Roy F. McCampbell's Blog

I greeted Sean and nodded to Tony.

“Bottle of Brugse Straffe Hendrik,” I said. “Room temperature.”

“Cool, dude,” said Sean somewhat garbled by his pierced tongue.

Tony stared at ESPN Classic Sports which was showing the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series Lipton Tea 250.

“Any news about Marty’s TV career,” I asked?

“Oh, man. She quit that. Hooked up with a mandolin player dude in an industrial rap blue grass band and moved to Austin. She got a job at a place, I think it’s called Cheer-up Charlie’s in East Austin.

“Hope she’s happy,” I said.

“Hey, Tony,” said Sean. “It almost time for the People’s Court. I’m changin’ the channel.”

“What the hell?” said Tony. “There’s still 150 miles left.”

“Sorry, dude. Gotta watch Judge Marilyn Milian hand out justice. These are real people with real cases and they have agreed to have them dismissed and settled, there, in the people’s…

So, you start a blog, learn all that WordPress stuff, write a few posts, get some likes (wow!), attract followers (how is that even possible?), get into your stride, and then suddenly after a year of blogging, something completely unexpected happens. You get Freshly Pressed, which means that a WordPress.com editor has selected your blog article to be showcased to the world.

Next thing you know your stats counter explodes and your email inbox goes into meltdown with all those likes, follows, comments and even reblogs.

Here are my stats after my last post got Freshly Pressed:

Every year we all say that “next year” will be the one when we won’t stress as much during the holidays, and that we won’t “do so much.” There’s sometimes even crazy talk after a glass of mulled wine about doing a “handmade-only gift exchange next year” but anyone who’s tried to handcraft a gift for a teenage girl who doesn’t happen to be building an Amish hope-chest understands that this is what I refer to as “crazy talk.”  No, sir! you protest. Next year will be different!  Well, that’s bullshit and you know it and I know it, but for the sake of not wanting to alienate a reader, I’ll let the assertion stand.

But you know you’re lying; by this time next year your holiday gift list will have grown exponentially and you’ll probably be hosting that neighbourhood mixer you swore you’d never participate in. And what’s…

In the spring of 2012, Brookings scholar Tom Loveless set off a firestorm when he wrote a study of the Common Core State Standards and concluded that they would make little or no difference in student achievement.

He did not pass judgment on the quality of the standards but on the question of how much standards matter.

He wrote:

“The finding is clear: The quality of state standards has not mattered. From 2003 to 2009, states with terrific standards raised their National Assessment of Educational Progress scores by roughly the same margin as states with awful ones.”

Does rigor matter? In fourth grade, he found, that was some evidence that raising cut points “is associated with increased achievement. But the effect is not large, and it is difficult to determine the direction of causality. At 8th grade, states with lenient cut points have made NAEP gains similar to those of…

I was watching a reality TV show recently and one of the eager young contestants proudly boasted, “I have never failed at anything I’ve tried to do!”

He smirked for the camera, and I thought, “Loser!”

Why? Because failing to fail is the greatest failure of all.