It must be borne in mind that
the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy of life lies in having no goal to reach.
Benjamin E. Mays
My Choice for American Idol 2012: Phillip Phillips
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| Courtesy of Americanidol.com |
It's difficult to describe Phillip's vocal style; at times during tonight's performance I thought that he sounded like a blend of Rob Thomas and an acoustic Bruce Springsteen with a touch of Joe Cocker or Louis Armstrong. He gave his original takes on the Ben E. King standard "Stand By Me", Billy Joel's "Moving Out" and then a brilliant, well-received original song "Home", which I personally believe is the best original song performance of any finalist in the history of the show.
Jessica Sanchez sang Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing", Celine Dion's "The Prayer" and an original song "Change Nothing". I know, from reading comments at the American Idol website, that Jessica has a fanatical fan base; they might tolerate my criticizing Barack Obama in my blog--but criticizing sweet 16-year-old Jessica? What kind of monster am I? In fact, I like Jessica, as I mentioned in my April 4 post. But to be honest, her song performances tonight were uneven, particularly during "The Prayer" where I felt her voice was thin and some of her notes sounded a little pitchy at various points. (A simple Internet search shows other viewers have also found her performances somewhat pitchy and screechy.) This is a problem especially when her interpretations aren't really that original or memorable: she becomes just another girl with a big voice, and the slight vocal flaws become more noticeable. "Change Nothing" was a clear disaster, probably her worst performance over the last few weeks. You could tell by the much subdued reaction from the crowd at the end of the performance (in stark contrast to Phillip's later standing ovation), and the judges' tactful criticism that focused more on a poor choice of song than her middling performance.
It was interesting watching and listening to the judges. First, the judges had used their one "save" during the season to keep Jessica in the competition; I think the judges have a vested interest in Jessica's success. Steven Tyler had made it clear over the last couple of weeks that he thought Jessica would win the contest, although he did not comment over either performance in the first round. Both Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez thought that Jessica won the first round. I agree that I thought she put in her best performance of the night on "I Have Nothing", but I thought Phillip had the more difficult assignment because he was singing one of the most well-known R&B classics of all time: how do you take a song that hundreds, if not thousands of vocalists have done and make it your own?
The second round had Tyler scoring it for Jessica, Lopez (probably picking up on some of the flaws that I mentioned above but only mentioning she had heard Jessica give the same performance before) gave it to Phillip, and Randy rated it a draw. If I had been Phillip, I would have probably chosen a different song than "Moving Out". (I would have preferred to see him tackle something like Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay", Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train" or "This Old Heart of Mine" or perhaps the Eagles' "Desperado". If Phillip was going to do a Joel song, I would have preferred "She's Got a Way" or Joel's cover of the Dylan classic "To Make You Feel My Love". (For some reason, people don't realize that Joel recorded the first hit version of the latter song for a greatest hits album, even before Dylan recorded it; most people probably associate the song with a country artist, Garth Brooks.))
The third song was an original song that will be released if the contestant wins American Idol; even Jessica realized her third performance was lackluster; I don't recall a third round where there was a more decided victor in the history of the contest, and Jennifer Lopez all but called Phillip the next American Idol. Phillip is a singer-songwriter whom can also play musical instruments very well. There is no question from a standpoint of marketing that Phillips is the most original, marketable, charismatic talent we've seen in American Idol for years, regardless of how tonight's voting ends up. (I saw a tweet on the site about some young lady saying she had already cast her 100 votes for Jessica.)
Tomorrow I'll tip my hat to whomever wins, but Phillip, singing like he has while suffering from painful kidney stones, has nothing to be ashamed of, win or lose. The voters will never take away his brilliant closing number of the competition.
Democratic Lobbyists Are "More Equal" Under Obama
Let me edit an excerpt from a recent Washington Post story:
More than any president before him, Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. He barred recent lobbyists from joining his administration and banned them from advisory boards. The White House visitor records make it clear that Obama’s senior officials are granting that regular presence to some of K Street’s most influential representatives. The records also suggest that lobbyists with personal connections to the White House enjoy the easiest access. Republican lobbyists coming to visit are rare, while Democratic lobbyists are common, whether they are representing corporate clients or liberal causes.Now I'm not interested in arguing the implementation of political spoils process, i.e., why GOP lobbyists aren't as successful accessing the Obama White House. As far as I'm concerned, a plague on both houses! I have repeatedly stated: I want this convoluted tax/regulatory system streamlined: we need to move past Sally Brown's "All I want is what I... I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share."
