giant rodents

Unsupportable Theory of the Day: At some point in the next fifty years, a great novel will be written, featuring as its protagonist a specimen of phoberomys pattersoni.
For those who haven’t kept pace with advances in rodent science, Big Phob was a giant rodent that roamed the northern stretches of South America millions of years ago. Picture a guinea pig with a squirrel’s gait — but 1,500 pounds. And 10 feet long. Not counting the additional four feet of tail.
Dude rocked.
See, South America was once silly with these bizarre oversized rodents and other furry creatures straight out of the the minds of six-year-olds. Weird shit like zenarthrans and toxodons and litopternas (a.k.a. the psuedohorse). They had few natural predators, so they evolved into big fat slobs, eating grass and sunning themselves in the Andes. A good life.
Then came the Great American Interchange. That’s when North and South America — after eons apart — were finally joined together at the Panama isthmus.
The north’s big bad carnivores poured across the bridge and found all these tasty fatties ripe for the munching. And while I’d hope a 1,500-pound guinea pig could put up a fight, remember that it hadn’t had to do much but eat grass for many millennia. I can imagine why it didn’t fare well.
But seriously: There’s great drama to be mined out of this, no? It’s essentially the plot of The War of the Worlds — except it really happened and involves fewer New Jerseyans. And I’ve already got the perfect wisecracking sidekick lined up for Big Phob: his surviving cousin dinomys branickii, also known as “Count Branicki’s terrible mouse.”

david lynch’s lumiere

If David Lynch had been born in 1875.
“This is David Lynch’s 55-second short filmed with an original Lumière camera. Forty international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinématographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds; (2) no synchronized sound was permitted; and (3) no more than three takes…Remember while watching that all the effects are in-camera and there is no cutting for scenes.”

kevin smith

Thank heavens Kevin Smith is keeping newspapers in business.
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of his movies — I honestly tried three times to watch Clerks and failed each time — but I have a lot of respect for Smith. His iPod director’s commentary idea is pure genius. And in the below 19-minute video, in which he discusses his abbreviated attachment to the new Superman movie, he shows what a smart, funny, and seemingly sensible guy he is:

teacher salary column

Here’s my column from today’s paper.

When Dan Hamermesh heard that Northwest ISD was paying rookie teachers $44,159, he was thrilled. “That’s phenomenal! In Texas? I’m happy to hear it.”

But within 30 seconds, he’d switched gears: “That’s just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. It’s exactly wrong.”

What was he talking about? Who is Dan Hamermesh? And why does he think that well-meaning North Texas school districts are making choices that will drive promising teachers out of the profession?

MP3 Monday: July 17, 2006

I’m sticking with my recent international theme with this week’s MP3 Monday. As always, songs will stay on the server for one week’s time.
URUGUAY: La Conferencia Secreta del Toto’s Bar by Los Shakers. Originally released in 1968.
This is new territory for MP3 Monday; I’m actually posting the entire album instead of just one MP3. (It’s a zip file, about 32 megs.) I linked a few days ago to a video by Los Shakers, the preeminent ’60s band of South America, whose sound I just love. The song I linked (“Rompan Todo”) is dead-on Beatles circa 1964. But their masterpiece, never released in this country and rare everywhere, was La Conferencia Secreta del Toto’s Bar, recorded just before their breakup. If you want to continue the Fab Four metaphor, it’s their Sgt. Pepper’s, but I don’t want to make them sound like no-talent Liverpool copy machines. It mixes in the psych-pop sound of the Nuggets compilations with a sunny optimism and some inventive instrumentation — including some Afro-Uruguayan street rhythms on songs like “Candombe” that are sort of a Pet Sounds-goes-bossa-nova. Of particular note: the title track, “B.B.B.Band,” “El Pino y la Rosa,” and “Una Forma de Arco Iris.”
In case you can’t tell, I really, really like this one and highly recommend you download it. It’s apparently been forgotten by the outside world; my off-handed mention of it a while back promptly moved me to Hit No. 2 in a Google search for its name, and apparently only 17 last.fm users have a copy. Help revive it from history’s back pages!
BRAZIL: “Blues A Volonte” by Baden Powell. From the album Images On Guitar (1971).
No, not the guy who started the Boy Scouts: Baden Powell de Aquino, the Brazilian classical/bossa-nova guitarist, who here works up quite a groove.
Another classic South American album unavailable in the U.S., alas. The great scat vocalist is the French jazz singer Janine de Waleyne, a frequent Baden Powell collaborator.
ZAIRE/CONGO: “Yuda” by Dackin Dackino. From the album Afro-Rock, Vol. 1 (2001).
Another album I can’t recommend enough: a compilation of some terrific (and super obscure) Afrobeat from the 1970s. In case you thought Afrobeat was just Fela, this album will set you straight. It was compiled by a fellow named Duncan Brooker, who tracked down all the original vinyl over nearly a decade of roaming the continent. Here’s his story of how he did it, and it’s really a terrific read. I can’t say I know anything about Dackin Dackino, other than this song was apparently recorded in 1974 in what was then Zaire. And it’s pro-Mobutu, which may be suspect in retrospect.
The whole album is available on eMusic, which you really should subscribe to. So is a lot of Baden Powell.
Speaking of Fela, I found this pretty good mini-documentary on the genius himself on YouTube — produced by MTV, of all people, in 1985:

another cheating story

Here’s my story from Sunday’s front page — it’s more about cheating:

When he saw that six Richardson schools were on the state’s list of potential TAKS cheaters, Superintendent Jim Nelson wanted to investigate. But to do so, he needed to know how Caveon – the company that built the list – did its work.

He e-mailed state Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, whose agency paid Caveon to do the analysis: “Commissioner, how do I get detailed information as to how Caveon reached their conclusions? All we got were the conclusions.”

He added, according to documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News : “Anger and frustration aimed at the agency is palpable. I want to help, but we must have access to their analysis.” Without those details, the Texas Education Agency is doing “nothing more than a hit and run,” he said.

Mr. Nelson and other Texas educators have tried to get the information they think they need to clear their schools’ names. But the TEA hasn’t been able to give it to them. That’s because agency officials never got the data themselves.

As a result, few, if any, thorough cheating investigations have begun – nearly two months after Caveon determined that 609 schools had suspicious test scores.