Trick or Treat

Novice Clock Reading Skills + Good Number Sense =

"Look, Daddy - One Thousand O'clock!" - Sebastien

Think the French are Inefficient?

Just try to get away from their automated traffic ticket system:

Going 50 MPH in a 35 MPH zone at night in a rental car and the rental company had my country of residence incorrect as you can see above!  Anyone renting a car in Corsica in English must be from Great Britain, right?

When I saw the automated camera flash late one night, I figured, "What are the odds the French government would ever find me?"

Apparently higher than I thought...

Sigh, let this be a lesson to you all:  Don't mess with French government revenue from tourists!  They are serious about that!

P.S. After I paid the fine online, my credit company called me to ask if it was a bogus charge, "I wish" I responded...

My New Supporting Role...

... in a novel coming to you:

Erec is an old friend of mine and I had pre-ordered this book on Amazon as soon as I heard about it.  Very good read and then I really enjoyed when a reoccuring character named "J P Rideout" appeared on page 31: "...The dark-haired Rideout, trim and stylishly dressed, had been Kanter's steal from Wall Street and Bloomberg monitors. Rideout retained a residual superiority inherited from his French forbears, his style sharply counterbalanced by the analytical bookworm named Matt King..."

You know that thing... at the museum?

Often I will mention a device that I hope students have seen at a museum before, but I always wonder if they are actually picturing what I am picturing.  So, on a recent outing with Isabelle, we snapped some pics of some of the commmon ones so I can use them in class:

The Bell Curve Distribution

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity

Pushing a heavy weigh is all about friction, not weight!

Average Speed versus Final Speed

Merit Pay for Teachers

So the private sector thinks we should adopt this merit pay model for teachers?  Pay us extra for good test scores and whatnot?  Forget the craziness of treating teaching like a business,  forget that teaching is a team effort, and forget that test scores are more closely correlated to socio-economic status than with teacher quality.  How about the fact that Merit Pay is  just a bad idea, even in business? 

A friend recently loaned me Jim Collins' "Good to Great" and I just recently read the tidbit in which he found no correlation between compensation packaging and effective management.  His summary, "Structure your compensation such that you attract great people and you keep them - but, beyond that, incentive payments to change behavior simply do not work."

Hmmm....