One of the signature quotes of this blog is: "If there's one thing that Obama knows, it's symbolism." There are other ways of phrasing the same point: "treating the symptoms, not the disease/cause." Obama has tweaked a few things, like no appointments from the ranks of lobbyists or lobbyist-subsidized conference admissions for civil servants.
One of my favorite libertarian economists Bob Boudreaux, as usual, has a colorful, pithy response: "Mr. Obama’s pledge to exclude lobbyists from the White House was, from the start, about as believable as a madam’s pledge to exclude men willing to pay for sex from the whore house."
Some Thoughts on the Education Quality Problem
Grade inflation is a chronic problem. We have the recent example of Florida lowering the passing grade for the state writing test when the passing rate went from about 80% to 30%; the state had recently resorted to more rigorous grading procedures, now penalizing for spelling and punctuation errors. (I really don't want to hear excuses from teachers explaining why their students needed to be coached on spelling and punctuation for standard tests: isn't that supposed to be part of the curriculum in the first place?)
I was a calculus teaching assistant at the University of Texas, but I wasn't lecturing in class or devising exams. For the most part, I led optional problem solving classes for the students. It wasn't until I became a UH teaching fellow that I had full teaching responsibility. I think any student probably dreams of being the teacher devising tests. I'll never forget this one notorious microeconomics professor at UH whom devised sadistic types of exams: for example, he had these multiple choice questions which could have multiple correct answers--or no correct answers. To get full credit, you had to list all (if any) correct answers and only correct answers; any incorrect answer was counted wrong at twice the rate. In any event, this professor would have tests or quizzes where the high grade in the class was literally a 20, with a large percentage of students with negative scores.
In 8 years of teaching, I never had to resort to trick questions or gimmicks like the above. My mom always worried about me teaching, thinking I would have unrealistic expectations of having students at my level. That was never the case. There is an art to proper test construction, and to be honest, I think I write better exams than any professor I've ever had. A lot of that came from a lot of reading and research I did with measure construction. I have a knack for writing questions that do a good job of separating good students from average students. But I'll be frank--I would sometimes write a question that I expected everyone to get right: it was like trying to throw a ball that would hit your youngster's bat. And some people would still get it wrong. Curves of 20 to 30 points were more the rule than the exception. I'm a geek when it comes to numbers, and I was utterly fascinated by the fact that whatever exam I designed, the same students would rank in the same order.
Students had a lot of complaints over those 8 years, but ironically they never complained my exams and grading were unfair. I remember a couple of UH students made reference to my exams being the "first real" college exams they had had at UH and one student compared taking my exam to having a lobotomy. (Then there were the students whom insisted that they rated my exams by how many beers it took to forget them. I think they were kidding.)
But to be honest, I wasn't really worried about teaching knowledge and skills that would be obsolete within 5 years. I was more interested in talking about general concepts (e.g., program/data independence, information hiding, code reusability, cybernetics, performance trade-offs, etc.), intelligence gathering, internal controls and communication (among other things). Communication, particularly within a business setting, should be concise, well-structured, practical, proactive, and provide an actionable context for management. But the general problem I found was that many students lacked solid writing skills, beyond the scope of my class. And even if one did have decent writing skills, he has to write to his audience, not indulgently in unnecessary detail: many managers and professionals read to do, not read to learn.
Jerry Bowler had a relevant discussion in in a recent Forbes rant on the college cost bubble:
Furthermore, there has been a severe contraction in the quality of higher education in America. Did we really think we could open the floodgates and not affect the quality of graduates? Can you turn college into the new high school, and not get high school-like results? Grade inflation will only keep the problem concealed for so long before the general public becomes aware that outside of a few highly challenging programs and majors, the quality of American higher education is plummeting. Graduates are mastering fewer facts, can’t think critically about the facts they have mastered, and can’t express whatever ideas they have mastered in clear, cogent, grammatically correct sentences. Employers already know this.Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Rolling Stones, "If I Was a Dancer (Dance Part 2)". Probably my favorite 80's track from the Rolling Stones. I love the arrangement (especially the horns), and I don't know how any rock vocalist can measure up to Mick Jagger. I am, of course, aware of the prominent use of horns by Herb Alpert, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, but I was trying to think of other experimental rock tracks by conventional rock acts, when I suddenly remembered the use of the USC Trojan marching band in Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk".
