Public education in an era of wealth disparity

The whole idea of public higher education, our state-wide systems of community colleges, undergraduate universities, and graduate universities, was to assure a well-educated citizenry and access to educational and professional opportunities for the "working/middle class" and even, via grants and loans, the fiscally disadvantaged, as well as the wealthy.  What made this possible was public assistance that kept tuition costs affordable and opportunities available.  This system has been under duress for some time now as public assistance has been systematically withdrawn (And for what purpose?), and under active attack from legislatures and governors that want to cut costs and perhaps limit opportunities for graduates that have been generally perceived as  hostile voters. Things are bad here in Lincolnland. TPP doubts public institutions will receive any public support at all this fiscal year (no budget since July '15), even though if a budget were to happen, it would still be a 20% cut in support, so tuition increases are being mandated by the state. Opportunities for students in response become more limited at public institutions, while they remain unchanged at private schools affordable to only the wealthy. Take into account that public schools educate at least 10 students for every student at an elite private school. This will accomplish widening the income/wealth disparity that the public schools were instituted to diminish. 
If you want another analysis, consider this comparison of Stanford, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State.  This really is an issue that has no winners except the one percenters. As one of those formerly middle class "blue-collar" people who benefited from access to public education, TPP is extremely annoyed with the people and the political system that wants to dismantle it.  If you have a more just and equal vision for our society and our country, you should be annoyed muchly too. Yes, very GnOPe, but plenty of blame to spread around. Say no to incumbents.

Totally strange flower

As a flower guy TPP is green with envy of anyone who has seen this beauty in the field, and that's funny because the plant is never ever is green itself.  This plant is a completely subterranean parasite that only surfaces to flower.  It superficially resembles a gigantic star flower (Stapelia) because it is fly pollinated.  But so hard to describe. You'll have to go see for yourselves. It's easier than going to Borneo, a place TPP has never been. TPP has wrote about one of its cousins before.

Study guides & student entitlement

This editorial from the U. Minn. Daily student newspaper really shows the state of student entitlement.  Do professors "owe" students a study guide for exams?  This was pretty much a pet peeve when TPP was teaching large lecture, introductory courses. You announce an exam already scheduled on the syllabus, and one of the questions you always got was, "Will you give us a study guide?" Sure.  Then the syllabus' lecture outline was copied, an outline TPP was always followed unless noted otherwise, added in the major topics covered in each heading, and sometimes added reminders of illustrative examples provided. Then one astute fellow notices the similarity to the syllabus, and says, "This study guide just copies the syllabus."  Right!  That's the material that's covered on this exam.  Now any competent student should have been able to do the same with their lecture notes, but the problem is that this was not the "study guide" they wanted. Read the editorial yourself. Maddie actually wants her professors to specifically note the material that will NOT be covered on the exam. Now TPP understands that exams cannot be fully comprehensive, but he tried to make his exams representative of the material covered, in depth and breadth, and never, ever, once has he ever said after covering some topic, "But you won't have to know this." WTF? Why would any teacher ever say that? Out of a universe of material on the subject of biology, your knowledgeable professor has winnowed out a minute amount of material that is both essential and necessary to the content of the course at this level, and now students want that professor to winnow out that subset and provide them with the sub-subset that they don't have to learn!  Amazing. This is what happens when education becomes primarily about about grades & credits, and not about learning. TPP doesn't think very many professors are going to be very sympathetic, but obviously Maddie has gotten study guides from some of us somewhere or she wouldn't be so entitled. Isn't it obvious that if a professor spends 30 mins explaining something it'll be on the exam. If it was 2 mins. maybe not so much. We can only hope life will provide Maddie with a study guide so she can put her valuable time to good use making sure she doesn't learn too much. HT to Angry by Choice.

Nope! Nope! Nope!

