Apocalypse Now--Mayan Style

What? I missed it? What are you talking about; didn’t the world actually come to an end last week? Of course it did, and this column is really taking place on some other plane, right?

Really, who would believe that the Mayan culture, some thousands of years ago, would foresee the end of the world as we know it? It’s not as if this is some kind of Atlantean vision of the future. The waters didn’t rise, the earth didn’t shatter, and the stars didn’t fall from the firmament. I mean, we are all right, right?

I am here and if you are reading this I have to assume that you are here too. Although, I have been wrong in the past, I somehow think my logic in this regard is pretty straight on. Still, how some people reacted is just so human, all too human actually.

To think that the world is populated by the kinds of people who believe that some ancient culture’s calendar might in anyway whatsoever control the details of our wonderful modern life is just ludicrous. Rave on, I say!

Still, the papers report thousands of mystics, hippies, and tourists celebrated at ancient Mayan pyramids in southeastern Mexico waiting for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Tell me that again, and I will tell you about tales of the dangers of the Y2K bug. And yet, I know there are people who insist that all the hard work by IT technicians save the world that time.

Ha. Forget the likes of Bernie Madoff, his scam is a child’s bad joke compared to the boondoggle that was Y2K. The best thing about Y2K is it gave new life to a bunch of old school COBOL and FORTRAN coders who had been out of work for years because of the dead computer programming languages. Ironically, they were brought back in for a last ditch effort to link the old and new and try to sidestep supposedly cataclysmic problems that were to come about due to the date change from 1900 to 2000.

We were supposed to believe that all these brilliant minds had forgotten to allow the computers to handle dates that began with a 2 instead of a 1. Hogwash. Yes, there were actually a few isolated incidents, like the 105 year old man who received a harsh letter from the local school board about his need to attend kindergarten. They thought he was only 5. Most of the problems the public experienced were more nuisance than cataclysm.

And here we have gone again with this whole Mayan Apocalypse thing. It’s ironic enough that Mayan ancestors told the media that they didn’t believe that stuff. And yet, here we are, homo-simpleton, eating it up like pablum.

For the record, the 21^st of December was merely the end of the Mayan’s 13^th bak’tun, a period of about 400 years in the Mayan long calendar.  Let’s not take into account in our logic that it is indeed the 13th such event, doesn’t it just make sense to hang another calendar on the wall, this one maybe made of paper instead of stone, than it does to think everything is going to come to a screeching halt. For me it does.

But thanks to our vast communication sources today we were able to get all the loonies on the same path. From the History channel to the Internet, everyone was exploiting the end of the world. And yet, those shows were designed to make money for somebody, and if we were all going to the happy hunting ground somewhere else, what need would we have for money, after all?

Well, it’s the day before Christmas and all through the house, not an apocalypse was stirring, not even a tsunami. So, as I break open the 14^th bak’tun, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I'm for stricter gun controls if it stops stuff like Newtown, CT

It would be hard for me to say that I favor gun control coming from a background where guns were prevalent and shooting them was a sporting activity. Whether it was target shooting, shooting skeet, or just plain old plunking, it seems that shooting and firearms in general have been part of my life since I was very young.

I remember clearly getting up early on fall mornings and walking through the “woods” with my father, an avid small game hunter. The time we spent together in the fields near our upstate New York home are memories I will always treasure.

When I joined the Army in 1974, I was trained in using an M-16 and a .45 caliber automatic pistol. My service record shows I earned the Expert Marksman badge with both weapons. While in Germany, my unit cross-trained with a German paratrooper unit during which time I earned the Schutzenshnur, or German marksmanship award. To earn the award, a shooter has to qualify with a pistol, rifle, and machine gun. It was not a particularly easy ribbon to win, and many American soldiers don’t get the opportunity to attempt it.

All of that had made my position on gun control pretty easy. At the bottom, I know that guns aren’t so much the problem as the people using them are. But that’s too easy of a response, in light of the events that took place Friday December 14^th in Newtown, CT. I can’t for the life of me imagine trying to deal with that kind of senseless, insane murdering of innocents.

