The Quest for the Perfect Sentence (Continued)

From the "Sentences You Never Thought You Would Ever Hear" File:

"How could he be innocent if his fingerprints were found on that banana bread recipe?"

Thanks, Dateline.

The New Season

In terms of television trends, it looks like horror is the new cooking-competition show.  In the last week, two new horror shows premiered on TV (well, American TV, anyway), both of which evoke the eternal question: If a house looks as creepy as THAT, why would ANYONE choose to live there?

In "Bedlam," which BBC America will use to fill the time slot of "Doctor Who" for the next few weeks, a group of telegenic young Brits--producers probably pitched the show as "'Friends' with Poltergeists"--are the anchor tenants of the Bedlam Heights luxury apartments.  Note the subtle symbolism of the name: Bedlam Heights used to be an insane asylum where unspeakable things happened.  Quite the selling point for prospective tenants, that.

Joining the crew is Jed, the adoptive cousin of the female lead (whose not-quite-related status, I assume, makes eventual sex inevitable); Jed has spent the last few years in a mental hospital because he sees dead people.  So in case you wondered what became of little Haley Joel Osment after the end of  "The Sixth Sense," apparently he became hunky but everybody thinks he's nuts.  Still, Jed's powers come in handy in the haunted environs of Bedlam Heights.  Overall, "Bedlam" is entertaining enough, but it's clearly only the second-best ghost-story of the new season.   

The best would be "American Horror Story."

 From the producers of "Nip/Tuck," "American Horror Story" is basically a southern Gothic--well, southern California, but still.  Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton star as Ben and Vivien Harmon, a married couple trying to start a new life in a new place after one of them has had an extramarital affair and the other has had a miscarriage (I'll let you guess who's who).  The best part of the show, though, is Jessica Lange, who hams it up hypnotically as creepy next-door neighbor Constance.  A faded southern belle, Constance reminds one of a latter-day Blanche DuBois; if Stanley Kowalski's rape had resulted in a pregnancy, one could imagine the result being Constance's spectre-sensitive, Down-syndrome suffering daughter, Adelaide.

I don't know if the show is meant to be a mini-series or an ongoing drama.  If the former, then great, but I suspect it's the latter, in which case, no matter how entertaining the show is, the real test will come at the moment when the Harmon clan inevitably realizes that their dream house is, in fact, a haunted nightmare palace. As well-educated, financially secure professionals, they will have no reasonable excuse to stay.  Why would they choose to live there?  How well "American Horror Story" deals with that question will determine the show's ultimate fate.

Thursday Trendwatch

Here are the top-trending stories on Yahoo! as of 4:30 PM:

10. Bank of America: Since BofA announced that it would begin charging customers a five-dollar monthly fee for the privilege of using a debit card to pay for things with their own money, the company has mysteriously been having technical problems on its website.  The company insists that the website has not been hacked, but I suspect that, somewhere, a bunch of folks in Guy Fawkes masks are having a good chuckle.

9. Billy Bob Thornton: Well, technically, it's his estranged daughter Amanda Brumfield who's all trendy right now.  A Florida judge sentenced her to 20 years in prison for aggravated manslaughter, after a one-year old child in her care suffered a fractured skull and died.  At least the judge didn't make her sit through "Armageddon."  Sorry.

8. Brain Injuries: Yes, brain injuries are trendy--and not just those inflicted by the estranged children of celebrities.  (Again, sorry.)  According to the CDC, brain injuries among football-playing youth are on the rise.  Which is interesting considering the amount of attention being paid to the issue of concussions in the NFL.  Maybe with the crackdowns on blows to the head in the professional leagues, kids figure they better get their concussions while they still can.

7. Tim Robbins: The Academy-Award winning actor and noted liberal activist was thought to have joined the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Turns out he just stumbled on the protest after taking a long walk.  "I needed to get out of the house," he said.  "Susan was bugging me to do the dishes."

