Gatekeeper

To begin the year, folks like me who help facilitate educational technology got a little pep talk/wake up. We were reminded once again that we have ten year olds walking round with more computing power in their back pocket than was used to land on the moon. Back in 1969, there were not very many ten year olds involved in landing a man on the moon, but wouldn't it have been amazing, as an educator, to have your students connected to such a momentous occasion?
I think about the time I spent back in 2009, rushing around our school building, trying to get televisions set up so that every classroom could watch Barack Obama's Inauguration. It was a day that wanted to be shared. It needed to be shared. This contrasted mightily with the Inauguration that occurred eight years later. Our teachers, parents, and students as a group put their heads in the metaphorical sand and made ignoring it an act of defiance. Looking back, I do wish that I had taken the opportunity to engage some of our fifth grade students in a more proactive way. They definitely had opinions, and lacking an organized forum or a unified voice, they were left with the fear, hurt and anger this election generated among the families at my school.
If the kids at my school aren't using their technology to land men on the moon or to live stream the inauguration of the first circus peanut ever to become President of the United States, what are they doing with it? According to most studies, listening to music or watching TV. After that, they are connecting with one another about what they just saw or heard. The kind of conversations that take place on the playground about didja see this or didja hear that can now take place across vast distances and be shared with millions of other interested kids.
Millions. This is the highlight of the tour. What you thought about last night's WWE cage match will be sent out across the wi-fis to anyone who cares to pick up the thread you've cast. Just like that photo you took of your friend. Whether they wanted you to or not. And then there are all those things that you might be tempted to do with that much bandwidth and that many eyes and ears. If you weren't interested in landing a man on the moon. Or watching Barack Obama's Inauguration.
In an instant. To millions. Not just whoever happened to come into the bathroom and read what you wrote on the stall. It's my job to try and keep the ketchup in the bottle. Once it's out, it tends to be pretty difficult to get it back in. And these are very powerful bottles of ketchup. Did I mention that they could land a man on the moon?
Or maybe you could text your President and tell him what you think. You've got the power. Use it wisely. Use it well. No pressure.

Make America Dark Again

In just over a week, darkness will be coming to this country. It comes in the shape of a solar eclipse, which at one time was seen as a sign, a portent of things to come. Interestingly, we live in an era when, instead of fleeing the shadow of the moon as it wanders across North America, people are moving in droves to be within the path of totality. This is possible because of science. Yes, I said it, and I stand by it. The ability to track and predict solar eclipses is a gift given to us by astronomers and mathematicians who have this thing figured out to the nth degree. These folks are so very clever, in fact, that they know that "nth degree" means. Serious biz.
It wasn't always that way. There was a time when humans looked up at the sun and were terrified to see it being eaten by some terrifying force that threatened to swallow it whole. Imagine their relief when the light returned and order was restored. About three hours later. Imagine the chaos and terror that might have ensued back before there was a way to forecast such events. The end of days came and I didn't even make it out to Costco to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape.
Of course, that was before the invention of duct tape, which is something we can also take time to thank science for, but not right now. This was back when Galileo was put in prison for saying that the earth was not the center of the universe. Thanks to him and his buddy Coprenicus, I can take a flashlight, a tennis ball, and a globe and entertain fourth graders with the very low-fi version of how all of this magic happens. Thanks to the science of flashlights, too. And globes.
So here we are, in the twenty-first century with families and friends taking time off work to find their little place in the lack of sun. There will be plenty of these folks who would probably like to argue the existence of global warming, since they don't see Florida sinking.
Not yet.
And yet, when climate scientists released their State of the Climate report for 2016, stating that last year was the hottest on record, a great many of us shrugged their shoulders and went back to their Twitter accounts. Oddly enough, it was on Twitter that I was encouraged to consider this science thing by noted science guy, Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's kind of like the Twitter version of Galileo. He keeps jabbering on and on about how the world isn't that hard to figure out if you do the math. Because that is what science does. Next week it's going to bring the darkness. We can't really stop that from happening.
Global warming? There are still things we can do.
Thanks, science.

