting to order. They lingered there till mid morning when the rain slacked off from a Biblical deluge to a steady drenching.
And I had just swore to Ekrem's mother, Seyhan, last night that I would not go out without an umbrella again. She, Ekrem, and Ekrem's Dad, Emin had invited me over for dinner, and though it hadn't rained all afternoon, as soon as I stepped off the Metro, the clouds opened up and the clouds emptied themselves out. I quickly got lost and roamed the backstreets of Cerrahpasha for nearly twenty minutes until Ekrem's father found me looking like I had just crawled out of the sea to give this evolution a shot.
"Where's your rain slicker? And your umbrella?" He had both.
"Broken and lost," I explained. "Then forgotten."
He gave the Turkish tsk tsk tsk of dismay and worry, and hurried me home. When we got to the house, Seyhan met us at the door with a look of hysterical amusement. Look what the foreigner's done now!
"What happened to you?!"
"If you're thirsty," I said. "I could wring out my shirt."
They immediately made me change clothes and then spent about fifteen minutes taking turns working me over with a hair dryer to make sure I was warmed up. I started giggling when the gravelly voiced, cigar smoking Emin made me lift up my arms so he could take the hair dryer to my armpits.
"Don't miss a spot!" Seyhan called. She threw one of Ekrem's T-shirts at me and gave me a fierce look. "Now you must promise me not ever, ever to go out like that again without at least a rain slicker."
Well, I broke that promise and paid the price.
This afternoon I was running down by the water when the rain finally let up for a bit. Clouds of steam roiled on the sea. The Princes islands were swallowed in white water vapor. A fissure opened up in the clouds and the sun was out for the first time in days, then promptly went back in as the clouds rolled shut again. Men were huddled in their boats playing poker and backgammon. They made snide comments as I passed, as usual. "Run, Forrest, Run!". Then suddenly, as I rounded the cape, a gang of police and firemen were crowded about the bridge that separates the boat docks from Fenerbahce Stadium's parking lot. They were fishing a corpse out of Frog Creek--(The quaintly named stream is a cesspool, filled with garbage and raw sewage that burst out into the sea when the water broke the little net that filters out the bigger shit and keeps it from pouring into the Marmara. Turks may be psychotically clean in their own homes, but on the whole, people treat this city as if it were a garbage dump/human litter box). A family of women stood around a wet fireman, who was desperately explaining something to a young teenage girl. She was near tears, her eyes wide, nodding and nodding. A man had fallen in when the water burst over the barriers--a city worker sent to survey the damage.
A group of rubberneckers had formed a swarm along the bridge over Frog Creek and along the newly paved footpath. Everyone was craning their heads over everyone else, trying to see what was going on. A news crew was setting up a camera and cat weaved in and out of their feet, soggy, its hair matted, a dead kitten in its teeth--it had drowned, as well.
Istanbul's strays are roaming the streets, sodden and sullen, having given up on places to hide. As the bus sludged through puddle after puddle on the way home today, I even saw a black and white rabbit with a collar hopping through puddles in an outdoor cafe.
Labels: Culture Shock and Freak Outs, Personal Trivia
Alevi Mizah (Comic Fables)
THE DEDE
The Alevis are a kind of religious group in Anatolia. They are an odd combination of Islam (mostly Shii), old Shamanic ideas, odds and ends from the world's other major religions, and possibly even Zoroasterism. No one seems to agree on who they are for sure. For a long time, they have been persecuted in Turkey for not conforming to the mainstream. I went to one of their meetings once, called a Jem House, with Delal. It was during Ramadan, the fasting month. The "pastor" if you will (In Turkish, they call him the Dede or Grandfather) made a point, first, to tell us that there were no women or men here, only living beings, all of whom where equal. Then he went on to make fun of the Sunni Muslims fasting outside. "The true fast," he said. "Is inside you. It's a spiritual thing, a state of the soul." There was a lot of music and dancing--the baglama is almost a sacred instrument.
Anyway, I have a book of comic stories from Alevi tradition. Some of them are pretty funny, and I want to translate one or two here. They mostly show how humble the Dede is, how human and fallible--in fact humility, a flouting of authority, human fallibility, tolerance, and the ability to laugh at yourself seem to be the prominent themes. They can also be quite crude.
Here's the first one. Only one vocabulary word is important to know here. Dede, as I've explained, means "Grandfather"--but for Alevis, the Dede is the leader of the people in his parish, an elder and teacher that has no equivalent in modern Christianity. The closest thing I can think of is a pastor in the traditional, rural sense--someone who was both spiritual leader and an adviser in the every day world.
THIS KID CAN MAKE AN EVEN BIGGER ONE!
