Guest Post : Product Endorsement

TOD generally doesn't do endorsements, not political nor product, but it is Black Friday Eve so perhaps this is a timely review provided by someone-other-than-TOD. It is worth noting this is a product that is designed and manufactured in the good ole U S of A.

A little background is in order. Over the last few years I've spent quite a bit of time and made quite a few trips to doctors, clinics and hospitals. It was immediately obvious that a purse was not going to cut it: too cumbersome and depending on the purpose of the meeting is just another thing to keep track of and to worry about. But you must have all manner of cards and sometimes cash and you'd think the average wallet would be just the thing. You'd be wrong. Folks burn logs in their fireplaces that are smaller than my wallet so I took to carrying just the essentials with a makeshift card/money clip:

Makeshift Moneyclip

This worked just fine. Secure. Easy to carry. Fits in any pocket. Intuitive operation. But my husband didn't like it. He had visions of me slipping and flipping cards and cash all over the room. I could see that. If he used it. He also did not like the "flashin' yer cash" aspect and the fact that to get out an insurance card you had to unclip the cash as well. So he got me one of these:

Flipside 4

It is called a "wallet" but it doesn't look like one and it doesn't operate like one either. Push the button at the end and this thing springs open exposing the top two card holders. These hold three to four cards each and provide RFID protection. Now THAT appeals as I'm pretty paranoid about identity theft. The card holder on the bottom of the divider and the money clip do not but that's OK. I still have plenty of cards that would not benefit from RFID protection. For easy access without the potential of cash-flash he also got me this option:

FLIPSideKick

It attaches to the bottom providing easy access to three or four of your most needed cards at any medical facility: ID; Credit Card; Insurance Card; and Medicare Card. These are held very securely but slide out with a thumb push. There is also a small drawer that can be used instead of the cards for a few keys and/or coins but I don't expect to use it.

This wallet is secure, easy to use with spring-loaded opening and pretty small, not that much bigger than my previous bills+cards+clip. It looks more like an old flip-phone than a wallet which makes me think it is less likely to be stolen. It comes in colors that make it easy to find and less likely for me to be misplaced which was another problem with the life hack money clip. I don't know what it costs and I'm sure my husband didn't either. 

Like A Third World Country

Recurring Failure

How often does this happen? Once a year? Twice? And let's be honest: if it continually floods it never really has been fixed. Has it?

Have you noticed that the larger the government operation, county or city, the larger the screw-ups? Water and sewer have been an enormous problem in this county and don't fool yourself, Dunwoody runs the storm water operation and not much has been done with maintenance of that disaster-in-the-making. So we have water in the gutters, sewer overflows with patchwork, bandaid "fixes." 

Pure Lunacy

Despite the founding fathers' frequent invocation of a higher power, they, in their wisdom incorporated the Establishment Clause to prohibit governments from inflicting religion, even the one to which they subscribed, upon us. Some folks have a serious mental defect preventing them from understanding this simple but foundational principle.

One councilman wants to "dance a little sidestep" and let the City Manager take the bullet and make the call by suggesting the determination of what is or is not "religious" be left up to him. Now that's leadership. NOT! Here's a simple little rubric: if it is not DIRECTLY related to city services called out in the charter then it has no place on city property. Don't waste our money on any of this seasonal falderal even if it isn't related to any religion. And yes, that means not a penny of city expenditure goes to Lemonade Days. Do your job first and then let's talk about a Fun-Fund.

But seriously. there are still folks out there who actually argue that Santa Claus is NOT a Christmas, Christian symbol. Same with Christmas Trees. [We at TOD reject the underhanded, deceitful practice of labeling these wastes-of-wood "Holiday" trees.] There is a real simple, clarifying thought exercise: if there were no christianity how could there possibly be a Christmas, a Christmas Tree or a Santa? Easy-peasy.

For what it is worth you could have your reindeer since they did and would exist even in world full of atheists. Just not the one with the red nose.

The Education Industry's "N-Word"

It is as if Oprah is managing the national lexicon: "Everybody Gets An N-WORD!" And the verboten word-that-will-not-be-spoken in earshot of a teacher? That would be "Accountability." This little nugget was inadvertently dropped by the AJC's Edu-cheerleader, Maureen Downey, in a fairly recent op-ed piece bashing Kemp for not being a lap-dog for Public Schools. In her piece she ascribes to Georgia teachers dissatisfaction she claims is voiced nationwide leading off with:

"Too many mandated tests that hold too much sway over how students, teachers and schools are judged." 

Sure, they wedge "teachers" between "students" and "schools" to create an obfuscating trifecta but let's be honest, teachers' top five priorities are: (1) teachers; (2) teachers; (3) teachers; (4) schools; and (5) students. And the latter two are only a important to the extent that teachers are impacted.

Teachers are  more than a little obsessed with pay/compensation and are always positioning themselves as under-paid, often suggesting that with a similar degree they would make much more in the real world. Clearly they've kept their distance from that reality. Fact is there is no "similar" degree as the real world eschews subtractive programs resulting in "major"-education degrees as they truly are less than a real degree. It is more than a little baffling where they think they'll get a job with tenure (official or merely by tradition), with guaranteed pay bumps just for hanging around or a defined benefit retirement. Given all that we now learn that they want to never confront a reasonable performance evaluation or accountability of any sort whatsoever.

