Yep, it's satire:

Conservative multimedia mogul Rupert Murdoch recently announced the creation of Fox Weather Channel, a 24-7 cable news channel devoted to "a fair, balanced view of the natural world around us." Fox Weather hopes to pull viewers who have grown frustrated with what Murdoch describes as the "overtly feminine, human and scientific tone of The Weather Channel.  In a nut shell, we want people to see that weather is not for pansies."  

"People want to go to a channel and see a tornado plow through a trailer park.  They don't want a tear-jerker about losing your home in a tsunmani," Don Anderson, the program director explained. 

 

Jennifer Tochensky, a weather enthusiast, expressed these same concerns. "I want big waves crushing buildings.   It needs to be more badass.  More Chuck Norris and less Oprah."  

For this reason, the show will create a Weather Center program modeled after the popular ESPN program Sports Center.  Here analysts will do a "Top Ten Destructive Moments" of the day segment.  

"With all this climate change nonsense, viewers have begun to see weather as something fragile.  We want them to yell out 'Holy sh--! That's better than a fu--ing monster truck ralley! And with the advent of 3-D television, we're the network to bring this daily destruction.  And if we can do it with some, you know, really hot weather babes, then we might be gaining a whole new demographic," Anderson said to at the packed Fox Weather Launch Party. 

However, some meteorologists were concerned with Fox Weather's action-oriented reporting, citing the fact that the list of banned words (barometric pressure, convergence zones, weather system) and the use of rounding to make "clean numbers" is an insult to the intelligence of viewers.  Still, many test audiences have embraced these changes.  

"Look, I don't live in Communist Canada.  I don't need Celsius to confuse me," one woman explained.  

Another test screener added, "I like the rounding of numbers.  Don't lie to me and say it's going to be 92 degrees.  Just say 'around ninety' and I'm good.  Plus, it looks so much cleaner.  Nice round numbers." 

Executives of the newly developed Fox Weather Channel explain that it goes beyond being viewer-friendly.  Proponents see this move as a Murdoch-sponsored crusade to bring fairness and balance back to the airwaves. 

As one talk radio host puts it, "Look, we're tired of being talked down to.  Do we really need a segment where government bureaucrats warn us to use sun screen or buy bottled water?  I'd like to see a weather channel that rejects the nanny state."  

For these reasons, Fox Weather will avoid using clips and data from the National Weather Service (or as they put it "the Socialized Climate Police") and instead focus on using their own data.  Furthermore, they intend to create special investigative reports about the "lies of climate change" and the dangers of socialist groups like FEMA and The Red Cross.  Furthermore, in times of natural disasters, they hope to present a more business-friendly perspective.  

"Viewers don't want to view hyped-up propaganda about radiation or oil-coated seal lungs.  Just tell them whether or not it will be sunny for the Super Bowl and help them to see that they can trust the transnational corporations calling the shots," Anderson said.   

Critics are quick to point out that the Weather Channel isn't typically singled out for being particularly liberal.  "We're just a bunch of weather geeks," Bill Odom, a chief meteorologist, explained.  "I mean, we don't even follow politics.  Just weather.  Oh, and we play Black Opps.  Yeah, lots of Call of Duty.  You know, you can only look at clouds so much before you want to kill an imaginary terrorist." 

Gladys Jorgenson, a journalism professor for the University of California - Santa Cruz, explained, "The weather has always been considered neutral.  Aside from the anthropological approaches to cultural criticism, few have suggested that weather reports serve a political agenda.  This, however, could be the impetus in politicizing a formerly neutral area of journalism."

Some critics are skeptical that Fox will pull much of an audience in an already unpopular venue.  However, Janet Pineda, author of the insider publication Weather Media Journal points out, "Don't write them off so quickly.  If Fox knows how to do anything, it's sensationalism and fear.  What better format to ensure both than weather?  This could be the perfect convergence of conservative journalism and sensationalist news.  Right now, most Weather Channel viewers are either losers or people stranded at the air port.  Fox can redefine this market and make it viable for advertising."  

Instead of posting a new excerpt of Drawn Into Danger here on this blog, I posted the first five chapters online at Drawn Into Danger.  If you enjoy the first five chapters, feel free to download the Kindle version or buy the paperback version.

