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She's certainly mastered that 3 point parking maneuver!My friend's grandmother was another wild one, God bless her.
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That little old lady from Pasadena!
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*See Barbara S. Schur's Amazon review page - http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/...
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Pseudo’s Connection To Recent News
As some of you may recall, I have spent most of the last 25 years developing achievement tests for schools. On the news this morning, I saw that the judge who sentenced 3 Atlanta school administrators to 7 years in jail for cheating on a high-stakes test reduced their sentences from 7 years to only 3. I helped develop some of the test questions for that test and feel that the 3 year sentence is too light, so was the 7 year sentence. They should have been sentenced to a year of teaching middle school. That would learn ‘em.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/e...
This was not the first time tests I worked on made national news. There was a similar cheating scandal in Chicago several years ago. That particular scandal rated a chapter in the best selling book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything as an example of how incentives can backfire.
My favorite cheating scandal, however, took place in Connecticut in 1996. One particular grade school in a small seashore community had gotten the highest scores on our company’s highly-rated achievement test for several years running. As a result, many yuppies from around the New York City area had started buying up houses within that schools boundaries so that they could say that their darling children were going to the best public school in the country. Prices on houses in that area more than doubled. But the superintendent of schools for the district began to smell a rat. Although the student demographics were similar throughout the school district, the methodologies that the principal of the magic grade school claimed to be using to obtain such high scores (for example, his juggling in the hallway) didn’t seem to work when they were tried in the other grade schools.
The superintendent asked our company to investigate. It turns out that electronic scanners that are used to score the number-2 pencil answer sheets have a super power. When they want to, they can detect erasures. So, the company re-ran the answer sheets for the entire district through the scanners and after a bunch of statistical magic involving PhDs, determined that there were 45% more erasures on the tests from the high-scoring school than on answer sheets of the other schools in the district, and more damning, nearly 90% of the answers that had been changed in the high scoring school were from a wrong answer to a right one. (Our statisticians pointed out that this is two standard deviations from the norm, which if you are into deviations know that that is a really good one.)
The result was that some of the home owners seemed rather upset that the $300,000 homes that they had paid $600,000 for were now only worth $300,000 sued the company and our head psychometrian for millions of dollars, saying that we were responsible for lowering property values in their fine area and because their darling children were no longer going to the best school in the country.
Pseudo, I think you need to write an aptitude test for Amazon reviewers. Above, Melki wrote: "See Barbara S. Schur's Amazon review page ..."After marveling over the amount of time Barbara seems to have on her hands to be able to review all of her purchases, I can't help but wonder why she didn't just set the travel clock right-side-up in order to read it. She said she had to keep turning it . . .
Obviously, the woman has plenty of time on her hands regardless of the fact that she cannot figure out which way is up on a clock. I, however, seem to run out of daylight every day, hence I have had little presence here lately (and reviewed absolutely nothing on Amazon despite being a good customer). In theory, things should be settling down around the middle of the month.
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Or burned as easily...
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Pseudonymous wrote: "Pseudo’s Connection To Recent NewsAs some of you may recall, I have spent most of the last 25 years developing achievement tests for schools. On the news this morning, I saw that the judge who s..."
They should add 10 years of community service on top of that sentence. Including some added hours tutoring those children whose lives they've altered. They're surely doomed to failure in the following school year. Will they need to be retested?
Joel wrote: "Pseudo, I've managed businesses where metrics were misused and abused by those directly generating them, their supervisors, those supervisors' managers, etc. I think people either don't understand ..."Before she retired, my wife worked for a office supply manufacturer. She was a customer service manager for many years, and then became the liaison with three of manufacturers largest customers--Staples, Office Max, and Walmart. Her job was to keep these beasts happy--very happy. The new customer service manager instituted a system of metrics to evaluate the customer service reps, and keep them at peak efficiently. I'm a little fuzzy on the facts here, but here's basically what happened: My wife got an irate call from Staples, saying a very large order they had submitted for a major promotion had been canceled my wife's company for some unknown reason. When my wife stormed into the customer service department, the rep who worked on the order said the order had been canceled because of some minor glitch in how the order form had been filled out. When my wife complained and explained how the rep could have resolved the issue in just a few minutes, the rep told her that she couldn't spend that much time on a single order because it would have hurt her metrics. So, it had become better to risk losing a million dollar customer rather than process one or two fewer orders in a day.
Here's a pleasant "thought for the day" a friend forwarded to me;To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine...
and those who don't and are always
seen with a bottle of water in their hand:
To paraphrase what Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
in beer there is freedom,
in water there is bacteria.
