Alec Baldwin and shooting his camera woman.

 I assume it was an accident.  I don’t know any of the principles personally but I don’t think they are the kind of people who would commit murder. 

The TV news has talked and talked about the shooting that resulted in the death of the camera woman.  What really happened is Alec didn’t know, or didn’t bother with, the first and simplest rule of firearms safety.  Namely ALWAYS check that the gun is NOT loaded when you pick it up.  Open the action, remove the magazine and look in the chamber to make sure no live round is lurking therein.  The gun in question I believe was an 1873 Colt .45 single action Army revolver, the kind that loads the cylinder one round at a time thru a loading gate.  This means when Alec picked up this gun, he had to check all six positions of the cylinder, one by one for being empty.  A little tedious.  In this case, the check was not made either because Alec was ignorant of gun safety rules, or he found the check too tedious to bother with.

   This makes the shooting of his camera woman an accident, but it is Alec Baldwin’s accident.  

How to Teach Children to read.

 The Phonics method works.  We teach the children the sounds of each letter.  This is not hard after the children learn to sing the Alphabet Song in kindergarten.  And learn the rules about long and short vowels.  And learn the more common digraphs like “th”.  Teach them that long words can be broken down into syllables. Each syllable starts with a consonant, has a vowel in the middle and a consonant on the end.  Sound out the syllables, one by one, and then say them in order and you have the word.  There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, that and the other stuff is probably less than 50 things the child has to learn by heart.  And with them, the child is equipped to handle new words, something that happens a lot when the child is just learning to read.

 

The Whole Word method is popular with Ed majors, but it does not work.  It cannot be taught.  The child is taught to look at the whole word.  If he/she is lucky, the mind will recognize the word and the child will know how to pronounce the word, what it means, connotations and denotations.  If the mind fails to recognize the whole word, the child is out of luck, the word is meaningless.  Whole word requires the child to learn by heart a lot more than just 26 letters and some other stuff.  The King James Bible is noted for restricting itself to a vocabulary of only 850 words.  Whole word requires memorizing at least 850 words and probably a lot more.  That is a lot harder for a child to do than Phonics. 

 

   Whole Word is what skilled readers do.  I picked it up by fourth grade.  It just came to me after doing some reading.  Some people, like my best friend, don’t have it by high school.  Best friend was plenty smart, he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and went to work computing the intensity of the sound fields around the Saturn V engines.  NASA wanted to know if the sound from 27 rocket engines, all firing at once, would be enough to crack the concrete on the launching site.  Senior year in high school, best friend went out for tutoring in reading, and came back able to read Whole Word method.  He was lucky, and bright, and supported by loving parents, and attending a top notch private high school with me. 

The big Tent Sale, Littleton NH.

Word got around.  The tent was supposed to open at 9 AM this Saturday.  I got there a few minutes after nine.  The place was already packed with people who got there before nine.  The stuff was mostly house wares, rugs, books, sports equipment like ice skates and golf clubs.  I didn’t see any tools.   There was a nice brass set of fireplace tools.  I have a fireplace.  I though long and hard about buying them.  On the down side, my hearth is small and mostly full of firewood.  The nice brass tools would probably get knocked off the hearth, onto the living room rug.  On the other hand they would look cool.  I sat in a chair to rest my feet and contemplate the fire tools.  After some agonizing I decided not to buy them.  I did get away with a Donald Hamilton paperback,  a Wallace and Grommit VHS tape, a couple of whisky drinking glasses, and two nice woven scrap baskets that will replace my existing ones which are 60 years old and falling to pieces.  Much nicer than the extruded plastic scrap baskets down at Wally Mart.  After an hour the crowd thinned out.  Word to the wise, if you want to get anything nice as a yard sale, best to get there early.

 

Wall St Journal reports Chinese students in US colleges down 50%

 This is too bad.  American college is fun to do, girls, parties, sports, dorm bull sessions, and more.  Any Chinese exchange student will leave for home with a nice warm feeling about America after doing four years of college here.  And, it is a good bet that any Chinese who can swing an American college deal will in later life become an important official in China.  Which has gotta be a good thing for us.  Plus the Chinese students bring money; say $100,000 for a four year college. 

I will pay a bit more for a product marked "Made in USA"

 Used to be, nearly every thing in stores was marked "Made in USA".  Not any more.  Take a walk thru Walmart and everything is marked "Made in China" or unmarked which I figure means the same thing. Japan and Korea are selling as many cars as Detroit.  Me, I still drive a Made in USA Buick and would buy Made in USA product even if it cost a bit more.

Either I'm getting faster or the flies are getting slower

 I managed to hand swat about a dozen of 'em today.  You know the drill, you move your hand very slowly towards the fly and when within maybe 1-2 inches, you swat.  That close and the fly isn't fast enough to avoid your hand.  I usually don't do that well, but today was good for me, bad for flies.

Books I read as a child.

The Battle of Britain.  By Quentin Reynolds.  Copyright 1953.   I encountered a good looking copy in the giant book box down at the town dump.  A freebie.  I recognized it and grabbed it.  It still reads well.  The author was an American war correspondent in Britain in 1940, the year of the battle of Britain.  In 1953 he writes of his meeting with British sailors, and the captain, of a smallest steamer in a coastal convey going up the English Channel.  Fending off German attacks by aircraft and E-boats and shelling from Pas de Calais livens things up.  In later chapters he writes about RAF fighter pilots, air raid wardens, RAF bomber crews, ordinary British civilian who have to sleep on subway platforms because of the bombing, firemen, and more.  Since he was there at the time, Quentin qualifies as a primary source and writing while the memories ought to be still fresh. You finish the book with a strong feeling the British were imperturbable, kept a stiff upper lip, and were ready to fight to the death.   Just the right sort of stuff to make any American want to support Britain.