Because it's self-published, I have no method of marketing this book.  So, if you are reading it and you enjoy it, here are a few things that would be helpful:

• tweet a quote from the book and generate some buzz on Twitter
• write a review on your blog
• write a review on Amazon.com
• post a link to the book on Facebook
• tell a friend about it 

For the next couple of days, I'll be posting short excerpts from Drawn Into Danger.  I hope you enjoy:

After an hour and a half of eating bitter food and watching the halogen images turn increasingly depressing, I wander away toward an alley.  Superheroes always fight in alleys, so I figure I might catch a decent battle. 

I hear the footsteps of heavy shoes echoing each of my steps.  When I turn back, I see nothing but shadows and random placed wooden crates. 

I listen closer again to the echoing footsteps. So, I change my pace and look around.  At first, I catch him only in the peripheral and assume he is simply another hero walking the alleys on his own.  Yet, as I turn toward other alleys, I see him again. 

After a few turns through the alleys, I shift to a full-scale sprint.  He takes off as well; each of us playing a hide-and-go-seek game.

I run a block and he’s ahead of me.  Another short block and he’s behind me.  I take a turn by one alley and he seems to creep up at the next.  Finally, I reach a dead-end and hope that I can figure out how to shock him. As I lean up against the wall, I hear the rustling of the shrubbery and I step away, startled. It’s a two-story hedge with the word “Labyrinth” in gold letters. Maybe I can hide out here.

I begin wandering around, hoping to see where it leads. Again, I hear the heavy shoes clip-clopping on the cement floor. I move faster through the labyrinth, wondering if the unnamed villain is hiding ahead with an ambush or behind me, waiting for me to turn around.
When I’ve reached the end, I bump into a man, who simply says, “Excuse me” and takes a step back.  I recognize the long monk’s robe and the facemask. It’s the Oracle I had met in the park. I attempt to turn around and run, but I’m immobilized.

      “Why were you running?” he asks.

      “I was being chased.”

     “Don’t assume that everyone who approaches you means to harm you.  I’m nearly out of breath trying to catch you.”

      “So you’re the . . .?”

“Ah, Gabriel.  You found the labyrinth.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

“You know, it’s not like a maze.  In a maze, there are dead-ends. In a labyrinth, there’s always an option, always a new turn, always a chance.  No matter where you go, you’ll make it.”

“Interesting.”

“The beauty of the labyrinth is that you have the freedom to choose, but you have the security of knowing that your path will lead to success.”

“So, where does this one lead?”

“To danger,” he says and points to a sign reading “WARNING” in big block letters and then “library” in smaller letters.

“Just remember this in your journey, Gabriel.  It’s a labyrinth.  Even when it doesn’t seem like it.  Even when it seems like a maze, there is that invisible force that takes you where you need to be.”

“Fate?”

“Some call it fate.  Some destiny.”

“What about choosing your story?”

“You choose your route.  You choose your reactions.  However, life is a labyrinth.”

“So, why is the library off-limits?”

“Might I advise you to go and enjoy Cynic’s Day? They have a pudding made of bittersweet chocolate. It’s delectable. It’s like the dessert that snuck in when no one was watching.  Much sweeter than you could have imagined on Cynic’s Day.”

So, I roam back to the Downtown Square in time for the official start of Cynic’s Day. According to the oral traditions, citizens created Cynic’s Day in order to counter-balance the optimism of Thanksgiving. Everyone drinks bitter wine and complains about how broken the world has become and if they have had enough to drink, they reminisce on the good old days and mope around in a drunken stupor complaining about the futility of life.

When this is all over, everyone plays carnival games – the rigged kind, where no one wins and everyone wastes wads of cash with the hope that they will win an oversized stuffed elephant in order to appease a whiny child or prove their love to a skeptical girlfriend.

Everyone re-gifts their least favorite presents from years past and hands them out to strangers while sullen clowns pass out balloon animals, because, let’s be honest, most balloon animals seem a little creepy and this is the day when it finally fits the occasion.

“Go ahead, pop it! See how fragile life really is.  You’re a hero.  One explosion and you’re gone,” a clown implores.

People decorate the walls with the dark art that they typically save for the indie coffee shops and everyone plays really sad country western songs from back in the day before the lyrics turned sappy and patriotic. My favorite is a tune about hiring an alcoholic to decorate the home and another one asking the absurd question, “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” Who asks that question? It doesn’t matter. It’s Cynics Day.