In a number of carefully controlled trials,
scientists have demonstrated that if we drink
1 liter of water each day,
at the end of the year we would have absorbed
more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria
found in feces.
In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop annually...
However,
We do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer
(or rum, whiskey or other liquor)
because alcohol has to go through a purification process
of boiling, filtering and fermenting.
Remember:
Water = Poop,
Wine = Health
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid,
than to drink water and be full of shit .
There is no need to thank me for this valuable information -
I'm doing it as a public service!
Have a great week!
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True dat! Do you realize this past Saturday was World Naked Gardening day? Is that really necessary? I understand that perhaps in some parts of the world, maybe in Las Angeles or whatever that country is in South America where people get plastic surgery all the time, maybe that could be a fun day. But I, for one, am grateful I only see my neighbors completely clothed.
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Too chilly here for gardening nekkid. And if it is warm, that means the sun is out, and I'm too red-headed to be out in the sun nekkid. So I'll keep my clothes on, to the relief of all the neighbors.
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Just thought you should know that today is National Roast Leg of Lamb Day. Let the celebrations begin!
Melki wrote: "Just thought you should know that today is National Roast Leg of Lamb Day. Let the celebrations begin! "Hmm . . . should we be reading Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" today? Or would that only freak out our spouses/better halves?
You know, at some point this month, "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" is celebrated. It's a floating holiday. Once it happened on my birthday (the 18th should anyone long to send flowers), but I could't find any appropriately themed paper plates and napkins to use to combine the celebrations.
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Woo-hoo! Third weekend in May!
http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/
I am so tempted to get a t-shirt.
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Now that's a comforting thought.
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Jeesh. I have a super-crazy busy weekend ahead of me. I hope I remember to look up every now and then.
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Hmm. . .
Backhanded compliment or sincere wish?
Perhaps I should be revving up the cattle prod.
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Google has been very kind to me.
And, in case you were concerned, the doomed spacecraft burned up over the Pacific Ocean last night. http://earthsky.org/space/doomed-russ...
It may have been heading for Rebecca.
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(I had some free time today, Joel ;-P )
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I can't think of any famous mother books, but I have A Mother's Kisses by Bruce Jay Friedman in my to-read stack. And there was a memorable mom in Bailey White's humorous book of essays - Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
Gladys Murch! Happy Mother's Day to all of you hard working mothers out there doing the world's hardest job! I hope it was a happy one for you!
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I can't think of any famous mother books, but I have A Mother's Kisses by [author..."
Oh, man, I died laughing at Mama Makes up Her Mind. Got the audio, read by the author, and it's enough to kill you. We still make jokes around here about having "something like a husband."
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And yes, it still blares a continuous loop of Turkey in the Straw, a song that has nothing to do with ice cream or summer, and in fact, has no merits whatsoever.
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I just wanted everyone to know that I have not vanished. (some of you may have hoped so…) In addition to a previously mentioned event, I have gotten a new job (same contract, different company), moved to a new state (Memphis, TN – really good BBQ, and no state taxes, yea), and was tasked to recreate the old company’s system with a new program. I’ve been busier than … well, I’ve been pretty busy. We are now settled into the new house (we all love it). Okay, there are some boxes left to be unpacked, but there will always be boxes left to unpack! I’ve almost got the new system fully functional, so it’s slowing down a little at work. We have a new terrier named Luke, so my wife’s dog Dude won’t be so lonely. Everything is going well, so now all of you will be treated/punished with more of my corny sarcasm. I missed all of you (okay I stalked the site a few times) and hope you are doing well.
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I think it's terrific that you've got a new dog.
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Good to hear from you again, Rodney. It sounds like you have your hands full but in a good kind of way. I've heard good things about Memphis, a friend recently moved up there to work also. I hope Luke and Dude like it there as much as you seem to. Continued good luck to you and your wife in the new surroundings.
My newly installed solar powered garden fountain doesn't work in the evening.Should I return it as faulty?
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The Humour Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Book of Heroic Failures (other topics)Fox in Socks (other topics)
Green Eggs and Ham (other topics)
Fox in Socks (other topics)
Fox in Socks (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Katherine May (other topics)Richard Osman (other topics)
David Sedaris (other topics)
Christopher Moore (other topics)
Christopher Buckley (other topics)
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Are you thinking that might be your great aunt's Falcon? Wow. She must be quite the woman."
Quite the driver, I'd say.