Month: January 2016

The Lydster, Part 142: First in Math

FIM512icon_singledigitsAt Thanksgiving, when we were at my in-laws, the Daughter became obsessed with being on the computer. But it wasn’t to be playing with the latest mind-numbing video trash. It was to play First in Math.

The variety of games include Measurement World, where one picks out the comparable length or weight in either metric, US customary, or mixed; Know and Show word problems; and Skill Sets. The latter uses the 24® Game, which, briefly, is getting four numbers and using the math functions, trying to get to 24.

For instance, if the numbers were 5, 6, 7, and 8, you could do: 5+7=12, 8-6=2, 12X2=24. But the actual timed play gets increasingly difficult, as the numbers include negative integers, fractions, and decimals. It gets even trickier when one has two sets of numbers, one number is unknown in each set and needs to be solved using the same missing variable.

FIM was designed to “Harness the power of digital gaming to build math skills.” Schools all over the country participated, but, as of the end of December, there wasn’t a New York State school in the top 100 of the country, less a matter of skill than a function of different emphasis.

Within the school district, the Daughter’s class was the last in her school, and her school among the last in the city to join First in Math, beginning in mid-October. At the end of the third week in November, she had about 4500 points, but by the time the turkey had digested in our stomachs, she’d reached 7500 points. And in mid-December, she obtained the coveted 10,000 points and got to first place in the city, overtaking some child two grades behind her at a different school.

Her class went from barely in the Top 50 in the state to the mid-teens. In the city, they are a solid #2, though it would be difficult – “Don’t say impossible!”, she implores – to catch them. A lot of that, though by no means, all of that rise came from her efforts.

I’d like to say that I have no idea where she gets this competitive streak. I’d like to say that, but it would be wrong.

Angela Davis is 72

Looking at these Brainy Quotes of Angela Davis, they do not seem so out of line with current progressive thought.

The controversial activist Angela Davis hits threescore and twelve on January 26.
AngelaYvonneDavis

I believe this was a pair of FBI most wanted shots. (Wikipedia has the info about the trial, in which she was acquitted.)

My, she had a great ‘fro. Yes, I was jealous in the day.

Looking at these Brainy Quotes of hers, they do not seem so out of line with current progressive thought.

Here are:
A 1997 Frontline interview
A piece from the Guardian: ‘We used to think there was a black community’
2014 interview on Democracy Now: Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama

Here’s a picture of one of my cousins at a rally supporting Angela Davis. This photo was taken as the women marched down Fifth Avenue on August 26, 1970, in the first mass women’s demonstration, reportedly 50,000 strong. My cousin reports that they were asked by others to abandon this banner “because Angela Davis has nothing to do with women’s liberation.” But my cousin’s group told them that Angela had everything to do with the kind of women’s liberation we were talking about.

davis_parade

C is for coffle (not in the spell checker)

The word takes the forms coffled and coffling

coffleSeveral months ago, friend Dan came across the word coffle and wondered if I was familiar with it; I was not. Somewhat appropriately, it rhymes with awful and lawful. It is derived from the Arabic qāfila, meaning caravan, and its first Known Use was in 1799.

He found the word in the article The Forgotten Supervillian of Antebellum Tennessee by Betsy Phillips. It is subtitled, “In a brutal business defined by cruelty, Isaac Franklin was perhaps the worst slave trader in all of cotton country—and the richest man in the south. Yet today his heinous crimes are long forgotten.”

The story begins:

The people of Nashville hear slave trader Isaac Franklin’s great annual parade of misery long before they see it. The rhythmic thud of 400 trudging feet carries quite a way. Then comes the sound of men singing, “Cut him down, cut him down, catch him if you can.”

There’s a river and a field and a few scattered houses between Nashville and Franklin’s coffle coming down Gallatin Pike, but once it crests the hill at what will one day be known as Eastland Avenue, everyone up on the bluff can see it. A great centipede of 200 men chained together at the waist, their hands locked behind their backs, marching toward Nashville. A hundred women and children follow behind in wagons, destined for sale. A man with a fiddle walks alongside the chained men, playing to keep them moving at the same speed.

The time is late August 1833.

Merriam-Webster defines coffle as “a train of slaves or animals fastened together.
The Wiktionary says: “A line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.”
The Free Dictionary notes that the word takes the forms coffled and coffling.

The obvious observation is that slaves were no better than animals.
***
Scientific Racism: “Fictitious diseases that the medical community used to keep blacks enslaved.”

abc18
ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Music Throwback Saturday: Time and Tide

In 2014, Basia was awarded “one of Poland’s highest orders – the Knights Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.”

basia Basia Trzetrzelewska, pronounced just as it looks (says the kid who grew up in a Slavic neighborhood) “is a Polish singer-songwriter and record producer better known by her stage name Basia.”

I have one of her albums, 1989’s London Warsaw New York, though I don’t know how, and it is quite pleasant. But nothing on it captured me the way the 1987 single Time and Tide did.

In fact, I heard it so often, and enjoyed it so much, I’m surprised it went only to #26 on the US pop charts, and #19 on the adult contemporary charts. It got to #61 in the UK.

She continues to record and perform. In 2014, she was awarded “one of Poland’s highest orders – the Knights Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta ‘for the outstanding achievement in promoting Polish culture in the world’ and from the Polish Minister for Culture… a Decoration for Merit to Polish Culture.”

Check out her website.

Listen to:
Time and Tide
Brave New Hope from the 1989 album; the chorus goes, “Now is the time…”
Clear Horizon: The Best of Basia.

Movie review: Creed

I had not seen Michael B. Jordan in the well-regarded Fruitvale Station, or the Fantastic Four flick.

Creed_Movie_PosterI had been initially disinclined to see the movie Creed. I’d seen the first four Rocky movies, and while the earlier ones were good, the fourth one I thought was awful. Never bothered with the apparently terrible fifth, or Rocky Balboa, the 2006 film I missed, despite a respectable critical response, because we had a two-year-old.

Now, I should emphasize how much I especially like the original 1975 movie. In part, it was because I saw it with my mother, just the two of us, which we did periodically when I visited Charlotte, NC, where my parents moved in 1974.

But Creed was playing at the nearby Madison Theater. PLUS Sylvester Stallone won a Golden Globe AND was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for playing Rocky.

Maybe it was low expectations, despite quite decent reviews, but I really liked this film. One could appreciate the storyline, even if you had never seen a single reel featuring the Italian Stallion, as Balboa had been dubbed. But it surely enhanced my enjoyment, the dialogue that evoked the late boxer Apollo Creed.

The plot is that a young boxer is driven to follow in his late father’s footsteps, without using the champion’s name; beyond that, see it for yourself. The film is directed by Ryan Coogler, based on a screenplay by Coogler and Aaron Covington.

I enjoyed Phylicia Rashad as the mother figure, especially in the pivotal scene near the end, which is, in the context, LOL funny. Also good is Tessa Thompson as Bianca, the irritating neighbor/singer. And, yes, Stallone is worthy of the awards buzz.

It is Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson who is the real revelation. I had not seen him in the well-regarded Fruitvale Station, or the Fantastic Four flick. But I did see him on the TV show Parenthood a few seasons ago as the boyfriend of one of the Braverman girls, and he was quite fine then. This performance by Jordan is Oscar-worthy.

Despite the boxing violence that was more graphic than it was 40 years ago, I left the cinema feeling exhilarated by a feel-good movie. It ended with a variation on a familiar Rocky trope, which The Wife particularly loved.

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