The word of the day: quaquaversal

From the Oxford English Dictionary, the word of the day is quaquaversal: “Chiefly Geol. Dipping, pointing, or occurring in every direction.” Does this word make you too think of Lucky’s monologue?

Reasons for Apple’s success

Adrian Slywotzky on the reasons for Apple’s success:

With each launch of another device or application, Apple seems to pull exquisite new products, fully formed, from the minds of a few geniuses in turtlenecks. From the outside, Apple’s secret sauce would seem to be inspired design (read, “think different”); and inspired marketing of that design. In other words, 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration (mostly experienced by eager customers scrambling to get the latest iPod or iPad). iPhone 5? “Eureka!”

The truth is really a lot different.

Steve Jobs and the Eureka Myth (HBR Blogs)

[I’d make an analogy to what many students think about good writing: that it just happens (to good writers), not that it’s the result of considerable planning and revision.]

1 PUN MULTI

Elaine and I went to the Asian market and bought some freekeh, some falafel mix, and a multi-color pun. It’s a surprisingly good pun, made in Korea by Morning Glory, with six choices: 0.5, 0.7, 1.0 black; 0.7 blue, green, red.

This post is for my son Ben, who loves puns. He’s on the ball, knows how to make a point, and is seldom irascible. And Ziyad products don’t make him falafel. Never!

[The box does say Ziyad Falafil, but falafel is the usual spelling. Freekeh is a grain, très Chic, I think.]

Letter art

“From idiosyncratic letterheads to sketches, stamps, cartoons and multiple choice form letters, what do a letter’s illustrations reveal?” They reveal many things. Look:

Elana Estrin, The art of the letter (University of Texas at Austin)

[Featuring Muhammad Ali, Al Hirschfeld, Irving Hoffman, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and John Steinbeck.]

Stalwart workers

They are intelligent, protective of their time away from work, and not especially interested in power, money, or becoming the boss. Thomas J. DeLong calls them “stalwart workers”:

Stop Ignoring the Stalwart Worker (Harvard Business Review Blogs, via Boing Boing)

[What I can’t figure out: how long have deLong’s people been spying on me? And you — are you a stalwart worker too?]

Young-adult letters

From a Boston Globe article on letter-writing among young adults:

Samuel Pearce, 20, a Brown University student from Milton, began writing letters to an African pen pal as a child and to a friend at summer camp when he was a teenager, and when his best friend went away to college he chose to stay in touch via snail mail. This experience inspired him to write letters with other friends as well.

“It’s cool,” Pearce said. “If there’s someone I’ve been friends with but haven’t written letters to, often times, beginning writing letters with them reveals dimensions of them that I just hadn’t thought of before.”

It is cool, and Pearce’s comments remind me that one of the great friendships of my life began by correspondence. You can read some excerpts from the letters of my friend Aldo Carrasco in this post. Believe me, it’s worth the time.

When did you last write a letter? My last was in April, to my fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Schorr.

[Thanks to Music Clip of the Day for pointing me to the Globe article.]

As Irene approaches

[“Palm trees blowing in the wind during hurricane in Florida.” Photograph by Ed Clark. September 1947. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Hurricane Irene is badly misnamed, as Irene comes from the Greek εἰρήνη (eiréné), “peace.” Wherever you are, reader, I hope that you and yours stay safe and sound as unpeaceful Irene approaches the East Coast.

Recently updated

Testing teachers for drug use: In 2009, a West Virginia school board abandoned a similar effort. Background on that case and on a Supreme Court ruling concerning random drug tests and public employees.

Testing teachers for drug use

In the tiny central-Illinois town of Glasford, teachers are on strike over their school district’s insistence that they submit to random drug tests. That’s random testing, without cause. No school district in the state has such a policy. A statement from the Illini Bluffs Federation of Teachers suggests that the drug-test proposal is a ploy to force union concessions on other matters. (We’ll drop the outrageous insistence on X, if you’ll give up Y.)

The Belleville News-Democrat, which the Illinois Federation of Teachers characterizes as a strongly anti-union newspaper, is taking a poll on the matter. If you, like me, think that teachers should not be subject to random drug testing (testing without cause), you might want to put your 2¢ in by voting. Click on the link, and you’ll find the poll to the left, under a photograph of a room full of empty desks.

8:08 p.m.: In 2009, a West Virginia school board abandoned a similar effort. The ACLU has the details and adds context:

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government may only conduct suspicionless drug tests of employees in “safety-sensitive” job roles, such as air traffic controllers or nuclear power plant operators, whose job functions, if done improperly, would cause specific and potentially catastrophic threats to the public safety.

The court firmly rejected the contention that public school employees meet the criteria for random drug testing: “A train, nuclear reactor, or firearm in the hands of someone on drugs presents an actual concrete risk to numerous people — the same cannot be said for a teacher wielding a history textbook.”

In addition to violating public employees’ constitutional right to privacy, random drug testing programs have been found demonstrably ineffective by the National Academy of Sciences, among others, producing a false sense of security that distracts from true safety threats.

Random drug testing may also reveal extremely sensitive personal information, such as medical conditions, prescription drug use or pregnancy, and can produce an unacceptably high rate of false-positives.

Update, September 1, 2011: The strike has been settled. It sounds as though random testing is not part of the contract:

Neither side has disclosed details of the tentative agreement. Board attorney Karl Meurlot said drug testing remains in the agreement that the teachers ratified on Monday, but that it is “substantially different than [from] the random drug testing policy the board initially proposed.” He did not elaborate.

Illini Bluffs students get back to school after strike ends (Peoria Journal Star)

Update, September 2, 2011: For current teachers, the contract allows voluntary participation in random drug testing and requires drug testing when there is probable cause. But for teachers hired after August 15, 2011, random drug tests will be required. Read more:

Illini Bluffs teachers contract includes voluntary drug testing (Peoria Journal Star)

Words from Steve Jobs

Not from his letter of resignation but from his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.