The GnOPe (the G is silent as in Gneo-con) continues to demonstrate that it has no platform, no ideas, no agenda, except obstruct Obama.  TPP has long known this because of the growing influence of Gneocons. Now they have changed the definition of lame-duck, the period from the election of a successor to the end of the term, to oppose any action the president might make in the 4th year of a 4 year term. Never thought anyone could make Rubitinio look good, but T-rump is doing a good job. 
The dismaying thing is to see how effective the rhetoric of fear has been in influencing a not very sophisticated public. Now Lincolnland's GnOPe senator is running a campaign ad that suggests his opponent, a disabled veteran has no regard for the security of our state or our country because he's scared of refugees. It's not just sad, it's disrespectful of a veteran who put it on the line to protect this country. It's a sorry state of affairs, promoted by the easily scared. 

Green Hamburg

Kudos to Hamburg, Germany's 2nd biggest city.  They decided to curtail the use of Keurig style coffee pods because of the waste they generate.  Over packaging is a serious problem, individually wrapped items within a larger package, and then within still another box or bag. Although TPP proclaimed the Keurig coffee maker the least green new appliance some time ago (couldn't find the link), its popularity has continued to rise probably because of the diversity of easy to make coffee/tea beverages, one cup at a time. What this means of course is that every 5 or 6 g of coffee or tea comes wrapped in 5-6 g of packaging (taking into account the outer packaging as well).  Such little things are almost impossible to recycle, and they quickly pile up as waste. Not many places, and certainly not cities or states in the capitalism worshipping USA would ban such a popular product and appliance. Some expensive alternatives exist; TPP's car dealership has a machine that will make upon demand several different types of coffee drinks starting with whole beans! Surprisingly the latte is quite credible. Probably too expensive for the average consumer. But this is where manufacturers feet are not being held to the fire because we all are subsidizing the Keurig product with our taxes so that some people can have convenient caffeine diversity. All products should be priced to include the cost of decommissioning the product and disposing of its waste, i.e., If the consumer pays up front, and then wasteful appliances and products would reflect their real cost to society.  Flat screen TVs are presently entering a new generation, and the newer, better models are fairly cheap, but what is happening to the old TVs? Well, the Phactors are still watching one of them. But the rest are piling up at recycling centers and no one is paying for their recycling, so your new TV was subsidized by everyone's taxes. These are costly items to recycle, and you should not be able to just throw them out. Same goes with toxic waste products. Their price should reflect the cost of their safe disposal.  You see we really don't have a capitalist system in the USA, we have a subsidized system where people and the environment pay so that products will remain cheap on the purchasing end and manufacturers won't have to deal with the messy business of dealing with the waste created by their own products, and avoid any cost that might lower their profits. So it's good to hear of a city with some guts.

Classy ride!

Hey!  Who's in town? This classy looking car was right outside the coffee shop and it certainly made TPP look around for a couple of guys in pork-pie hats, sunglasses, and skinny black ties. Everybody knows whose car this is. Elwood and Joliet Jake Blues! Wonder what they were doing? Maybe they were on another mission from God.  No need to guess where they were going. To quote Elwood: "It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses." Jake: "Hit it."  

Garden Flowering Log 2016

TPP has been trying to get his garden flowering log database straightened out (data up to date, removal of those what died, names corrected, duplications eliminated, etc.).  So this late February balmy weather (highs in the 60s F) is a bit too much too soon. But not much you can do, but to trot out to the back of the gardens with the camera and record the first blooms of the 2016 gardening season, to make yourself a margarita, and to write a blog about it. From a distanced these rusty red flowers cloaking this witch hazel shrub ('Diane') are not all that gaudy, but up close they are quite nice. A moment after this image was taken a pollinator (actually 2) showed up, a syrphid fly with the yellow & black bee/hornet mimicking abdomen and a regular house fly of some sort. Some other flowering may follow shortly: a green bear paw hellebore, snowdrops, squill, Guess someone should get that danged flowering log done, or drink another margarita. The voting will be brief.

