I suspected we’d be seeing distribution of the Tales at some point because, let’s be honest, there’s demand for more from the Harry Potter universe. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if a new series started out within that continuum, because she did such a wonderful job creating a believable world.

So, I wasn’t too surprised when I saw that Amazon announced today that the Tales of Beedle the Bard will be available on December 4th, 2008. Tales, if you remember, was a hand-crafted book written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling in her own hand, it seems. Only a handful of copies were made and sold at auction or given to friends. They look spectacular. The books contain the fairy tales described in the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

There are two editions available for pre-order. There’s a standard edition, that contains the five fairy tales, reproductions of the illustrations in the hand-crafted originals, and commentary by Dumbledore. There’s also a collector’s edition, which comes in a fancy package and has additional illustrations and a cover very similar to the one on the original run (inlaid metal, replica gems, etc.).

I think I might have to get one for myself… (would make a nice Christmas gift, hint hint).

Most of you probably know this, so consider this a friendly reminder. When you see a direct quote from someone that includes ellipses in the middle somewhere (or splits the quote in another way), be cautious and turn up the dial on your BS meter. Otherwise, you could get fooled by reporters who create this surprising quote:

Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, “This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,” adding: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

out of the more humble, more expected, and far less controversial:

It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

I’ve seen variations of criticism of this particular story around various blogs today, but the bottom line is that the ellipses obscured the pretty clear statement that he was being humble, not arrogant. Matt Yglesias puts it clearest, so I’ve cribbed from him.

Besides, quite frankly, he’s right. This isn’t about Barack Obama the man but about the vision he’s put forward of a better America. It is all about America.

Update: oops, clarified a bit in the first paragraph.

I had a long conversation with my (more conservative than me) mother-in-law this weekend about why I’m voting for Obama. Along with the positive reasons for voting for Obama, I made the point that my biggest problem for McCain is that I don’t know what he stands for any more. While the Republicans like to use the “flip-flopper” label on Democratic candidates, there’s no candidate that this label applies to more than the 2008 edition of candidate John McCain.

This Washington Monthly post highlights the most recent incident where McCain or his campaign staff contradicts themselves within hours of each other. It’s actually remarkable how completely uncertain they are about what their campaign favors or opposes.

Normally, some wiggle on policy positions is fine in my book. People are allowed to change their minds, even politicians. The problem here is that these are 180s because, it seems, McCain’s campaign is unclear about what they believe in.

This seems to be emerging from a natural tension within the campaign itself. I think John McCain’s instincts are to try and govern when he’s asked his opinion. This is, however, running into his campaign’s decision to bow before the Republican interest groups (anti-tax Norquist, the religious right, etc.) plus his own inclination to tell whoever he’s talking to what they want to hear. I think this last is what got him into trouble with the Keating Five scandal or his interference in the PAX tv regulations. In both cases, these were big interest groups with a personal relationship as well.

That’s a dangerous way for a leader to behave. In fact, it’s basically how George W. Bush behaves as President. We’ve seen how that turned out. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

WHForums and Talk of West Hartford have pulled some interesting data together about our local test score debate. You can get my take and links to the earlier posts here at FM. The two new posts I’d like to highlight are these:

• Free/Reduced Lunch Eligibility and Hartford County Test Scores - WH Forums
• CMT Scores and Per Pupil Spending - Greater Hartford Area - Talk of West Hartford

Both are interesting posts and worth considering.

I suspect they also say a lot about how each of those writers approaches the school budget debate (as this post will say about mine, shortly). Basically, ToWH focuses on outlays, per pupil expenditure vs. results as measured by the tests. WH Forums takes a different tack, starting with the question of “what makes our town different than Avon, Simsbury, and Farmington” and proposing a theory.

To me, both are valid starting points. In fact, the only concern I have is using this test score as a proxy for “results”… but since it’s easy to turn into a number and easy to correlate that to other numbers, there we go.

So, I’ve done a couple of things that I hope help the debate out a bit. First, I’ve put the numbers from ToWH’s post and the 2000 census data on median household income by town into a spreadsheet. I’ve put that spreadsheet online at Google Docs so everyone can look at it, re-sort it, and download it. I’ve invited both ToWH and WH Forums’ writers in as collaborators, as well. If you want to add data to the spreadsheet, feel free to drop me a line at codesujal -at- gmail and I’ll invite you in. I took the census numbers from the Dept. of Economic and Community Development’s site and I’ve added that spreadsheet to Google Docs as well.

Second, the per pupil numbers are interesting to say the least. Hartford City Public Schools spend by and far the most dollars per pupil. The next thing I’m going to do when I have a moment is dig through the budget breakdowns to see how they allocate money vs. West Hartford. Here are the relevant links:

• Hartford Public Schools 06-07 budget — (here’s the executive summary, which contains most of the info I was looking for
• West Hartford Public Schools 08-09 budget

The executive summary for the WHPS system doesn’t contain the same level of detail as the Hartford one, so I’ll have to cull that from the Section C Breakdowns (PDF link). It looks a little daunting and I need to get back to work on my real job. So, that will come later.