Fire And Fury

First of all, I think that Marvel comics has its new spinoff series title, thanks to our "President." He really said that he would respond to North Korea's threats with "fire and fury." It  could be that he chose this particular turn of phrase because "shock and awe" was still under review by the patent commission. These things take time, you know. 
The trademarking of a phrase, I mean. Not the popping off despot dictators. That just takes a few seconds. This may also be why, a couple weeks back, when the "President" made his multi-tweet pronouncement that began, "After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow… " followed by a nine minute pause, many Americans feared the worst. The misguided and phobic finale of that flurry came as a relief to some, including some of the Generals who were not only caught off-guard by the ban on transgender Americans in the Armed Forces, but feared for a moment that the "President" may have been declaring war between games of Candy Crush. 
Drop on top of this frightening war of words the assurance the "President" gave in yet another tweet: "My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before...." Then a seven minute gap before he finished his his thought: "...Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!" The guy has been in office for six months. A few of those months had to be spent explaining to Rick Perry that part of his job as Energy Secretary included managing our nuclear weapons. Almost five thousand warheads. Let's say that Rick got right to work in February. And he had some help. Are we convinced that they all got renovated? And modernized? No more steam-powered nukes for the USA!
That's what makes America Great. Again. A renovated nuclear stockpile and a nutjob with an itchy trigger finger. A nutjob with an itchy trigger finger with no sense of history. The only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in war is the United States. Twice. Once on August 6, and then three days later in 1945. Ask the folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They're in Japan. That's pretty close to North Korea. And our "President" chose to drop his bomb right between those dates.
Saber rattling is something that countries that like to think of themselves as super powers do. If you have super powers like Fury and Fire, you don't really have to do that. Unless you're a nutjob with an itchy trigger finger and no sense of history.

Missed It

I was sitting in my classroom the other day, with a week and a half still to unwind before the short people start to fill the seats and the halls outside. I was thinking about Ned. Ned won't be coming back to our school this year. He was a fifth grader and got promoted along with the rest of his classmates.
Well, actually, that's not completely true. Ned will be going to middle school this year. Somewhere. I don't know exactly where because he didn't show up for the promotion exercises on the penultimate day of school. This was strange to me because Ned was invariably one of the first kids to show up on any given day. He was there before I put the PE equipment out on the yard. He was invariably the kid who would take a variety of different balls from the rack and punt them across the playground. After I had gone back inside.
Ned was discreet, in this way. It didn't mean that the other kids wouldn't rat him out the minute I returned to the playground, but at least he had the decency to wait until I wasn't staring directly at him. That meant that I had a great many chances to discuss with Ned the safe, respectful and responsible use of playground equipment. So much so that he accepted my challenge to become one of our school's young heroes. It was his job, along with five or six other kids in red T-shirts to keep the games and jump ropes and assorted balls in play and not launched onto the roof or into the bushes up the hill. It also meant he was expected to be a role model for the other kids.
That was the tough part for Ned. He wasn't difficult or mean in any typical sense. He was someone I could slow down or stop with a teacher-voice holler from across the yard. But that didn't keep him out of mischief. Which is what eventually lost him his job as a young hero.
Ned was part of the after school program I ran for fifth graders, building community through leadership skills and cooperation. He shined. He came up with our group's first semester project slogan: More Friends, Less Bullies. He came to every meeting, and when no one else had any ideas, Ned came up with something to get the discussion started. He saved me from being the droning adult voice in the classroom.
Why didn't he come to promotion?
He practiced along with his classmates. He walked in and out of the auditorium countless times. He listened to all the speeches. He sat in his seat. Until the day came that it counted.
Ned wasn't there.
I didn't get a chance to say it: Goodbye, Ned.

Soon

She'll be fifty-three.
Soon.
She'll be twenty-five.
Soon.
She'll be ready to go.
Soon.
She'll be back.
Soon.
It's the amount of time between this and that.
Soon.
We'll be falling in love again.
Soon.
There will be dancing on the Lido Deck.
Soon.
She's making plans for world domination.
Soon.
There will be sunshine.
Soon.
There will be cake.
Soon.
There will be a party.
Soon.
She'll be happy.
Soon.
She'll go for a walk.
Soon.
She'll be ready.
Soon.
It's her birthday.
Soon.
And always.