Friday fabulous flower - star anise

Star anise doesn't just have fabulous flowers, but they are the flowers that are basal to all other flowering plants.  As explained in blog this links to "basal" means that this lineage has a very ancient common ancestry with all other flowering plants, the so-called ANITA grade of ancient lineages where the I stands for Illicium the genus and family name-sake of star anise.  The fruitlets and seeds used as the spice are part of a whorl of pistils that look a bit like a crown in the center of these flowers. TPP almost decided to study this genus many, many years ago, and has a certain fondness for it ever since. This genus has what botanists call a disjunct distribution with species in SE Asia and SE North America and adjacent Mexico and Caribbean.  Prior continental positions account for such distributions, so yes, very old. 

City Bike-ecar hybrid looks like a winner!

As many of you know TPP loves innovative bicycle technology, but it's been awhile since finding anything this exciting.  Here is the Veemo by Velometro, a fully-enclosed electric-assisted bicycle. On a week to week basis TPP operates within a 2 mile radius of our residence, it may sound amazingly dull, but it is a central location. Now by and large TPP is a pedestrian most of the time and a biker summertime.  Some of the drawbacks of the present situation are solved right here. It is a bicycle, so no car registration and you can use bike lanes and trails (It's actually pretty narrow.  Wind chill is the biggest factor for the Phactor during the winter, and of course, every biker is certain to have gotten wet at some time, but this enclosed 3-wheeler really solves the weather problem.  The second problem with walking or biking is cargo; a gallon of milk is about 8.5 pounds a signifcant amount to carry any distance either walking or on a bike.  Our local "people" grocery store is about 20 mins walk.  The Veemo has cargo space in the rear that can hold a bag or groceries.  It has a top speed of around 20 mph and with a range of 62 miles per charge, TPP would be fixed for running errands for a week or two between charges.  Due out next year, the Veemo is really the kind of vehicle that could get more people pedaling, at a much lower price than an electric run-about car. But let's get the green one.  HT to the Treehugger.

Are fruits and vegetables better tasting in Europe?

After TPP retired, the Phactors rented a villa outside of Florence and just soaked up Italian culture, food, and wine for a month, and yes, this was much better than traveling around like a pinball, bing, bing, bing, from place to place. It was hard not to notice how much better the produce was even in large grocery stores.  And of course speculation about why this was the case was a topic of our conversation. Some of it was certainly seasonality.  This was something TPP grew up with; you only ate peas during pea season, and sweet corn during sweet corn season, which for my Father was as extended as the climate made possible (His late clambake corn for October would get frosted every other year or so, a gamble he felt was worth while.), and so on. Yes, some produce would get frozen or canned for winter, but it just wasn't the same, and you knew it.  In Italy a particular type of melon season arrived while the Phactors were in residence, and a mob of little old ladies just about beat TPP with their umbrellas for having his effrontery of getting between them and the first boxes of melons to be put on display. The melons were uniformly ripe and delicious, and in the USA buying a melon in a store is a bad bet with many under ripe and tasteless friuts. And it was obvious Italian shoppers demanded high quality produce.  So here's another analysis that includes our conclusions.  Produce is better in Europe because: 1. American farmers put an emphasis on yield and durability, not flavor. 2. American shoppers favour access over seasonality. 3. The US government regulates for safety — but not quality. 4. Finding flavourful food is a matter of priorities.
Sometimes things get better. OK, so having an Italian menu for our dinner club (members for 38 years) in January 2016 was not the smartest idea, but it was for that reason strawberries were needed for the zabaglione (hint: out of circumstance an anejo rum was used instead of marsala, but it's a good sub.), and the berries were smaller, more columnar, and the best tasting out-of-season strawberries TPP has ever had!  Don't know the variety, but think they were raised in Mexico. Picked under ripe for long travel is the reason they usually are tasteless, that and the varieties were bred to be big and robust so as not to bruise easily in travel, such varieties usually leave out the flavor.  This is how the Delicious apple (really was delicious) became the Red Delicious (not so much), prettier, more durable, but something important was lost.  At any rate no question in our minds that these are the main factors in the lower quality of our produce.  Farmer's markets and local produce are trends that are improving the situation.