Finally, looking through all of these numbers, I’d like to summarize how I’m seeing the conversation evolve. We’ve got two conversations, really, that are going on together. First is the bottom-line expenditures by the school district and the size of the budget overall. There are many people understandably upset about the overall growth in the budget. This conversation is, to me, focused on purely fiscal issues — comparative pay of school administrators and teachers vs. other towns, audits looking for waste in school expenditures, etc. The second conversation is about whether the WHPS budget is delivering appropriately for the town. This conversation is about test scores, programs, and student outcomes.

The two conversations could be happening without the other. One could be perfectly satisfied with the school performance but feel like it should be or could be cheaper. One could also be perfectly fine with the tax rate, but care about test scores and our relative performance to other districts, to dropout rates, to college attendance rates, etc.

Because of the budget debate, though, I think both are happening together, and are being used as ammunition by each side of both. It’s also pretty clear to me that the conversation one focuses on indicates an underlying stance on the budget issue. Speaking for myself, I’m focused on the test results because the tax issue is tied to why I live in West Hartford: I want good schools. I really want the best schools, and will be willing to pay a premium even if I don’t take advantage of the system (no kids yet). So, I want to know if my willingness is being taken advantage of or not, and whether we can do better as a town. I think if the tax burden were making it hard for me to afford living in town, or if I were on a fixed income, I would be more focused on the bottom line growth in the budget. So, I think it’s important that we acknowledge that difference if we’re going to come to some sort of consensus on a budget.

Enough meta-debate for now.

Let me get back to the test scores again. If we use the test scores as a proxy, we’re not in the top 5 as a district (and that’s just in our county). Like WH Forums, I wonder if this is a big deal or not. Certainly, I’d like for us to be much higher, but I don’t know whether the goal of being top 5 or number 1 makes sense for our town. Again, it matters whether the scores are a good proxy for educational results.

My take, which I think is pretty clear, is that the test scores cover two subject areas and that’s hardly the full measure of a student’s academic success or the quality of the education they’re receiving. For example, the WHPS executive summary highlights other, unmeasured differences. WHPS starts foreign language study in 3rd grade (kindergarten in some cases). They offer a gifted and talented program, which was important in my own education and an alternative high school program. Read the summary for others. These things don’t show up directly in test scores, even though they make for a broader education. These things are important to me. Therefore, I’m not sure the test scores serve as a good enough proxy for results.

This is worth having a wider conversation about in town, because we’re often speaking past each other when discussing the budget. Are we all going after the same goal? Do we agree on what makes a good public education system?

PS. local bloggers — if you don’t mind, could we all start using Google Docs or something like it when pulling together these type of spreadsheets? It can import Excel files if you’re more comfortable in the tools, and lets everyone play with the numbers rather than just look at a static file. I’d appreciate it.

… that I may not be able to vote for the first Presidential ticket with an Indian-American on it. I know, rationally, that voting for Obama is the right decision, but it’s still a tiny bit depressing. Bobby Jindal, wait until Obama fixes Bush’s mistakes, then switch parties (or fix the GOP), and we’ll talk in 2016.

Though, on another random thought, it bugs me a slight bit that he turned on his faith and doesn’t use his real name, which is Piyush. It wouldn’t affect how I vote, but it’s not a choice I would make (obviously, I haven’t made it).

There isn’t a post I’ve written over the past few months where I don’t find grammatical errors, spelling errors, or just downright poor writing. I’ll just randomly skim old posts because they show up in Sitemeter and typically have to fix 2-3 mistakes. Just wanted to say that I’m aware of it, and am trying to do better. Ultimately, trying to squeeze in blogging, which is fun and usually relaxing, into the start-up schedule means less time proofreading. And, as my wife tells her students, proofreading is the key to good writing.

If I had two things I wish I could be, the first would be a musician, the second a graphic designer. The wannabe designer in me really wanted to see Helvetica when I saw it in the iTunes store. Helvetica is a documentary about typography, specifically the emergence of Helvetica 50 years ago and it’s origins in modernist design to the rebellion against it to it’s reemergence as a core design element today. The movie touches on the power of type and typeface to communicate through conversations with some big name designers, including the people behind some of the fonts and album covers and posters we all might recognize.

To me, type is the hardest thing I grapple with when working on FatMixx. It and color give me the most trouble. These ideas that are stuck in my head need the right typeface and the right spacing to work, and I’ll spend hours playing with fonts and colors before even starting on a new FM layout. (then I’ll usually give up and do something “boring” or random, but hey, I tried)

To that end, listening to these talented designers talk about how they approach type and how they interpret Helvetica was a neat hour plus of entertainment for me. If you’re a font geek, or if you have wondered how that ubiquitous font came to be, this is worth seeing. The history lesson alone is interesting enough.

It’s available on iTunes now:

(and, yes, it’s been a movie extravaganza this weekend)

Heidi and I rented 27 Dresses last night via iTunes and our Apple TV. This is going to be the shortest review ever. It’s basically what you’d expect, a romantic comedy that’s neither memorable nor particularly good or bad. If you have an hour and a half where you want to watch something funny-ish that helps you relax, this is the movie for you.