We are still fighting with generator/boiler issues. The bottom line is that both cannot be on at the same time. I can't explain what is happening, and neither can anyone else. It's not the size of the load on the generator; the well pump pulls ten times the current that the boiler is, and the generator doesn't have a nervous breakdown. In fact, the generator will run every load in the house except the boiler. I still suspect there is a problem with the boiler wiring. It hasn't worked reliably since it was installed. Pretty much like everything else in the house. I've yet to understand the inverse relationship between cost and reliability: cheap stuff lasts forever, but expensive stuff breaks at the slightest touch, or for no reason whatsoever. Think of this in terms of watches. I am wearing a watch that cost me a grand total of $20 that I have dunked in water numerous times, hit with hammers, slammed into walls, dropped, stepped on, zapped with static, DC and AC electrical currents, yet it still works like brand new. If it was a $200 watch, it would have died the first time I set it down too hard. Can someone explain this to me?

We woke up to snow today. Ugh. Not much, but the forecast is for more and more until we are buried up to our necks in the stuff. I'd rather get a root canal than have to deal with snow.

Last night, we watched Mad Hot Ballroom. This was a movie in this summer's film festival that we did not get a chance to see. The movie is a documentary about a ballroom dancing program/competition in the New York City public schools. I have no idea what the ideology of the filmmakers might be, but nothing I have ever seen so dramatically shows what is wrong with our public education.

The first thing you notice is the adults: they are nearly all women. The men are mostly personifications of the stereotype exemplified by the question, "Is he gay, or just European?" Yes, I understand that education has always been heavily female, especially in the early grades. But the near-complete lack of males was obvious. (One school had a male dance instructor that wasn't a fag; other than that, I don't recall anyone that wasn't a female or a fem male.)

But the lesson in modern education began with the competition. Weepy females lamented the existence of "hard competition" and worrying about the students feelings. Selecting the students that will represent the school in the competition is presented as the hardest thing any of the adults have ever done. My first thought was that it must be nice to live such a sheltered life. Then I remembered we were talking about school teachers, who live their entire lives in a sheltered hive, safely walled off from anything that looks like competition. Or competence.

No one competed as an individual or as a dance pair; all scoring and awards were given to the entire school team. There is one little girl who had big dreams of being a professional dancer. She was actually pretty good, maybe the best in her school. But her performance was pulled down to the school average, which wasn't good enough to get past the first round. If you go frame-by-frame, you can see the exact moment that her dreams are crushed like an empty beer can under the wheels of a semi. The hive mind of public schooling at its best. "No, Sally, you can't be a professional dancer because your parents live in a neighboring filled with children who dance like they have cement blocks on their feet, and we couldn't possibly acknowledge that you are better than they are because that might make them feel bad."

And just like in the Special Olympics, everyone goes home with a medal. And the now-ubiquitous gift bag; does every damn thing in our schools have to include consumerism?

The real eye-opener was the reaction of one school team when they were eliminated in the first round. First, the entire setup was so confusing that it took several minutes for them to figure out they had lost. That was understandable because I'm still a little fuzzy on what was going on, and I wasn't an ADD 12-year-old kid in a big, echo-plagued room with 6,000 other ADD kids. In any case, first came the look of shock, then the water-works start up (teacheress joining in, of course). Then the bitching. "We followed the rules; we did just what we were taught to do; we should have won, too." No concept whatsoever of a scored competition. No thought that someone may have done a better job on the dance floor to ruffle the smooth surface of their little minds. Worse, the teacheress is agreeing with them. What was missing from all this was any form of sportsmanship whatsoever. No applause for those who won; not even a perfunctory "Good job." Just bitching about how it was all so unfair because they had done exactly what they were told, and didn't win.

Feh.

Rent this movie, then remember that these are the people that will have to out-compete the Chinese in order to support you in your old age. Do you suppose this competition would have looked a little different in an Asian school system?

Not much else. Later.