Month: October 2012

I am voting No on amendment #1 in the upcoming Georgia general election. This amendment has to do with State-licensed charter schools (as opposed to locally-licensed). Before I tell you why I’m voting no, here are the facts as I understand them ((Huge caveat: I am not an educational expert. I’ve derived these facts from [gasp] reading the legislation and the constitutional amendment text.)):

• Charter schools are legal in Georgia today and all decisions regarding them are made at the local school district level
• Voting yes will empanel an appointed commission who will set rules and make decisions regarding State-licensed charter schools
• The commission will be appointed by the Governor (3 members), the President of the State Senate (2 members), and the Speaker of the State House (2 members)
• The commission will only act if a petition to have a charter school is denied at the local level
• Funding for the new schools will come from another pot of money and from the standard formula
• Funding for the old schools will, by the standard formula, decrease due to a loss of student enrollment

Here are the opinions as I understand them. You’re more than welcome to surf the web for the various opinion pieces. ((I haven’t posted links anywhere here because I’m sending this in via email this from a remote undisclosed location and in the past, links in those posts have broken)) Warning: there’s no real information in any of those.

• Charter schools approved at the state level are tantamount to stabbing your children in the neck with a blunt straw and sucking out their life juices
• Charter schools are the only thing saving our decrepit republic from the onslaught of socialism (Yes, I’ve heard people screaming about socialism while advocating for more public-schooling. I’m not sure they understand what they’re talking about)
• Charter schools as designed by this legislation (HB 797, by the way) will be controlled by an unelected body who will eat your babies after being appointed for life terms
• Charter schools cannot be effectively administered by the blinkered, shortsighted locals who don’t know their ass from a toboggan

Other tidbits of note, which I tried hard to not let sway my opinion:

• This legislation is being pushed hard by the Republicans
• This legislation is supported by the Tea Party

As almost everyone is power in Georgia is a Republican of one stripe or another, and at the local level I tend to support our Republican candidates, ((At least the ones who aren’t insane and screaming about Agenda 21)) I’ve let that first one slide. However, having the Tea Party jump on the bandwagon was a huge blow against it in my opinion.

As I said, I’m voting No. And here is why:

• Is there a problem? Nowhere in the noise and furor has anyone identified an actual problem. Is having charter schools denied at the local level an issue? Who’s being harmed here? What’s the issue? Without a clearly identified problem, what’s the point of a modification to existing law?
• Who’s paying for this? As I said above, it seems that funding will go down for local schools if a State-licensed charter school appears. That seems a fatal flaw to me.
• Too much opinion, no real substance. In contrast to the Transportation Referendum fight of last summer, this is all noise and no information. When that sort of thing happens, I’m going to vote on principle against a change in law.

Reason why I might have decided Yes:

• I support more educational controls at the state level. I understand the need for local controls of schools, but that allows for nut jobbiness like Cobb County’s anti-evolution stickers of 2004. At the state level, things would be more open to scrutiny.

As a side note to my last post, when Brandon Sanderson made his entrance to the room, he raised up the novel shown in the picture and it was met with tumultuous applause. He then explained that it was “some other” book and that he’d just brought the dust cover to show.

Or did he?

He’s probably smart enough not to bring a physical copy (even if one existed at the end of August) to Dragon*Con. It would need to be guarded. However, he then proceeded to read from the novel off his laptop, shown in the image. Jenn and I pondered the probably success of a laptop-stealing mission, followed by a dash for the emergency exit.

We’d probably have been mobbed. We didn’t try.

But it was briefly tempting.

I mentioned in my Dragon*Con montage that I went to see Brandon Sanderson read from the final book of the Wheel of Time. This was the only thing I did at Dragon*Con where I waited in line ((Almost. I did wait for the Mech Pods at times.)). In fact, I got in line with Jenn over an hour and a half early, and still only secured second row seats.

If you’re not familiar with the Wheel of Time fantasy series, it’s one of the defining epic fantasies of my generation. ((Some would argue it is the defining series, with George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire a close second.)) The first book was published in 1990, and I still remember the reading of it. The last book will be published on January 8, 2013, twenty-three years after the first. Those 23 years define almost the entirety of my reading life; this is the culmination of reading I’ve been doing since high school.

The series was conceived, detailed, written, and defined by Robert Jordan (pen name for James Rigny) who wrote the first 11 books plus a prequel novel. Unfortunately he passed away from cardiac amyloidosis in 2007. I distinctly remember when Robert Jordan was at Dragon*Con in 2005. I was sitting with Jenn and I leaned over and remarked that he better finish the series before he died. I recalled those words with horror when the following year he was diagnosed.

Brandon Sanderson was asked to take up the mantle that Robert Jordan had been forced to lay down, and in this fan’s opinion he has knocked it stiff. Sanderson has stayed true to the spirit of the series, finishing and polishing the notes and outlines that Jordan left behind.

The reading that we attended at Dragon*Con was moving in many ways. Sanderson read a passage from A Memory of Light which no one had heard before that moment. That was moving, but more so was the question and answer session afterward. Sanderson is one of the most personable and genuine authors I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to and the situation he’s in is freighted with emotions on both sides of the table. There were at least four spontaneous ovations during the Q&A. The people who packed that room to the rafters were there because they love the series, and this is the end. This is the last installment of something that has shaped a generation of fantasy readers.

Honestly, it’s impossible to convey the emotions I felt in that room.

January 8th. It both can’t come soon enough, and it’s going to be here too quickly. I will probably take the day off from work to read the book. ((That’s just being honest with myself and my employer; I’m going to be reading that book whether or not I take the day off.)) I’ve already read the prologue, and the first chapter. Three months until the day. ((It’s not too late to read the series before time is up. It’ll take you about three months.))

I’ve been going through a period lately where I feel that I don’t have any time at all to do things. This is largely self-inflicted (of course) but things that are important to me that I’ve not been keeping a good handle on include:

• Blogging. Yeah, haven’t been doing much of that recently. This could be more generally stated as simply “writing.”
• Photography. Other than Dragon*Con and the trip to France, I haven’t pulled out the camera in ages.
• Reading. Honestly, with few exceptions I haven’t read anything new in months.
• House work. Been totally sucking at that recently. Enough so that we’re getting a maid service in here and I just paid a guy $500 to do the 2.5 years of neglected yard work.
• Friendships. Again, other than Dragon*Con I haven’t seen some people around here in months.

It’s not like I’ve not been doing things. It’s curious what can happen to the time you spend when you’re busy doing the wake, eat, work, repeat thing. Looking around my office, I realize once again that I’ve got too much stuff going on and I need to refocus.

So, I’m doing another housecleaning of hobbies. If I’m not actively going to do something or likely to in the next month, it’s gone. Good bye, arduino. Good bye, papercraft mechas. Good bye these books here that I picked up thinking I’d read someday (several years ago). Gotta just declutter this stuff and do the things I want to be good at. If something doesn’t have a place, it’s going to get one, or it’s going to get gone.

It’ll be nice to have clear horizontal space in the office again, and to know what it is I should be focusing some time on. This all reminds me of this comic, which I hope to emulate.

This process should be done in a day or so. Anyone need an arduino?