Sometimes they play the blues. Not the fake blues, either. Not the kind of blues that you hear at the doctor’s office or in those cheesy movies where everything turns out good in the end. No, they play real blues with real saxophones and my God if you could hear the way the brass cries, it’s amazing. Even to an eighth grader in love with robotic hip hop, it’s beautiful.

The whole Superpower, Outsiders included, gathers together their rotten produce and everyone throws it at pictures of genocide and racism and murder and everything else that makes this world dark and depressing. Little kids, old ladies, villains and heroes and street sweepers (we never had street sweepers in Phoenix) alike grab wrinkly tomatoes and black cucumbers and fuzzy oranges and all of us chuck it with as much pent-up anger as we can muster at the photo collages, but the collages are covered in plastic and so volunteers simply squeegee the rotten remains. It becomes a bold reminder that cynical anger alone cannot create change.

“It’s a cautionary tale about freedom,” Uncle Carl tells me.  “Sometimes you think autonomy will mean you are always free from darker side of life.  Today is the holiday where we all have a collective reality check.  We see that choice and freedom are not synonymous.  We recognize that there are things we cannot control.”

The thing about Cynic’s Day is it sounds like a dysfunctional carnival. And maybe it is. But I find myself happy despite its inherent darkness. It’s like finally we are all admitting, “We don’t have it together. There isn’t much to celebrate,” and somehow, as strange as it sounds, hope breaks through.

At the end, everyone walks home in a generally happy mood with the sense that, even as broken as this world may be, there is still such a thing as love and hope and beauty.  We end up in the Caves eating pie and talking about the parts of this world that we enjoy. 

It turns upbeat, perhaps even schmaltzy, but it doesn’t feel that way since we’ve all been honest about how broken this world is.

And that’s the magic of Cynic’s Day.

My book is now available. I'm more excited with this book than with any other book I've written.

In Print: $12.00 at Amazon.com

Kindle: $5.00 at the Kindle Store

The number one weapon in the War on Ignorance is humor. Logic is great, but it's no match for fear. However, good satire has a way of exposing truth at the most unexpected time. With that in mind, here's a great video from The Onion. 

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

I'm going to take 40 day Online Sabbath. I'll also be taking a break from Twitter and Facebook. My posts have been a bit cynical lately and that's a sign that I need to move away from it and rethink a few things. More than that, I want to work on finishing my novel and doing some multimedia experiments.

Hopefully, I'll return with a series of videos, pictures and podcasts.

I will be posting once during this time, so that I can let people know my book is out.

I wrote this after reading a thought-provoking post on the Spicy Learning Blog.

When I first began blogging, I felt like a lone Luddite in a techno-wilderness. While writing about the greatest "killer apps" (sadly, not nun-chucks), I wrote about the need for technology criticism. I'd cringe about a glassy-eyed description of the future class erasing the boundaries of time and space.

I thought I was alone.

I wasn't.

It was pure arrogance on my part and I soon ran into Doyle's Science Teacher blog and saw the value of understanding the physical world. Using a more poetic, honest and narrative format, he managed to speak what I felt.

So, I wasn't exactly a trailblazer as much as a tech critic on the wrong trail. However, I've noticed that it's become commonplace now to put pedagogy above technology. I constantly read retweeted lines about why the real magic is the learning and the students and the thinking.

And yet . . .

To say, "You shouldn't love technology, you should love pedagogy," is akin to saying, "You should love the points you made about Sufjan's newest album" rather than saying, "I really love getting a chance to sip coffee and have a conversation with Quinn."

I expect an author to love his or her ultra-trendy Moleskin or retro typewriter or, God forbid, brand-new Mac Book. Similarly, I expect a guitarist to appreciate his sing-string companion. I expect any master of any art to love his or her tools.

The point is to get past the novelty phase and love the medium, knowing all of its faults and understanding its limitations. I want to be grateful for the medium, knowing its power and potential without trying to convince myself that the tool will not change me in both good and bad ways.

I don't care where you stand politically, it's a bit bizarre to ask teachers who didn't ruin our economy to make sacrifices and break their contract when bailed out Wall Street bankers (who are now financed publicly through a bailout that tax payers never encouraged) continue to get their massive bonuses.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Part Three

one lesson Micah has taught me is to look up
I almost didn't post this, because of its religious nature. I realize that a blog is probably not the best place to have a discussion revolving faith.  So, please don't read this as a religious rant, but as a story of life and the reality of death. 