I still believe that people who are bent on doing the indescribable and unthinkable will find a way to do so. Adam Lanza, and those of his ilk, will always be able to conjure up a means to put their plans into action. There are dozens of examples.

On the other hand, perhaps it is time to look at locking down weapon sales. In this country, we will never be able to keep deranged people from getting access to weapons of all sorts. Think Timothy McVeigh, and you can kind of get the idea.

But if there is a chance that tightening gun laws can stop the next school shooting incident, or mall or theater or anything, then it may be time to impose stricter regulations. The whys and the wherefores have won out with me.

It’s hard enough to endure the loss of loved ones when they come to the fulfillment of their lives. Suffering the pain of losing a parent, a friend, or a sibling, even when you expect it, is difficult enough to endure. But the loss of a child? How hard that must be on an individual basis. It’s one thing if there are medical reasons for such a loss, but for so many to be killed like this?

Something has to be done to attempt to stop or hinder people from doing these things. While I still fully believe that someone bent on doing such evil will find a way to do it, perhaps making such devastating weapons harder to get is the answer.

All in all, something must be done. It’s not just stricter gun regulations, which may or may not help, but in almost all of these senseless killings people had an inkling about the evil. Adam Lanza used weapons that his mother owned and she was aware of his mental instability; a school psychologist knew James Holmes, the Colorado movie theater killer, was on the edge and capable of doing great evil; and Seung-Hui Cho was known to be dangerous and violent. So what does it take? How can we stop such events?

While I suspect that stricter gun laws will have little change on shooting like this, I think anything we can do to try to stop them should, and ought to be, on the table. If that includes tightening up guns laws, then so be it. Anything we can do to keep from living with the prospect of another of these atrocities needs to be employed.

Sex offenders could be as close as next door

Sexual abuse of children in this country is rampant and growing. On occasion, we overturn a stone here and there and find yet another slimy excuse for an individual romping around and trying to “hook up” with underage girls and boys. It’s easy to point fingers at people like Jerry Sandusky, Bernie Fine, and the entire Catholic Church. They are far away, and we, as the general public can say “at least it’s not like that here.’

Well guess again. Not only are such actions taken against children here in our own Tri-City area, but they are thriving. Take a look at the Virginia State Police sex offender registry, http://sex-offender.vsp.virginia.gov, and you may be in for a surprise or two not just by the numbers but also by the list of who they are and where they live.

While the offenses that may get someone included in the registry can range from misconduct with a minor to aggravated sexual assault and rape, the registry only shows the ones who have been caught. There are many who have not been caught, despite the police departments’ best efforts. And there are so many different ways a sex offender can make contact with youths these days it makes the potential risk that much greater.

The table below shows each location in the Tri City area, the number of registered sex offenders on the State Police Sex Offender Registry, the most recent population numbers from the 2010 Census, and the number of sex offender per 1000 residents. It includes a total for the Tri City area.

Location	Registered Sex Offenders	Population	Sex offenders per 1000 population
Prince George	42	36,556	1.1
Dinwiddie	52	28,001	1.8
Colonial Heights	41	17,440	2.41
Hopewell	88	22,580	3.8
Petersburg	217	32,326	6.7
Chesterfield	278	320,277	8.6
Tri City Area	718	457,180	1.5

So, in a way, it shouldn’t be such a shock to find out that a local pastor, Curtis Glendell Mathews, was sentenced to 10 years in prison recently for trying to set up sexual encounters with five girls from Petersburg. He pled guilty to using FaceBook and his cellphone to attempt to set up his meetings. In accepting the plea, which kept everyone from having to appear in court to testify, Mathews dodged five additional counts.  Still, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Mark Bowes’ story, Circuit Judge Pamela S. Baskerville accepted the plea agreement and set the sentence to 85 years with 75 years suspended.

It started out simply enough when Mathews contacted at least these five girls, aged 14-17, through FaceBook. He would groom them with favorable comments, and then try to get their phone numbers. Then he would call and text them and try to set up a meeting. Two of the five met with him, and one reported having sex with him.

