Odds and ends, 1/23/08

Wow. If only stuff like this could happen here.

Entire staff of underperforming Cincinnati school to be replaced

CINCINNATI (AP) — The entire teaching staff of an underperforming elementary school in Cincinnati is being replaced, along with the school’s principal.

Officials say Taft Elementary has not met standards for nine years, and students score about 20 points below the district average on standardized tests.

Taft Elementary is one of the smaller public schools in Cincinnati, with about 240 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The school’s principal and 11 teachers will finish out the school year.Officials say several measures short of housecleaning have been tried to improve performance at the school. But the president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers says nothing has worked.

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In all the talk about state Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard and Don Blankenship, I knew something was missing, but I didn't remember what it was until I saw where Justice Larry Starcher wants a full investigation. Bingo! I remembered Starcher has not exactly been impartial toward Blankenship in the past, either. Lucky for me, the AP filled in a few holes in my memory, although a fuller explanation would show that any investigation of the justices' relationship with Blankenship should include Starcher's past comments, too.

Here is the relevant but sketchy section from an AP story:

Lawyers for Massey have not ruled out pressing for Starcher’s recusal, citing his series of public comments attacking the company and Blankenship.

Some of those remarks targeted the multimillion-dollar 2004 ad campaign bankrolled by Blankenship that likely aided the defeat of then-Justice Warren McGraw, a Democrat, by Republican Brent Benjamin.

Benjamin declined on Friday to withdraw from the case after lawyers for Harman invoked the 2004 campaign. As acting chief justice, Benjamin appointed Cookman to replace Maynard.

Maynard and Starcher are both Democrats and their 12-year terms end this year. Maynard has announced plans to seek re-election, while Starcher has said he will not run.

I will have more thoughts on this in a few days, I hope.

UPDATE: Headline from a Wall Street Journal article that uses the West Virginia Supreme Court case as its hook: "Need for recusal by judges can wind up clearing a bench."

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A new study of California temperatures shows that state is heating up. Researchers attribute the change to greenhouse gases and urbanization.

A previous study released last March and noted in this space shows that urban areas contribute to the heating up of California, although part of the state has recorded lower temperaturs in the past 50 years.

The urbanization part creates a conflict that someone may want to address somehow. Urbanization contributes to climate change. To combat that, we should move people out of cities and into urban sprawl. To accomplish that, people will have to consume more energy, which contributes to greenhouse gases.

Okay, I'm a bit facetious here. Long term, we should encourage people to move back to the land to backwater places such as North Dakota and West Virginia where fewer people really want to live nowadays.

Fight global warming! Move to West Virginia! (That slogan's not going anywhere).

We also need to replace a lot of meat in our diets and ...

But that's a topic for another day.

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January is Blood Donor Volunteer Month. It is also Stalking Awareness Month.

The only logical conclusion is that someone is trying to tell me that vampires really exist.