Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Smith, who says he remains the majority leader, told an Albany radio show a lawsuit was definitely a possibility. The GOP broke Senate rules by not submitting their leader-changing bill to a committee or gaining Smith’s consent, he said.

Control of NYS senate in dispute, deadline looms | Markets | Markets News | Reuters.

Silly Republicans. Didn’t you know you need the majority leader’s permission before you can replace him?

Today, John McCain put a former state senator with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Senator Obama shares John McCain’s commitment to warrantless surveillance programs, the agenda of gun manufacturers and increasing our military presence abroad — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.

(The judge also consulted Wikipedia to better understand what “Flash” might be, and he concluded that it is “the name of a file format used to transmit videos over the Internet.” Remember, kids, Wikipedia is only good enough for the federal judiciary to make precedent-setting legal decisions, not for your term papers.)

Veoh Safe Harbor ruling could help YouTube in Viacom battle

Now the eagle-eyed among you will note the “Skip Donation” link in the top right corner of the page, but seriously? This is the kind of behavior I expect from scummy marketers and those stupid interstitial ads. Why does Obama’s site accost visitors with a heavy-handed donation request before it grants them access to information about Obama and his views? (Maybe it’s just a sign of things to come; if Obama is elected, this will surely not be the first time I feel that he is strongarming me into giving him my money.)

For the curious, I had no trouble getting to John McCain’s homepage on the first try. And I guess the Associated Press noticed as much: in this article (towards the bottom) they have to tack on an “index.php” in their link to Obama’s site, but they require no such tricks to link to McCain’s site. Ain’t that something.

Last year’s race was fairly interesting: the board’s minority faction seemed to be at or around its peak in notoriety, and with Walsh being regularly lambasted by the local press it seemed, at least for a little while, as if the tide was about to turn. That didn’t happen, and it seemed when it didn’t happen that the minority had fallen for good. Then this year came around.

Board candidates Treyz and Owen, notable for their membership in the critically-acclaimed “Sunshine Group,” have been attracting much of the attention of last year’s minority freedom-fighter Meyer. Normally I, being the bright and happy person I am, am a great fan of sunshine and enlightenment. Normally I, being the rebellious and contrary teenager I am, am a great fan of resistance and revolution. Normally I, being the schadenfreude-enjoying person I am, am a great fan of the public mockery and figurative effigy-burning of public officials much deserving of such berating. Yet, there’s something about the Sunshine Group that just doesn’t sit quite well with me.

Maybe it’s got something to do with this. And it’s not necessarily the video itself per se; there are certainly enough foot-in-mouth moments deserving of public scrutiny that have gone unseen by the public at large, largely for reasons of indifference and disinterest. I certainly don’t oppose, unlike others¹², the fact that an enterprising citizen spent her own time putting together such a video for public consumption—these are, after all, public meetings, and anyone so inclined to respond in kind is, of course, more than welcome to do so³.

Yet, it is the tone of things that does seem to concern me. Funny as it is, there’s an unmistakably high school (or younger)-ish vibe that I get from the video, at least given the knowledge that it’s being used as a campaign tool. Perhaps not explicitly so—I’m not sure how much the Sunshiners are actually playing this up—but certainly implicitly so—one of their candidates posted it. And the cornerstone of their entire campaign has been to assert that there have been flaws in the BOE in recent years, and that these problems need to be addressed.

Except, that doesn’t really sound like it’s what they’re saying. There is no real hint at any sort of “solution” anywhere in the video, nor anywhere else in their broader campaign. Certainly it’s a campaign against those who are in power, but for what? Last year’s elections called into question the handling of sensitive financial matters and other professional oversights by those in power; those who composed the minority were clear in their desire to find any other flaws and correct those that were already there, because the people who were in power hadn’t been doing that. This year the Sunshiners seem to have all the vigor of last year’s minority but with none of their purpose.

