Tuesday, April 12, 2016

"...Johnny Has Three Apples, Mary Has Two Apples, How Many Apples Do The Superdelegates Have?.."

No one has ever accused me of being a math genius.

Truth be told, back in the day, based on the S.A.T. scores that were the "back in the day" simple method that universities used to determine both freshman acceptance and class placement of those freshmen, I found myself, in my own freshman year, sitting in junior year level English classes.

And remedial math.

By the way, not to cast aspersions on the whole conventional wisdom when it comes to teaching mathematics in the first place, but it will be 47 years in June since I graduated from high school and I have not, yet, lived a single day finding myself in need of algebra.

Regardless of my own eventual lack of need for co-efficients and constants, that's the way mathematics has been taught, at least here in the good old U.S. of A since Alexander Hamilton unwisely got on the wrong side of Aaron Burr.

Until, of course, common core came ca-ca-calculating along.

Now, I don't profess to even beginning to understand why the "powers that be" when it comes to calculating curriculum, especially when it comes to the curriculum concerning calculating, felt the need to fix what I and most of those who came along with, and before me, honestly didn't see as broken.

And, of course, I'm a pretty smart guy, given that based on my S.A.T. scores, I found myself, in my freshman year, sitting in junior year level English classes.

Well, that was that remedial math thing, but, whatever.

And I have no problem at all (no pun intended, but it's fun how things work out sometimes) at confessing that I've looked over the common core methodology of time-zas and ga-zintas and I have neither the time, patience or brain tissue to waste in trying to figure out what in hell they've done with the simple act of subtracting twelve from thirty two.

A quick glance makes one think that this kind of wandering around, in what seems like a totally wasted time version of trying to get to a simple solution to something could have only originated at the ground zero of totally wasted time versions of trying to get to simple solutions.

Congress.

But, no, it turns out that the Feds had very little to do with the mutating of all we of previous generations had come to know and love when it comes to readin', writin' and 'rithmetic.

It's actually a long and somewhat interesting story.

But too long and not nearly interesting enough to offer right now, so here's a link to a long and somewhat interesting article about that long and interesting story.

http://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/1132015-top-ten-origins-common-core-curriculum

You might want to get right on that and jump over there now before some other bright light decides to upend everything that has to do with the new way of doing math that took the place of what we all felt pretty sure was a perfectly acceptable way of doing math before they got their hands on it.

Just sayin.

Obviously, I could have put that in a much simpler, easier to arrive at the conclusion style.

But that's not how we do things anymore is it?

Meanwhile, back at the blackboard.

Turns out that Common Core has not just seeped and/or sneaked into classrooms from sea to shining sea.

The methodology of turning what might look as simple as two plus two into something that isn't even close to as simple as two plus two has very cleverly, or deviously depending on what your voter registration card says, found its way into the big mama of all things in need of a simple solution in this country.

The American presidential election process.

The whole powder keg over percentages showed up, most recently, in this little chitty chat on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC morning show.



Couple of random thoughts watching that.

First, it's hilarious, right up to and slightly over the line of insanity, that a large part of the "debate" there is basically nothing more than an argument over what to call what's going on.

Joe says "rigged".

Mark Halperin says "disenfranchised".

Potato, pahtato, chicken shit, bullshit.

Let's call the whole thing off.

Second, though, sitting and watching the way the process has diabolically turned losing into winning rang a little bell somewhere in the strange and strangely unique place that is this cerebellum.

And, suddenly, it came to me.

Fisbin.



There's not a whole lot of point in discussing, debating, dissecting or even diddling with the logic, of lack of it, when it comes to why a candidate can get more votes from more people than the opponent and still walk away with more delegates.

Or the whole she-bang.

Al Gore.

George W.

Ring a bell?

And it's also a waste of time to go into laborious detail about why voters feel disenfranchised or frustrated or annoyed or even angry about the game of fisbin that the electoral process in this country has become.

Because voters in this country are like the students in those math classrooms.

They don't get to choose the way that things get added up.

The "powers that be" are in charge of those calculations.

Truth is we should probably just be grateful that two plus two still, eventually, equals four.

Except on Tuesday.

Which, probably not coincidentally, is a very special day.

Election Day.
























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