I wrote the following this summer:

We wait anxiously for the coming of the night.  The sunset has been beautiful, but now it's the awkward intermission where the sun has bowed out and the night is beginning to creep in.  I can already see more stars than what we experience in Phoenix.

My father-in-law has a close friend who died suddenly of natural causes.  I'm jarred by this term "natural causes."  I suppose if I'm going to go out of this world let it be the way I came in - through natural causes.  Then again, it seems as if death itself is natural.

My father in-law is quiet I guess, but not any more than usual. Some people seem to have the gift of only speaking when something is important to say.

Death is too big a subject to discuss on a tweet and probably too big for a blog.  We bathe in the dim light of solar systems so far away I can't keep track.  I ask Joel how many he sees and he says, "too many to count."  I like that.  Perhaps "countless" is more accurate than "billions and billions."

Everyone says that the vast night sky makes people feel insignificant.  I find the opposite to be true.  The stars feel closer in proximity and I feel like I'm a part of something big right now.

We wait, all the while pointing out planets and satellites until finally the awe takes us in subtly.  A sunset might demand out attention, but the stars seem to ask for our patience.

"He's gone right now.  He's with Jesus.  I can't imagine what that's like."

On most days, I'm at least a little scared of death.  I'm scared that grace is too good to be true and being content in the now I often fear the future anyway.  I'd love to speak boldly about how I am absolutely convinced of the gospel, but I'm not.  Don't get me wrong, it's the basis for how I live and it's what shapes my world view and yet there is always a lingering doubt that I'll probably never shake.

Tonight, though, I'm thinking of Heaven.  I'm thinking of a God vast enough to number the stars.  I'm thinking of what it will be like to live without insecurity and fear and broken relationships.  I'm wondering if I'll have a chance to write the novels I never wrote on earth.  I wonder if we'll observe better and listen better because we won't have to be rushed. I'm thinking of Jesus (not the freshly shampooed British accent Jesus of the movies, but the carpenter who cussed Jesus) and longing for a two-way conversation.

So what does this have to do with teaching?

Everything.

If we really want "life-long learners," we have to get over the taboo of death.  I'll stay silent about my thoughts on Heaven, but I will welcome inquisitive students to think about life and death and what it all means.  Perhaps it's a bit too morbid, but I think the biggest disservice we've done to students is locked them away from the dead and the dying while perpetuating a myth of the Fountain of Youth.

That's part of why I love teaching social studies.  Too often, science teachers are forced to turn mortality into a process, a procedure, a cyclical graphic using animals other than humans.  But in social studies, we are forced to think about death.   Not simply in the study of war, but in the study of all past stories.  We have this implicit reminder, at every moment, that life is finite.

Part Two in a Series

The peppy consultant shares with us the importance of creativity, in his battle against the apathy of a staff hooked on Buzzword Bingo.

"It's the rise of the Creative Class.  You're looking at bold people who do not fit within the current system.  They are our future leaders in the New Economy, gang."  I don't think he really means gangs, but for the moment I'm intrigued by a staff wearing matching colors and creating their own signs.

He then explains the need to connect with the Creative Student, which is both an over-the-top stereotype and also a dead-on definition of who I was as a student: a daydreamer, a connector of ideas, uninterested in grades, concerned about the deeper meaning of ideas, philosophical, a doodler who spends more time sketching pictures than taking notes.

"What we need to consider is a 20% time, when students can work on any independent project they choose."

"Where would we get that twenty percent?"

"Perhaps social studies teachers could find a way to change their class into an independent project time.  Lets be honest, history can be pretty irrelevant.  But give time for students to be innovative and that's a game changer."

A few teachers ask questions about the twenty percent idea until the principal cuts in and explains, "That's not going to happen, guys, but it's an interesting idea."

When the session ends, I meet up with the speaker.  I'm ready for a confrontation until he tells me flatly, "I chose the one subject that gives context to creativity and I expected an argument.  How are you guys supposed to teach students to engage in public debate as critical thinkers if you're silent among your own staff?  I just made the case for eliminating your subject and none of you said anything."

Bam!

Checkmate.

The guy caught me in my own inadequacy and exposed it so flatly that I left in silence.

*     *     *

Any subject can allow for creativity.  I ask students to find new words to develop solutions in math.  I expect students to create new works in writing.  I often provide creative platforms for book studies in reading.

Yet, social studies allows for a certain contextual, connective creativity that is hard to attain in other subjects.  Here's what I mean:

• Students must develop solutions to current problems while also analyzing the entire human story. Thus, I ask students to create a "model city" for changing Maryvale given the reality of globalization and in the process, they study white flight, regentrification, current events and the history of our city.  
• Social studies provides a platform for seeing the hubris of creativity.  A simple glance at the twentieth century proves the darker side of well-intentioned progressives, the dangers in technological creativity (think the atom bomb) and the ways that reactionary movements have used creativity to push racist propaganda.  
• Students must blend information (primary and secondary sources) from multiple genres to develop their arguments.  While reading is often chained-down to a rigid, systematic framework ("We'll do expository in second quarter"), social studies can deal with broad themes in a way that allows students to mix media.  
• In a social studies class, students experience a limit on creativity, which can paradoxically lead to more creativity.  "Nope, you can't design anything.  It needs to be an eco-friendly house." 
• Students see creativity in a way that is both very human (especially in studying history and geography) and yet also very systemic (especially when studying economics and aspects of government).  They get the opportunity to film a documentary on a social issue, participate in community service and then design a business or create a budget during an economics unit.  This constant connection between people, ideas and systems is important in developing holistic creativity. 
• Oftentimes, students have a chance to be creative in projects that don't require artistic skill.  Thus, they craft an innovative argument in a debate, write a complex and deep-thinking persuasive article or figure out an unusual line of questioning in a mock trial. 

The curriculum specialist asks us to reflect on why students are struggling in math at the primary grades.  I have a few ideas, but I suggest one that comes across as bizarre.  "We're not teaching social studies, which is the subject that lends itself so well to real-world application, to cause and effect, to space and time, to critical thinking and to conceptual understanding.  Students are getting the algorithm processes and memorizing facts, but they struggle to think deeply, in part because schools are cutting social studies."

It sounds counterintuitive, I realize.   However, if we want students to see a problem from multiple perspectives, what better subject than social studies?  If we want students to understand the connection between numerical systems and human systems, why not look into geography or history?  If we want students to be innovative, to connect globally or to become creative thinkers, why not start with the most neglected subject in schools?

People have asked me about my students' test results in math.  What test prep program did you use?  The truth is, I didn't.  I focussed on solving problems, generating questions, developing discourse, finding pseudocontext and humanizing a subject that always felt cold and inhuman when I was a child.  I'm not an amazing math teacher.  I didn't do anything special.  However, I used the strategies from social studies to help students understand math.

Still, school districts throughout our nation continue to cut social studies from their curriculum.  It's not STEM.  It's not tested.  It won't help created the jobs in the New Global Economy.  People view it as stodgy and old or as low-level social time.  Even in our district, they are cutting funding from the Social Studies specialists and focussing more on reading and math. 

*     *      *

I'm at a social gathering when the subject turns to current events. 

"Tunisia needs to be a democracy, but we need to be wary of the forces of Islam."  The same forces that helped us out of the Dark Ages in science and math, I suppose.  

"We can't expect democracy to work just yet.  It will have to take time.  I worry about the Islamic Brotherhood spreading."  Wrong country.  That's Egypt.  

I try and engage in the conversation, but I notice that people get uncomfortable with the conflict.  Nobody wants to disagree.  Nobody wants to debate.  Ultimately, nobody wants to consider a new perspective.

And it strikes me that people make bold pronouncements on the best route for democracy in Tunisia when they know little of that nation's history, culture, geography or economic system.  I run into strong arguments about collective bargaining and unions by people who know very little of either the history or the function of unions.

What's worse is that most people ditch the conversation with the phrase, "I'm not into politics," or "I'm not into current events," as if it is American Idol or Nascar Racing.  Democracy isn't really something that you need to be "into."  It's sort of a part of that whole social contract thing that our nation was built upon.

It's not that these people are unintelligent.  Nor is it that they are simply shallow and uncaring.  It's just that, as a culture, we are experiencing historical amnesia and civic apathy.  Some are the victims of poorly taught history classes.  Others bought into the lie that social studies in an irrelevant and impractical class. Either way, I want to avoid that with my own students. I want to teach them to be informed citizens and critical thinkers.   

With that in mind, I'm starting a series called Social Studies Matters.  I'll be exploring why we've abandoned the subject and why we need to recover it in schools.