Pathways

My son dropped by this past weekend to stir up his parents' dull existence and to see Green Day perform at the Oakland Coliseum. There were dinners at the kitchen table. There was a trip to the local cineplex. There was a lot of talk about this and that, but there was an awful lot of talk about technology. My son, the theater arts major, spent the last few months being employed by his college's engineering department as their IT guy. While this mix of specialties might seem odd for those of you tuning in just now, knowing my son's predilection to most things mechanical makes it less startling. He has reasoned, and for the most part successfully backed up, that anything he can watch happen step by step on YouTube can be replicated  in his living room. Or garage. Or someone else's living room.
This is how he learned to replace his own brakes. Change his oil. Swap out hard drives. These were not skills that were passed along from father to son. Though my own power tool acumen continues to grow, I can only feel truly responsible for his periodically snarky sense of humor. The rest of these abilities come from a certain fearlessness which I cannot fully comprehend.
This, I believe, is how he finally got his new job at Best Buy selling TVs. He will go on about color, contrast and clarity at absurd lengths. He was able to this many months before he ever started wearing a blue shirt. While I was busy memorizing comedy albums in college, my son took a different path: researching component technology and capacities. When he speaks, there are times that I hear a bit of his grandfather the printing salesman coming through. He knows his stuff, and he wants to share it with anyone who cares to listen. LCD, LED, OLED, MOUSE, letters that have made glancing connection to my life and daily world, but my son has taken the time to explain them to his old man. My father, who used to say that he had printer's ink in his veins, would happily discuss the offset printing process if anyone gave him an ear. Mostly he wanted his customers to know that he understood and he was going to make sure they got the best he could get.
I know that my son did not expect to be a Best Buy Blue Shirt when he grew up, and I imagine that he has plenty more stops to make on his career bus. It is interesting to see his name on a badge, not too very different from the one that was made for me when I started work at Arby's back in the twentieth century. I don't suppose I ever cared as much about the roast beef sandwiches I was serving as he does about the home theaters he sells. There aren't as many moving parts to a big screen TV, and they are probably more digestible than your standard Beef 'n' Cheddar.
This is all part of the wandering path our son is taking on the way to becoming an adult. It's a fun ride, and most of the time he doesn't mind stopping by to hook up our new router if he's in town. It was nice having him around.

Real Money

Does it seem like humanity has slowed down to a trickle? There are so many despicable characters roaming around these days, it's hard to find what amounts to good news. Let's take, for example, Martin Shkreli. It could be that his shoes were too tight, or it could be that he has four consonants in a row in his last name, but whatever the case, this guy is a real whatever the opposite of mensch is. He is the guy whose company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of one of one of their drugs five thousand percent. A pill that once cost thirteen dollars and fifty cents was jacked up to seven hundred dollars apiece. These pills were Daraprim, used to treat toxoplasmosis and HIV.
So, you're really sick, and you need medicine. Let's hope you have insurance, first of all, since thirteen fifty a pill is still a little steep if you're taking more than one a day. Now go ahead and figure on that seven hundred dollar pill. Nearly five thousand dollars a week if, as I suggested, you're taking just one pill a day. That's when we enter that tricky world of insurance money. Big money. Profound money. Outrageous money.
And you might think that is how our friend Martin found himself in jail. Nope. You can hate on Mister Shkreli all you might like to, but it's his company and he can charge whatever he likes for his medications. You don't have to pay it. Free country. Free enterprise. And all that. And he can say whatever he wants about Congress on Twitter. Free speech and all. And he doesn't have to answer questions that Congress gives him because of more Constitution stuff. He is going to trial for using millions of dollars from one business to bail out another which he had bankrupted via a failing hedge fund.
If this all sounds a little confusing, it's probably because folks like Martin Shkreli don't have to make sense of their lives. They are far too busy making and losing other people's money to live life in the fast lane. Of course, that's not what Martin would like us to believe. He would like us to see him as a Horatio Alger story, who saw a need for children who needed his help. And if he happened to make a boatload of money while pursuing this altruistic dream? That dream that just happened to include buying a one-of-a-kind Wu Tang Clan album for two million dollars.
And maybe that dream didn't include being found guilty of security fraud. Which is too bad because now young Martin is going to jail. Maybe for twenty years. At one pill a day, that works out to a little more than five million dollars. That could buy a couple Wu Tang Clan albums.