An Alevi Dede was making the rounds of his parish and visiting everyone in his congregation. At the insistence of one of his parishioners, he stayed over, and woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And what should he see, but a huge, mean dog sprawled out in front of the bathroom door! He wanted to jump over him, but he inevitably drew back when the animal started snarling at him. He waited a bit and then made another move to get into the bathroom. But the dog showed no mercy. The Dede really needed to go, and while wondering what in the world he was going to do, his eye fell on the baby sleeping in its crib in the next room. An idea hit him. He snuck into the baby's room taking care that no one heard him. He unfastened the diaper, did his business inside it, and then taped it back up like it had been before.
When the people of the house woke up the next morning, undid the baby's diaper and saw the huge pile of feces, they stood frozen in shock. "How can a breastfed little baby make such a monstrous bowel movement!" they wondered. They decided to ask the one man who was so much wiser and more experienced than they--the Dede. He stroked his beard, deep in thought, and then answered briskly.
"By God, I'll tell you what--as long as that dog lies in front of the bathroom door, that baby will take shits far bigger than this one."
Two Sketches
The lights. There are no street lights in my neighborhood, and the dark is big. Chunks of shadowed street between the black shapes of buildings, a black sky, black hulks of dilapidated houses crushed between apartment blocks. There are figures, a group of kids on the corner eating sunflower seeds, but all featureless, shades in the summer night heat. There is a man walking toward me. I smell the cologne on him before I see him. And me, lost in shadow.
The lights on the buildings seem to take on significance, they reflect back strange and alien and make me more isolated. The strange blinking red light on the second floor of one building, the line of orange glowing door bells on the entrance to another, the flickering blue of televisions, the bare white light illuminating bedrooms with people hanging out the window. It's eerie, these pools of illumination.
Chris is a young Englishman I occasionally hang out with here in Kadikoy. Everyone says he looks like Harry Potter, but he's more the love child of Harry Potter and Peter Parker--Tobey McGuire's Peter Parker. Beardless, whiskerless, round glasses, big innocent eyes. He looks like a startled elf. Chris has a reputation for being perpetually perky. He is never unhappy, never grumpy, never complains.
We are having a beer and talking about odd jobs we'd had as students. I exaggerate, of course, and turn my interview with the funeral parlor back in '99 into a full fledged summer job. I describe body pick-ups in the middle of the night, cremations, embalmings. Chris asks me, "Why would you take a job like that?" "I'm afraid of death," I tell him. "And I thought it would be a good way to face it."
This is true enough. That is why I applied. He crinkles up his Tobey McGuire face--something about his skin always looks a little too tightly fit over the bones, like it might tear if he strains it--"Why would anyone be afraid of death?"
"It's a pretty common fear, I think," I answer.
"You think so?" he asks.
"Yes! It's been motivating people throughout history, or rather, terrifying the shit out of them throughout history. I mean, it's been an issue for everybody, man. The ancient Greek philosophers talked about it--the Stoics, the Epicureans. From Heidegger to the Buddhists to my friend from high school, every philosopher in the world, real and armchair, addresses it. Hell, it's not just people who fear it. Try to crush a bug. It runs! It doesn't want to die. Death fear is everywhere, man."
Cats are yowling around us. It's fish street and the vendors are closing up shop. Srays are prowling around for heads and entrails.
"Maybe," Chris says. "I just take comfort in knowing that we all go to the same place in the end. I think it's nice. Think about it. We are all traveling together toward the same end, no one is exempt. It's rather elegant."
In addition to cat yowls, his words are punctuated by the Turkish pop song on the loudspeakers and the gypsy girl down the sidewalk, playing on her drums and singing folksongs.
"I'm sure it is," I say, "But you gotta understand that a lot of people don't feel that way, and they're in the majority."
"You really think so?"
"Okay, it's a part of life and all that crap, and we all are journeying to the same end, but there's a lot of suffering to get there, often, and I don't like seeing my loved ones go through that. Or myself. It's just scary. Jesus!"
"Maybe it's the unknown," he concedes. "People are afraid because they don't know what's coming after?"
"Yes," I say. "The unknown. Okay, let's say, you're completely wrong. You're Catholic, but the Jews or the Muslims are right or whatever and so you're going to burn in hell because you cast your lot in with the wrong crowd. Oops, right? How were you to know? But now you're forever in hell. Just burning and screaming, your skin popping and melting and cracking in the heat forever and ever and ever and ever. Eternal pain. You hurt so much you think of nothing else but the pain. Isn't that scary?" Ahh, the Baptist in me comes out. We know hell better than anybody, I think.
He pauses, shrugs, pushes up his glasses. "If I go to hell, I'll just make the best of it, I guess."
I sit back, "Make the best of it?"
"Yeah," he says in his long, drawn-out British vowels. He grins, shrugs, takes a swig of beer. "You know, you're there. You can't do anything about it. You might as well look on the bright side. You could be on a deeper level getting sodomized by a demon or something, someone with a burning sword. So sit back and thank God you're only burning."
Labels: My Lit