Police say there are more victims in the case. It is likely that the case would never have come to light if not for some bad luck for Mathews. It seems that one of his victims showed a friend his picture, and his friend recognized Mathews as the pastor at her church.

Don’t think this is the only such case. There are more; they are all around us. The nature of the crime keeps witnesses from coming forward, and in some cases the people who are aware of something being awry are unwilling to step up and report it. That’s what happened in the Sandusky case, and to some extent with this case. Had it not been for the friend, Mathews would still be working his game via FaceBook and cellphone.

Changing the Rules to Make the Grade

A recent Richmond Times-Dispatch article concerning public school grade scales seems to support the idea that creating a state-wide scale may be the way to go. The issue with grading scale isn’t really the problem that people are attempting to deal with. The real problem, the ultimate problem, is how the grading scale enhances or dis-enhances the students’ chances to get into a school of their choosing.

Whether a 93 constitutes an A or a 90 constitutes an A is really irrelevant. Many years ago, when I expressed my concern about what I felt was an out-of-whack grading scale at Colonial Heights Schools, where you have to have a 93 to earn an A, Les Fryar, a long time Colonial Heights principal and retired school board member, told me it really didn’t matter to him. If they dumbed down the grade scale, Fryar said he would simply make his tests that much harder with the result being no appreciable change.

The real point people like Chesterfield mom Jamie Stewart is trying to make is that the seeming disparity between grading scales gives those with the lower scale a better advantage when applying to college.  Her comments, in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article by Jeremy Slayton, imply that if the scale were the same, or similar, across the state then all the students applying to colleges throughout the state would have the same opportunity.

To some extent that is true, but again, what really counts is the student’s grade point average (GPA).  The difference between a 3.9 and a 4.0 may seem inconsequential to a parent or grandparent, but when the grades arrive in the great combine that is the college entry process, one tenth of a point can easily be the difference between getting in and being left out.

An even bigger farce perpetrated on high school students is the misconceived idea that taking AP courses, in which you are given degree of difficulty points toward your GPA, is somehow better for you than taking a lower level, and therefore easier, course and earning an “easy” A. The argument that is often presented is that colleges look at the kinds of courses the students take when assessing who gets in or who does not.

Hogwash!

The number of students applying for college forces the institutions to run the applications through their version of the combine. What comes out on the other end is a raft of applications which meet certain, prescribed criteria. So, we want students who have 4.0 GPAs, etc. So the student who earns a B in an AP course and doesn’t get a 4.0 is on the outs, while the one who took the baby course and earned an A gets accepted.

Voila! There you have college selection 101.

Don’t think that’s so? Ask a college registrar about the process. GPA is a key indicator in every college acceptance combine ever created. Really, what is better? It’s different if the student scores an A in an AP course, because they then get the benefit of the degree of difficulty assessment. That’s how students can graduate with 4.6 and higher GPAs, on a 4.0 scale.

But I have had many AP teachers and students say that a B in an AP class is as good as an A in a lower level course. That isn’t true, unless somehow you pass the combine where the colleges attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff in large numbers. Even some wheat goes by the wayside and some chaff gets in with the good stuff. Colleges don’t take any class difficulty into consideration until it comes time to award scholarships or whatever, in which case a B in an AP class may in fact be worth more than an A in a regular class.

Nothing really beats getting the grade anyway. Whether the target is 94, 93, or 90, there will still be students who just miss making the grade. Will the change benefit some students? Probably, but I think we are talking extremely small numbers. Enhanced, if that’s the right term, grade scales won’t really change much. There are a finite number of students who will be accepted to this school or that school and in the end you may juggle a few of the marginal ones, but overall the process will remain the same.

So change the scale or leave it as is. No difference to me and none I am sure for the colleges. In the end, the students will enter their GPAs into the gaping maw of the College Entrance Combine and hope and pray they have enough credentials to get where they want to go. To me, there is no difference.