6. Lisa Irwin:  10-month-old Lisa Irwin disappeared from her Missouri home sometime after she was put to bed on Monday night--  Oh come on!  Murderous celebrity offspring! Brain injuries!  Kidnapped toddlers. . . .What the hell is going on with the Trend list today!  Don't the folks at Yahoo! know that some of us are trying to make jokes?!?

5. 30-Year Mortgages: I don't have a joke for this, either.  I'm just relieved the subject doesn't involve infanticide.

4. Phylicia Rashad: Mrs. Huxtable will fill the Denzel Washington chair in the drama department at Fordham University.  She will teach a class called "Creating a Character," which is amusing if you consider that she created basically ONE in her career.

3. Terrell Owens: The wide-receiver, recovering from knee surgery, is still hoping to play in the NFL this season.  If that doesn't work out, may we suggest the Denzel Washington chair at Fordham University?

2. Jennifer Aniston: Malian orphans take note: The former friend is not, apparently, desperate to have a baby of her own.  She's 42, so if she changes her mind a few years from now, you now have a third option to add to the Madonna-Angelina Jolie axis of adoption.

And the number one trendiest topic at this moment is. . .

1. Kelly Clarkson: The original American Idol beat the leakers at their own game by releasing a video of her latest single ahead of schedule.  Asked to comment, the head of the Leakers' League said, "Yeah, um, we weren't really interested in that, anyway."

A Crazy Day

I apologize for the brief post, but I'm busy absorbing today's news: Sarah Palin dies, and Steve Jobs announces he's NOT running for president.  Wow.

I  might have mixed those up.  I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is?

Sometimes, when students give less than their all, I offer a gentle reminder that, for all intents and purposes, studying is their job.  The people in students' lives--and society in general--expect nothing less than full participation in the business of their own education.  As seriously as doctors or policemen or firemen take their respective professions, so, too, should students think of their own particular vocation.

"Oh, yeah?" the more confrontational ones retort.  "If this is my job, then how come I don't get paid?"
It's a fair question.

Should students be given cash incentives for coursework?  A non-profit organization, the National Math and Science Initiatives, thinks so.  This program provides equipment, teacher-training, and tutoring to students preparing to take advanced placement exams.  It also gives $100 to any student who scores a '3' or better on the AP exam, as well as cash bonuses for the instructors based on how many of their students succeed.  Last year, the most successful instructor pocketed over $12,000 extra based on his students' success.

Some complain that this reward system crassly caters to the basest mercenary instincts, reducing or eliminating students' intrinisic motivation.  As if anyone is intrinsically motivated to study calculus!

The payments to the students are unobjectionable.  The students are not being paid to take the exams; they are being rewarded for doing well.  As long as all students who succeed receive the same reward, regardless of whether they score a perfect '5' or a passing '3,' no ethical lines are being crossed.  While $100 may seem like a large amount to a student (or even a blogger), it is still a largely symbolic amount, and ultimately of only slightly more monetary value than the standard reward for good work: An 'A' on a report card.

The teachers' rewards are more troubling.  Don't get me wrong: I'm all for teachers getting as much money as possible.  The concern becomes that teachers, knowing that they can get significant bonuses for successful students might cherry-pick the best students in the school for their classes--something that this national program discourages; indeed, one of the fundamental principles of this program is that any students can enroll in the classes.  Still, I can imagine a situation where a teacher with, say, 40 students might devote more time to the top half of the class, figuring to hedge his bets: Maximize the success among those "expected" to pass, rather than try to teach everybody something, even if this means taking time away from the strongest students.

Certainly, I want all my students to succeed.  And in all honesty I wouldn't protest too much if someone offered me a bonus for each student who passed some national exam.  But in the end, I don't think my results would be much different--for better or worse.  Teachers didn't go into teaching for the money.  No one should get the idea that financial incentives are going to change what teachers ultimately do.

Monday Miscellany

The Rich Get Californian-er

According to a recently released report, 25% of the richest people in America live in the Golden State.  Topping the California list in these troubled economic times is Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who last year had a net worth approaching an astonishing $14,000!  The next Californian on the list is Facebook magnate Mark Zuckerberg, who as of last Thursday reportedly had $183.26 in his checking account.

