#402: Penetration, "Lovers of Outrage" (1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJjLUPBXAm4

In my Joni Mitchell write-up, I noted how the history of pop/rock music through the early 1970s had been, overwhelmingly, one in which only men had felt free to innovate. Punk rock arrived in the late 1970s, and in the usual histories, it too was a tale of white men -- or teenage boys, spiritually if not always calendrically -- blasting fresh hot air into stale, stultifying arenas (note to self: steal better cliches next time). In Britain, for example, we read that it was led by the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, the Stranglers, Gang of Four, the Jam, the Buzzcocks.

Maybe the signal is the noise: on U.S. standardized tests, from best to awfulest

I have three part-time teaching jobs, one of which, for Princeton Review, involves preparing students for standardized tests. Friday night, the Princeton Review job also involved me staying awake the entire night and taking three Advanced Placement tests in a row (because I hadn't been able to find any other free time to take them in), and reflecting how exceptionally well-designed they are, in comparison to the highly dubious tests I often help with.

Since teaching is one of my passions, and tests are a key force shaping (or mis-shaping) teaching in the United States, I'll share some of my opinions on the tests I'm familiar with. Ranked from best to worst:

Ugh jobs at good wages

Whatever we think of the Trump Administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, it bothers me to see immigrants on farms praised for doing "work Americans won't do". That phrase is an evasive way of saying "Work that plenty of Americans will do, quite eagerly, *if* you pay enough".

Is the farm work that illegal immigrants do unpleasant, exhausting, health-damaging, and low-status? Absolutely -- even Stephen Colbert has tried it and vouched in person. I bet it's even worse than working at an Amazon.com warehouse (although worse in degree, not kind). All of those are great reasons not to take work.

On the other hand,

Small is de-uglified: on how to dramatically improve the U.S. prison system

From pages 425 to 435 of Bill James’s sprawling, unpredictable (but brilliant) book Popular Crime, James outlines a dramatic reform of the prison system that is, in my opinion, exactly correct.

It would be a huge step forward: in terms of crime reduction, fear-of-crime reduction (not at all the same thing), in-prison behavior, and the integration of former criminals into society. I say that as a guy who’s come up with dramatic prison-reform schemes of my own, purely as a hobby, btw (my profession is teaching): his scheme is better than mine ever were. Because my forthcoming review is struggling not to be as sprawling and unwieldy as the original book, I’ve decided to write up his proposal here.

In very short form: