Do Not Confuse Heat with Temperature!

Any listing of the most notable pedagogues from my past would have to include amongst its upper ranks my high school Physics teacher.  And any listing of the most notable lessons he taught me would have to include the lab and lecture on the latent heat of fusion.  The lecture ended with an admonition that has remained with me all these decades -- "Do Not Confuse Heat with Temperature!"

There is one particular member of our congregation with whom it has been amply shown that I cannot work.  I have nothing particular against him, but he just does not think the same way I do.  The kerfuffles we have gotten into have included, but not been limited to, (A) why is it necessary for me to back into parking spaces instead of going in head-first with my car; (B) why was it necessary for me to take a phillips-head screwdriver and tighten the screws in the shul refrigerator (the handles were coming loose, shmuck!); and why did I have to park my bicycle in the back yard of the shul (did you want me to bring it INTO the shul?).  He sees no problem with New York's firearm restriction laws, he doesn't understand how illegal aliens are costing American taxpayers any money, and when Obamacare first was legislated, he was incredulous that I and a few other individuals were saying that it would actually increase the cost of healthcare.

In any event, for those who have not noticed, there has been a significant amount of snow deposited here on Long Island during the past week or so.  T but today was supposed to be (and in fact was) significantly warmer than the past few days.  I took. the snow shovel and started throwing snow and ice that was on the walkway up to the shul out onto the street, to facilitate its disappearance.  So this fellow congregant whose mental processes (?) are incompatible with my own started with me.  "It's going to be in the 40's today, so it will melt anyway!"

After mentally marshalling the physics lectures regarding how the white snow reflects the sun's rays and their concommitant heat, and how the snow evaporates into the atmosphere with a liquid water stage that is brief if it happens at all, and the latent heat that must be absorbed when water transitions from solid state to liquid state, and how temperature and heat are not necessarily the same thing, and how we need to get rid of the snow and ice, et cetera, I realized that there can be no rational discussion with this man.  So instead of reprising all of those informative and valuable lectures from my high school physics course (and a few from my college physics course -- my Physics 101 professor was no slouch either), I just said to him, "This is what I am doing.  If you don't like it, then report me to the Rabbi!"

Meanwhile, even before today, my own driveway was clearer than almost all of my neighbors' driveways because I took pains to expose the bare black asphalt and let the sun do its thing.  The temperature may be low, but there was plenty of sun for most of the day.  We didn't have much in the way of temperature, but the rays of the sun did deliver sufficient energy to dispatch most of the ice and snow away.  Temperature and heat are not the same things.

Opting for Wimphood

I have mixed sentiments regarding the standardized tests administered by the educational system.

On one hand, they are very useful in apprising students and parents as to where the child stands.  On the other hand, the standardized test as a predictor of a child's future, while highly reliable, is not 100% accurate, and educators can misguide at least a small percentage of students if standardized test scores are the sole evaluative criteria used.

I myself have always done well on standardized tests, from the third grade ones to the Multistate Bar Exam.

Quite frankly, I have seen the quality of school administration/administrators decrease since the time I was a student.  I have seen it from the perspective of a taxpayer, a parent, a college faculty member, and a former board member of a non-public school.

So I have nothing against standardized testing per se.  My chariness is based upon the misuses to which the various standardized tests can be put, whether against individual students or in the administration of the tests themselves.

And the misusers are not necessarily the school administrators who administer the standardized tests, or those who use the scores of standardized tests to classify students or prospective students.  A misuser can be a parent who refuses to allow their child to take a standardized test.  In fact, the organized parental standardized test refusers are tied in with the OccuShmucks who made such a mess (figurative and literal) of Wall Street.

There are valid reasons for a parent to refuse to allow his or her child(ren) to sit for a standardized test.  But then again, some parents, such as Jeanette Deutermann of North Bellmore, New York, opt out their children because they cannot bear to see their little darlings having to focus their energies towards meeting the challenges of the standardized testing.

Such parents are shmucks.  Worse yet, many of the children they are raising are being put on the path to developing into irresponsible, fawning wimps who will not be able to think for themselves.  The proliferation of such people in the population, of course, makes it far, far easier for tyrants to take over the nation.

More Folly than Honor

My views regarding Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, the three American (?) hikers detained by Iran, are and have been essentially the same as those enunciated by Debbie Schlussel. I have been following the story since its inception, or, rather, it has been followed for me by a certain acquaintance of mine who also happens to be a friend of Josh Fattal's mother.

Josh grew up (and his mother still lives) in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. On 5 October 2011, the Township's Public Affairs Committee proposed that Josh Fattal be honored. Now, some friends of mine (not the mutual one with Josh Fattal's mother -- yet) have informed me that the Township Board of Commissioners has unanimously voted in favor of the proposal!

In my book, Joshua Fattal ranks with those Jewish Kapos who did the bidding of the Nazis in the concentration camps. He is not a hero. He is not a proud American. He is a self-hating Jewish leftist anarchist.

But he does outrank, albeit not by much, the shmucks on the Cheltenham Township Board of Commissioners who all voted to honor him.