New York-New Jersey Trail Conference - You Rock!

I recently took a hike in the Ramapo Reservation without a map, and had a less fun time than I hoped for. The natural surroundings were great, but there are many trails, and I could not find what I was looking for.

To the rescue - trail maps by the NY-NJ Trail Conference. Great color and BW maps printed on Tyvek, so they won't rip. NYNJTC does great work for hikers in the area of New York City. Buy their stuff.

(A shoutout of thanks to Danny Chazin, who has worked tirelessly for TC, the Scouts, and his synagogue over the years.)

Catching up - SFABC

First order of business - catching all of my faithful readers up on my life.

Science Fiction Association of Bergen County - a great group of folks I met in July at a Barnes and Noble in Paramus. Thank you, BN for hosting that meeting! I'm now a regular member and a member of their writers group. I'm very happy to be writing fiction again!

Can't wait for Spring!

My recent look into science standards here in New Jersey popped up the factoid that the Garden Sate has a state dinosaur (as do several other states). Now I've found that the best place to look for fossils here is Poricy Park. Thank you NJGS!

Since you have to wade out into the stream to seive for fossils along the sandbanks, I'll have to wait for the spring before dragging the family out for the fun. This is gonna be great!

NJ ASK - WTF?

So I was watching (via PT 'natch) the slow motion train wreck of Florida school districts signing up to stupidity, consigning a generation of graduates to burger flipping and telemarketing hell.


(Btw, if they ever figure out how to outsource burger flipping to India, we are toast. That is, until they figure out how to outsource toast to India...)


So there I was, all smug in my insufferable suburban Yuppie way, when it suddenly occurred to me that the fair state of New Jersey has its own share of rural ignorance, people from one end of the state who impose blue laws on the other end, teachers in Kearny that lecture kids on their private religious beliefs, etc. Perhaps I should check out how my own state is doing?


The good news - New Jersey has some (IMHO) appropriate core content standards in place for life science education in evolution. New Jersey got an A while Kansas was getting an F- (pwned!) a couple years ago when KS was devolving into BS. The standards went into effect in 1996 and are reviewed every five years. Testing shows that even economically disadvantaged kids are scoring above 50% "proficient" at all grade levels.


The better news - we have a state dinosaur! (OK, OK even Florida has a state fossil.)

Back to smug complacency until 2011, when our standards come up for review...