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Typecasting 101

If you're a British leading-man-type, you can aspire to play either James Bond OR the Doctor (i.e., "Doctor Who")--not both.  Years back, I read somewhere that Hugh Grant was being considered for the role of 007.  This is ludicrous.  Hugh Grant is as Doctor as they come.  Colin Firth, on the other hand, is clearly a Bond.  It works with American actors, too: George Clooney = Bond; Johnny Depp = Doctor.  The point is: Know your limitations.  Don't try to be a Bond if you're inherently a Doctor.

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Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Get Caught

While the military's repeal of DADT was a much-publicized and highly welcome milestone in gay rights, I feel I missed something that, while obviously less-heralded, was no less significant: When did "Cheaters" feature its first gay couple?  I mean, we all knew that gay people are just as capable of bravery and nobility as heterosexuals; it's nice to see they're capable of licentiousness, too.

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Today's My Birthday. . .

. . . and (this is true) when I was surfing the Web this morning, just bouncing around checking out some links that friends had put up on Facebook, I got a pop-up for an "over-50" dating site.  Now, for the record, I am only 42.  And married.  Still, some of those cougars were quite--oh, Hi, WOS.  Gotta go.

I clicked on a link this morning and got a pop-up for a "seniors' dating" site.  Come on!

People Power and People Powerless

"Democracy," according to Winston Churchill, "is the worst form of government, except for all the others."  Lately, democracy seems to be taking a few hits.

An article in the Times last week talked about the fact that democratic governments around the world are under siege from their own constituents.  Citizens of Greece, India, Israel, the United Kingdom--not to mention those here in the US--are extremely frustrated.  Democracies all--solid, indisputable democracies--these nations empower their people to select their own representatives and ostensibly to rule themselves.  They also provide an unfolding answer to a troubling question: If democratic rule fails to improve the condition of a large number--or a majority--of the citizenry, what then?

We romanticize elections.  American newscasters especially extol the virtues of the democratic republic, especially when an election results in the defeat of the governing party.  The "peaceful transfer of power" from one regime to the next is the hallmark of the mature democracy, and I don't minimize its significance.  As complacent as Americans have become about such a spectacle, we should recognize how rare--historically and even in the modern world--such a shift in power is.  But while we've mastered voting, even in the United States we still struggle with the concept of governance afterwards.

Part of the problem arises from a fundamental misunderstanding--a belief that, because we vote, we live in a democracy and that, therefore, the wishes of the people are the primary mover of society. 
We've gotten to the point, however, where our governmental representatives seem more concerned with serving corporate masters who finance their election campaigns than they do with meeting the needs of the average citizens they supposedly serve--at least insofar as these two interests are in opposition.  This makes people question their representatives and, more frighteningly, of democracy itself.

People shouldn't lose faith in democracy, though, at least not until they try it.  Because despite the liberal Western faith in democracy, we really have seen very little of the phenomenon.  The US, of course, is not a democracy, but a republic: we elect other people to represent us. Ideally, these representatives respond to the will of their constituents, but as mentioned above, they don't.  And if they don't. . . well there's always the next election--but that just perpetuates the cycle of electing the people who can serve the moneyed interests who finance them.

Now, of course, with the advent of social media, people theoretically have more power than ever before to make their wishes known.  Democracy--direct democracy--is plausible on a scale larger than any seen before.  Of course, this poses dangers, too: The will of the majority may be in direct conflict with the rights of the minority.  But with the structural framework laid down and, generally, accepted in this country at least--with things like judicial review a solid part of our civic enterprise--minority rights can still be protected while affording the people an unprecedented opportunity to make their wishes known.

I am neither a politician nor a political scientist, and I know that the structure I propose has and number of pitfalls and dangers.  But the current system isn't working so great either.  And with people repudiating the results of elections and rioting in the streets, the time has come to start tweaking the system in a thoughtful way before the tweaking is taken out of our hands in a way that makes the dark side of democracy all too clear.