Idaho Is Scared of Posters, I Guess

A news item.

And this is the poster in question, which should be plastered everywhere:

Back in March, the West Ada School District near Boise forced a teacher to take this poster down from a wall in her classroom. She rightly refused, left the district, and found a job elsewhere.

Now the Idaho Attorney General's Office has ruled that any school in the state wanting to display this poster is breaking the law.

It's odd to see people scared of inclusion; of offering a token to show students they're welcome.

Big scary, scary posters frightening big men who ought to know a lot better than that. Becuase I guarantee if someone of their ilk wanted to display a poster or sign in a classroom and others were against it, they'd have their knickers in a twist.

Obviously, a copy of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, for example, could be said to express an opinion or a political point of view. Should they be banned from display in Idaho schools?

I'm sure the AG's office could write an opinion that would dance a tango around such a prohibition. But banning speech is banning speech.

One Month Left

Well, I guess a little over a month.

Five weeks, to be exact, and I have to be back working in the office.

Here's what that looks like:

Work from home: Be at my computer in the basement, talking with others at various locations via phone and email, working to revise documents and get them approved.

Work from the office: Be at my computer at the office, talking with others at various locations via phone and email, working to revise documents and get them approved.

I won't be required to be "on location" with the bulk of my customers out at the Site. I won't have to take the bus, or get up early, or get home late.

So the work I do from home won't change a bit when I go back to the office.

Help it make sense, because it doesn't.

The Housing Market is, Shall We Say, in Need of Some TLC

Lexi and Keaton are moving back locally and are hoping to get into a house.

Of course the housing market is weird, locally and nationally. Really high prices and the like. Makes me appreciate how lucky we were getting into the home we have now, at the nadir of the 2008 real estate collapse.

We took Lexi to see a house in Iona on Saturday.

Should have noted some red flags right away.

First of all, these are the only two photos of the house on the listing. No interior shots whatsoever. We'll get to that in a minute.

Then, the description:

I emailed the agent to see how much "TLC" the house required, but never heard back. We were contacted by a different agent through Zillow, however, so we set up a time to see the house.

Obviously the phrases 'great potential" and "this home does need some TLC" told me there was some work the house needed, but I thought we should at least see if it was cosmetic or if it were more structural.

I did not take any pictures, though I probably should have.

First of all, here's a view from Google Street View:

Not necessarily flattering. It's got an addition that looks like most of the town of Sweet Haven -- like it was built in a couple of hours.

Currently, the city is resurfacing the street and putting in curb and gutter, so the fence is mangled and a good portion of the driveway is missing.

We had to access the house through the back -- and the real estate agent put his foot in a hole and fell as we were walking there.

Once inside, well . . . you could see why there were no interior pictures on the ad.

An addition had been built on the back of the house, and it's clear the roof -- even though metal -- is leaking like a sieve and the ceiling in the two added rooms is either collapsing or bowing noticeably. The first room we came into was covered in bird feathers; that was after we got through the outer door, partly kicked in, and the interior door, locked but not looking all that secure.

The house stank of animal droppings, and there were a few on the carpet that looked like it had been plenty tromped on with muddy feet.

I don't know how they can ask for $230,000 for this house with a straght face. You'd seriously have to trash it out and put an easy $100,000 or more into it to make it even partly habitable, and that would likely include demoing the addition on the back of the house and putting a new roof on, so more like an additional $200,000.

This is not a house with potential or one that needs TLC. It should probably be torn down so the new owner could start again on the land.

I felt bad bringing Lexi there, but it was an eye-opener for them. They're going to either have to spend more money on a house now, or rent a while when they move back until the market has a correction.

Thanks, dirty_sanchez

 

This lovely little rhyme is from a book called "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book," published in London in 1744.

I had a feeling that the third line, "barley butt," meant something more than just an odd grain-related insult. So I did some googling. Then I put on some PPE and clicked on the Urban Dictionary link and found this:

Thanks be to dirty_sanchez for confirming my hunch there was someting more going around.

Buck Rogers, Jim Rockford, and that Infernal Roller Disco Music

Listening to the pilot episode of "The Rockford Files" this morning as I work. He goes into a disco and suddenly it's the music from the Buck Rogers roller-disco scene.

But he's only in the disco for about five seconds. This pilot is poorly edited, even if it features some snappy music.

And while I know someone thought this was really neat, watching this scene was cringe-inducing then, and it's cringe-inducing now.

Against All AI Authority Except my Mom

So this is interesting.

Per this article at Futurism.com, teachers, researchers, and other professionals have started to notice certain writing styles popping up from ChatGPT, and likely from other large language models.