Instead of sounding like a group with a passion for fixing clear problems, the Sunshiners are stuck in a position where all they have are attempts at character assassinations. And that’s unfortunate—not necessarily because character assassination itself is bad, but because it’s a really bad way to address legitimate problems. BOE President erroneously going on the Today show as the voice of the district? Bad idea. BOE leadership regularly showing bad faith and misleading the public on matters that should be open? Bad idea. Most of the other things that showed up in that video on YouTube? Bad ideas. But turning the entire campaign into a playground-style rash of ad hominem attacks is a worse idea, and it obscures any legitimate points that might be made in the process⁴.

Seems that the Sunshine’s a little too bright around here. It’s kind of a shame, too, because I’m not even sure how big a fan I am of the alternatives (or would be, at least, if I could vote).

1. Inexplicably (or not so much), there seems to be a student posting comments on referenced video who’s pulling double-duty as VOTE cheerleader and as uncontested unilateral spokesperson for the entire student body. I tend to think such (mis)representations (at least the last one) are asinine. I don’t plan to identify said student by name, since I have no direct evidence and doing so would thus be irresponsible, but it should not be a difficult exercise for the observant reader to figure out who it is for himself.
2. Yes, that was a footnote I just used: enjoy.
3. Some, in fact, do, at least by the same medium. Reference: Breslin for School Board, a somewhat déjà vu Feierman for School Board, and, in perhaps the most impressive use of the medium, Christopher Knight for School Board. A different school board, yes, but still very much worthy of your attention.
4. It really is a fortunate thing that I’m about done with high school; even though I’ve actually been fairly lucky at avoiding it, I think this kind of melodrama would have soon enough done me in.

Nations that try to teach math in terms of daily life have the lowest test scores.

So glad I didn’t stick around the elementary school for Everyday Math. Mean Jeans was many times better.

Sidenote: our class’ senior superlatives are due this week. All I can say is that I wish Corey Brezak and Sheila the best in their quest for “Best Car,” and can only remind my readership that every good cause has a Facebook group. And this is a very good cause.

First: the means of comparison here was the writing portion of the new SAT, a section which I feel compelled to point out is not weighed particularly heavily (if at all) by a number of colleges compared to the critical reading and math sections of the test. And this perhaps is the most important point to consider. I hardly think that the SAT writing section is capable of telling me whether or not I’m a “good” writer, and I certainly don’t need an 800 to validate my own ability to compose sentences and make points in writing.

The SAT, like all standardized tests, judges the student (or blogger, as the case may be) on his ability to provide to the grader what the grader wants to read. Typically this takes the form of a position on some vague human ideal or absurd philisophical question, which is then supported by equally absurd “concrete examples” either from personal experience, historical examples, or readings, the last two of which typically come from what’s been studied in school that year. The SAT does not care whether you have any actual interest in the topic, or whether you have any fitting “personal examples,” or even whether your paper has any semblance of fact in it. The grader essentially takes each paper through a vague rubric that places emphasis on using concrete evidence to argue abstract ideas, creating an argument designed exclusively to please one’s audience, and preparing a piece of writing to meet these goals in a span 25 minutes.

In short, it’s no wonder that the high scoring essays from students weren’t particularly astounding, or that bloggers didn’t score particularly well. The essay on the SAT is just like any section of any standardized tests: those who perform best on the test are not necessarily those who are most qualified at the subject matter. The College Board chooses as exemplars the essays that most clearly address the points that graders have to check off on their rubrics, and those who fail to meet these points explicitly are left by the wayside.

I enjoy blogging for a simple reason, if nothing else: it gives me the opportunity to write. I can’t blog unless I actually decide that I have something to say–it just won’t happen. I write about things that interest me, and things that I have an opinion on (and yeah that’s a preposition at the end of a sentence, but I don’t care). Without a blog I’d be left with no writing experience other than a few formal papers on the changes in women’s roles in Chinese history or the effect of friction on the speed of a rolling ball, or something similarly useless. One of the most important things I felt I was able to do in my English class last year had to do with voice, and being able to actually write something informal while injecting some personality into it. I’m rather pleased, and this very blog is the one place where I have the most opportunity to practice it and take advantage of it.

Besides, I could sure as hell spend 25 minutes writing something out on my blog when I already know what I want to say, and I don’t have to worry about saying what some robot in Princeton wants to hear.