Today is Sunday, March 9.  There are only 78 days until Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of pale old man legs and fat women who should not wear bikinis season (AKA summer).  Today we remember the birthdays of Amerigo Vespucci, George Hayward, Raul Julia, my sister Nancy and my daughter-in-law Marianne.  In 1562 kissing in public was banned in Naples and was punishable by death, in 1842 Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” premiered in Milan and in 1942 construction of the Alaska Highway began. And yes, General Francisco Franco is still dead.  It is Baron Bliss Day in Belize, Amerigo Vespucci Day world-wide and in Memphis, Tennessee, Tuesday will be the start of the five-day Cotton Carnival.

I read in the paper the other day about the changes being made to the SAT’s.  I have a problem with this whole thing.  College Board officials said that the update was needed to make the exam better representative of what students study in high school and the skills they need to succeed in college and afterward.  If this is such an important issue, why are they waiting until 2016 to roll out the new test.  The last change was made in 2005.  By today’s standards, that test was out-of-date about five years ago.  By the time they come out with the new test, it will be time to change it again. 

 One problem I have is that they are not encouraging students to develop a strong vocabulary.  They are doing away with words like prevaricator and sagacious.  Why?  Those are good words and students should be encouraged to expand their vocabulary.  What I find interesting is that my wife was teaching reading to a group of second graders recently and one of the words they needed to know was exhaustion.  Now if those young kids need to know that word, why shouldn’t high school students know words like prevaricators?  

They claim that they are making the test more relevant to the high school curriculum.  Which high school?  Unless all high schools throughout the US are teaching the exact same curriculum, I do not see how that is possible.  Are they going to regionalize the tests?  If so, does that mean the results will only benefit a New Jersey student who wants to go to school in this area?  If that student wants to go to school in Florida or California, will they have to take the SAT for that region?  I understand relevant.  I also understand the need to create a test that reflects what a student has learned throughout their school years.  I just think that you can encourage learning and expanding a student’s knowledge and still be relevant.

As you may remember from other editions, I have a hard time with people who do not pronounce words correctly.  See if you can see what is wrong with the following passage:

The young girl was estatic to find out that her boyfriend was going to take her out for a hamager after school.  She was hungry and could not wait fer the end of the day.  She looked forward to the opportunity to exscape from the burdens of school.  She wanted to ferget about everything and just enjoy her time with her boyfriend.

If you were typing that using Word, five words would be underlined with squiggly red lines.  However, if you read it to most people, they would not notice anything wrong.  You want to make the SAT’s a test of knowledge?  Have students correctly pronounce standard, everyday words.  What gets me is that people who should speak properly do not.  I have heard the language destroyed by teachers, newscasters, etc.  I heard a weather person talking about the tempeture outside.  I heard a news person talk about an intresting story that was coming up.  People are always talking about how they are gonna do somethin or they kinda wanna go to the mall.

I have had people say, “Lemme axe you a question,” and I have heard women talk about a new piece of jewlery they received.  Home buyers go to realators to find a house, people receive alcolades for doing good work, they brag about how well their child is doing in kiddygarden.  They drop the g off words like runnin, goin, jumpin, doin, and on and on.  I may be picky, but really – is it that hard to pronounce words correctly?  Let’s start slowly.  Let’s just start using the “g” on the end of words.  That’s a good beginning.  Maybe people would pronounce the words properly if they looked at them and saw how they were spelled.  Maybe.

Please forgive my rant.  That has always been a pet peeve of mine and occasionally it gets to me and I have to let loose.  By the way, I had a pet peeve once, but it was eaten by my neighbor’s pet project. 

Am I the only one who feels that inanimate objects are not always inanimate and are really out to drive us crazy?  Here is an example of what I mean.  On nights when I take out the garbage, I empty the waste baskets upstairs into plastic bags.  A simple task right?  You pick up the can, insert it into the bag, invert it and dump the trash.  The problem is that just as the trash starts to come out of the can, the bag folds in on itself and all the trash goes on the floor.  What makes it worse is that it is usually when the can has a pile of ripped up paper in it.  The lovely Elaine feels that it is necessary to rip everything into small pieces before discarding it.  I guess she does not want people going through the trash and finding out that we do not use the coupons for driveway repaving.  But I digress …

The trash bag is just one instance of the problem.  I have had more battles with electric cords than I can count.  Why is it that no matter how I want the cord to be, it always goes a different way?  One time I was trying to put the cord for the coffee pot back behind the pot on the counter.  It did not want to coil up the way I wanted and kept uncoiling.  I finally decided to just drop it on the counter and not worry about it.  When I did it coiled up the way I had wanted it in the first place.  This kind of thing goes on all the time.  If you are not having problems with inanimate objects, don’t tell me.  Let me believe that I am not the only one.

Our fact this week tells us that a female donkey’s milk is closest to human milk.  What I want to know is why anyone would be testing that in the first place.

Have a good week.  I’m gonna be back next week writin some other stuff for ya.