Posted 10:05 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Junk TV

I used to enjoy watching TV, and still find a lot of good shows on a few channels, but the general quality of popular shows has gotten steadily worse. The cable channel USA "premiered" a big-production, great special effects movie tonight - "10.5" - the number being a Richter scale earthquake rating. Actually, the story involves a series of earthquakes up and down the U.S. west coast. A big cast, a ton of computer effects, all wasted on some of the world's worst writing.

Every major character was written to present sappy, sentimental slosh in ridiculous settings. Imagine the national director of FEMA not only personally supervising the placement of 5 underground nuclear devices, but then volunteering to go down the drill hole to hands-on blow the device after it fell. Then, after roping down 200 feet to the bomb jammed in the hole, he releases his line and crawls under the bomb. Just before he can enter the last digit of a long triggering code, a minor tremor makes him fall lower, then the bomb falls and crushes him, making him unable to key the final digit... until the very last second, and after he has made a lengthy final phone call to his doctor son, who is pulled away from emergency surgery for this extended and maudlin phone call.

All the major characters, when stressed by the earthquakes, touchingly reveal all the emotional mistakes they've made with each other... the CA guv and her husband and daughter, the FEMA idiot and his son, and numerous others.

Most of the west coast is saved by a beautiful young seismologist, who is the only one in the country who understands what is happening, but the nuclear blast fumbled by the FEMA dummy upsets the whole mix, causing a humungous quake in L.A. breaking the southern CA coastline off into an island, and a new coastline far inland. By the time that finally happened, it was hard to sympathize.

Posted 7:12 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Complexity through government

Last night I attended a small meeting about starting a charter school, held by a non-profit that acts as a paid consultant to help get such schools started. Charter schools are, of course, government funded and controlled, though with more freedom than traditional public schools.

There is nothing simple about starting a charter school. It can take over a year of hard work just to put the qualifications in place. One needs a sponsor; either a school district, a non-profit with over $2 million, or an accredited college or university. Temporary start-up funding will be needed, a grant from the Walton Foundation being the most likely source. Application is made through the MN Department of Education, where the organization, budget, and finances will be scrutinized. With their approval, federal funding may occur.

After an hour and a half, I was amazed at the complexity. All of that presentation and discussion was about paperwork, organization, and funding... nothing about students, curriculum, or what would make your school unique. As soon as I can get a handle on all of it, I'll write about it in No Force, No Fraud.

Posted 6:46 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

No Force, No Fraud milestones

Over the weekend just past, NFNF passed the 200,000 cumulative reader mark, and another article in the archives, Our stifling security had its 5,000th reader. I've been writing NFNF since 5/28/03, and have published 397 articles. Watching such statistics can be interesting, and puzzling. I just noticed that 11 articles from last month (February 2005) are suddenly in the top 17. Steadily increasing reader numbers may explain why so many recent articles have moved to the top of the list, but it is peculiar, and I don't have an explanation. I'm inclined to think that the statistics system may be faulty.

Truth is, such numbers don't mean much, but they can be an indication of what subjects are of most interest to my readers, or whether I may have "hit a nail on the head". I can see which other websites link to an article, or whether they have a general link to NFNF. It amazes me to discover that people from all over the world somehow discover NFNF. The internet does produce a remarkably complex "net" of links that has the potential for putting each of us into the lives of so many others.

Another truth is that I may stop writing NFNF soon, and shift the considerable time I spend on it to other pursuits. Although I don't track it, it certainly consumes between 20 and 40 hours/week, and some days I get little else done. There are many activities that interest me, each of which could benefit from more of my time. Thanks to the ease and low cost of digital photography, I'm again taking a lot of photographs and posting them on my website. For me, photography is the recording and sharing of personal discoveries... a journal of what interests me. I'm also a very visual person, which means that writing is less natural for me than pictures. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.

That said... back to working on a couple more articles.