Thing is, I'm not sure I see these patterns as horrendous as reported -- certainly not use of the em dash, which I use a lot in my own writing.

From the article:

"As AI-generated text is becoming increasingly ubiquitous on the internet, some distinctive linguistic patterns are starting to emerge — maybe more so than anything else, that pattern of negating statements typified by "it's not X, it's Y."

"Once you notice it, you start to see it everywhere. One teacher on Reddit even noticed that certain AI phrase structures are making the jump into spoken language."

Pay particular to the italicized sentence (emphasis mine). It's an enormous red flag not that LLMs are corrupting the language, but that programs used to detect it are going to be outpaced as common spoken (and, yes, written) language evolves thanks to these artificial intelligence structures. Like it or not, we are going to lose the battle against AI in the written, and likely spoken word.

Do we give up?

No. But we can certainly point things out. But not in a rude way, because right now even my students whom I'm confident aren't using AI (or at least all that much AI) to write and churning out essays that sound like they always do, per author Terry Pratchett's description of newspaper language in his Discworld novels: As if the writers "have their bums stuffed with tweed."

I'm going to focus less on hunting out AI and focus a lot more on praise for students who turn their own phrases, who take risks, even if they end up taking them down blind alleys, because these are the students who really want to learn how to write or communicate. Those who want the easy way out through AI are going to take it, and technology is going to make that increasinly hard for us to detect. But that ought to help make the original, awkward, bumbling human-sourced writing stand out more. Those are the students I want to help.

Way too Late at the Movies: To Kill A Mockingbird(!)

I add the (!) in the title because, as my oldest son and I watched the movie unspool this evening, I realize that while I have seen parts of this film, I don't think I've ever sat all the way through it.

Two little asides first: William Windom, instantly recognizable as the prosecutor. Then Robert Duvall as Boo Radley. I had to stare at him for a while before I saw it; maybe I'm used to seeing him as an older actor.

Nevertheless, what a spectacular film.

A daring story to tell in a book and in a movie at the time. We could use a few more movies like this.

Much is said about Gregory Peck's performance -- and the praise is deserved. But considering the cast as a whole, I have to say there's not a bad performance in the bunch.

And regarding the controversey over the first draft of the novel, "Go Set A Watchman," that dared paint Atticus Finch in racist tones, I've got to say while I haven't read the book, I'm glad it exists. It serves a different purpose than what was published first, showing the jarring complexity of life at the time, something we'd do well to look at today where we elevate people to the status of hero until they do or say something unorthodox and have to be toppled from the pedestal and rendered human. We could all do with a bit of introspection as to our own behavior and see that while we want to believe we're saintly, we sin as well.

Lincoln at Gettysburg, by Garry Wills

I enjoyed reading Garry Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America."

The book analyzes the rhetoric and context of the Gettysburg Address in a lot more words than the actual address includes.

While I have to believe Wills' analysis is spot on, I was most taken by two quotes from Lincoln on the subject of war:

Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he first be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.523

I read this in context of finger-pointing over bad actors at recent protests, and thought this portion of the quote pertinent: "Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion."

Bad guys are going to show up at protests and under that cover, do bad guy things. Those who were there to protest get blamed for the bad guys being there, doing bad things, "sullying" the protest, no matter how pure.

Then there's this:

When our own beloved Country, once, by the blessing of God united, prosperous and happy, is not afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand og God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy -- to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order and peace, throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of cirivl and religious liberty earned, under His guidance  and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.264

I can't imagine any president saying this today and not igniting a furore from those not religious, missing the mark in Lincoln's call for humility and repentance, ideals which certainly apply to those who believe in a Christian God or not.

Petunias and Birds

 

On to better things.

1. The petunias have really taken off. Michelle's not necessarily smitten with petunias, but they certainly do like the places we've planted them. I think they look great, and she agrees.

2. The baby birds have moved on. We hope under circumstances of being able to fly off and find lives beyond the hanging basket on the front porch, but we don't really know.

The internet tells me robin fledglings are fairly competent filers 10-15 days after hatching, which puts the time about right. It was amazing how quickly they grew. I don't know why I suspected I'd see adolescent birds flopping around the nest waiting for mom and dad to come home with a meal. . .

The birds' presence in the hanging basket didn't really do our petunias there much good, in part because I had to wire the irrigation dripper away from the center of the basket because the parent robins didn't like where it was hanging. I've taken that wire down and maybe the petunias will do better after that.

Huh?

The fence project I mentioned in my last post is finished, but not as I'd like. Some neighborly complications have arisen. More on that later, hopefully resolved.