But this one little line from the AJC begs a very important question. EXACTLY how should we, parents and taxpayers, judge teachers? How do we hold teachers accountable for doing the job the profession demands and the public expects of them? Maybe the teachers have an answer for that one. 

Going To A Happy Place

The Happy Hearse

Uber Take You Up To The Spirit In The Sky

Luxury Trailer Park

Future Home Of Dunwoody's Next Trailer Park

Really? In Dunwoody?

Look very closely. Just above the Toyota emblem. No, not the photographer's reflection. Yeah. Right there. A swastika. 

Found In Publix Parking Lot

And this was not the ride of some H1-B Refugee from Chennai--they DO want their symbol back. But there was not a miniature Hindu temple on the dash, so this is just a plain old swastika.

Please Daddy! Please Don't!

Stop it Daddy. It hurts. Stop. Please!

Don't you just want to scream? You know, when someone who claims to "serve and protect" instead works diligently to "annoy and offend." So when Daddy, our paternalistic City government, gives you that 4AM wakeup call, you aren't just annoyed, you are downright offended. After all, there are still quite a few "Smart Folk" in daVille and they are quite capable of determining when their succulents are at risk. While the "Smart City" protestation has been dropped, all that city hall has done is acknowledge that they have no brain cells to rub together in hopes of generating an intelligent thought.

But it really was a wake-up call: wake up to the fact that there is something seriously rotten at Dunwoody City Hall. And stay waked. Until the rot is excised. And this rot runs deep.

Superficially it would appear that the po-po have tried to be your papa. And they aren't. They are not adult enough, responsible enough. Just watch, they are about to throw Nixle under the bus, and while there are serious problems there, this would be a juvenile diversionary tactic to keep you from looking too hard at who is really at fault. That would be the po-po, who seem to think their job is anything but community police work. But also their bosses: the City Manager and Council who let them shirk their responsibilities and who refuse to hold the Police Chief responsible.

There are many problems with Nixle. The TCPA should protect us from businesses of that ilk. Protect us from automatic dialers. From recorded messages. Except of course from politicians and governments and this is what Nixle will hide behind. "Papa made me do it!" But there are bigger problems. There are the lies. The City claims that Nixle harvested numbers from the "white book." Had one of those delivered lately, have you? So how did cell phones show up on the list, keeping in mind the TCPA takes a very dim view of calls to cell phones? They also slimed out: Nixle called numbers in Dunwoody. And yet some folks in Gwinnett county, definitely NOT Dunwoody, received calls.

But that isn't really the worst of it. The worst thing is that the City of Dunwoody took it upon themselves to start cold-calling residents. Not. Their. Job. Making matters worse, this was not an opt-in service. After the fact there have been some indications that you can opt-out by calling Nixle. Right. Yet again, the Federal Do Not Call List is ignored. This time by your local-yokel out-of-control government. Maybe when they touted "local control" they were referring to their control over you and your life. 

City Diss Service

Did you get the call? You know, the warning about a freeze this Friday? The one that came in at 4AM Thursday? Yeah. THAT one. And has anyone from The Other Dunwoody thanked any of you ass-hats who voted this disaster into existence for your service? No? Well, we'd like to here but words fail us. Adequate pejoratives are yet to be defined.

It All Adds Up

The AJC has a rather disturbing but unsurprising blog post on how "we" expect kids to be on grade level in math but a lot of them aren't. The education industry has ginned up a report, with its own website, arguing that this expectation, that children stay on task with math, actually causes them to lose ground in math. Though there is an observation that "math is cumulative" they dare not identify very real, systemic, pedagogical problems within the education industry and consequently offer no meaningful solutions.

Math is cumulative: a student will not progress until they have mastered pre-requisite skills. Not "demonstrated once after cramming for a test," but acquired enduring proficiency. And we're talking skills here, not merely "learned concepts." Think of it this way: you could study the rules, history and great players of cricket and even ace tests on all these areas, but would that make you a great cricket player? Or even a competent one? And after the test would you even bother to remember the rules? And this is the pedagogical paradigm dominating the education industry: get it, then forget it. It works for history. It works for english, grammar, writing and literature. The only thing embraced by the education industry that it does not work for is sports, and well, math. But with math, a classroom endeavor, they will use only the get-it-forget-it approach. And should anyone or anything try to upset that applecart they will fight it tooth and nail. Consider that the kind of practice required to acquire proficiency in sports, and math, is required for the former and given the pejorative of "drill and kill" with the latter.

And this is not going to change. Our current crop of educators are themselves products of this system.  They know nothing else and cannot make any meaningful change. Frankly they have no reason to improve as long as they can "pass" their failures (AKA "students") to the next grade without any responsibility or accountability. Should anyone bring in outside evaluations they will undermine them in any way possible, even to the point of cheating. They will suggest that math competency is unnecessary or unattainable and generate documentation supporting those claims. They will deride any objective measure as unfair because they know that no amount of cramming, no teaching-to-the-test will overcome three or four years of mathematics retardation.

And what happens when your child gets to college? Well, they (and you) will expect the same treatment, the same unwarranted praise and advancement, the same lack of rigor that they received in high school. And since colleges have been pulled into the education industry that is exactly what will happen. Just don't be too surprised when your child gets into the job force and has their ass handed to them by co-workers with a foreign education--where math counts.