You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.
Last week’s (updated) results are here. Browse all our other previous contests here.
Last weekend, we highlighted Heidi Tworek’s proposed fix for grade inflation – adopting a three-tiered grading system. A high school history teacher nods along:
I think a move to a British-style system with only three grades, as advocated by Tworek, would be easier than it seems. We would just call our grades A, B, and C, rather than 1, 2, and 3. In fact, we’re already using a version of that system.
I teach high school history at a high-achieving public school in Massachusetts. Whenever I see grade inflation in the news, frankly, I’m a little baffled. The problem would disappear if we redefined what each grade represents. Traditionally, an F represents failing, a D represents below average, a C represents average, a B represents above average, and an A represents excellent. What if, as a society, we agreed that a C represents needs improvement, a B represents satisfactory, and an A represents excellent? In that scenario, we would ditch the D, and anything below a C- would be failing. This would simplify the system for everyone involved.
The reality is that today, a grade of a D is meant to be a warning – turn things around or you will fail. It is rarely given. Students who receive Cs are not average – they are students who struggle with the material or are students who are lazy and need to work harder. To recalibrate my grading scale to a traditional bell curve, where the majority of students received Cs, would result in serious pushback from my administration and from parents, and honestly, would be confusing to my students.
It’s time we made the de facto grading system de jure – B is the new C. Accept that, and the grade inflation problem, at the high school level anyway, ceases to be a problem.
That teacher offers a caveat: “I don’t mean this as a response to grade inflation in certain courses at certain colleges and universities where every student receives an A or an A-.” And another reader, who teaches history at the college level, dismisses Tworek’s proposal:
Heidi Tworek writes: “There are also fewer incentives for professors to assign higher grades if students recognize that the majority of them will receive the same mark.” Perhaps. But students respond to incentives (or the lack thereof), too. If there’s effectively no difference between a B and a D (which is how I’m defining that second tier), then the student capable of B work is probably only going to do C or D work, because it’s all the same to them. That’s a rational response. Under the current system, I have students earning a C or C+ at mid-semester who will work harder and learn more to get that B. That’s also a rational response.
Grade inflation is a recipe for mediocrity. So is this proposal.
My solution is simple. I pay no attention to any alleged “incentives” for grade inflation. An A grade goes to an exceptional student, not the norm. Sure, there’s a price to be paid. Students don’t rush to sign up first for my classes. They don’t barrage me with ego-inflating requests for overrides to get into my classes should they fill. I am not beloved the way some of my colleagues – the ones who hand out As like candy on Halloween – are. But I have, I suspect, the respect of at least some of my students (especially the ones who truly deserve As who bristle at the way their less committed peers get the same grade for far less work). And most importantly, I have some self-respect.
With the exception of adjuncts (which is a whole other problem), professors could easily solve the “problem” of grade inflation without any systemic change: show some backbone and enforce some standards. Stop caring about being loved and start caring about truly educating.
On a related note, philosophy professor Emrys Westacott is concerned that a constant focus on grading and assessment in general “chokes out healthier, more idealistic, more creative attitudes among both teachers and students, especially in our high schools”:
On one occasion I asked my daughter’s AP biology teacher if she would be taking the students outside at all during the year to examine nature in the raw. Her answer: she’d love to, but she couldn’t spare the time given the need to cover everything on the AP syllabus. Inevitably, the AP exam would be the guiding star that the class steered by: not love of nature, appreciation of natural forms, or delight in fathoming how living things function, but whatever needs to be known to do well on the test. Success on the test is the “measurable outcome” by which students are judged—and teachers, and principals, and schools, and, ultimately, entire education systems.
Students naturally soak up this message. … Most teachers dislike students trying to haggle over grades, but this behavior is a predictable response to the educational environment students find themselves in. If appearances seem to matter more than reality—grades on a transcript more than less easily measured values like holistic grasp of a subject, appreciation of beauty, intellectual excitement, insight, or wisdom—we shouldn’t be surprised to encounter such strategizing.
John Brewer looks at a brief history of the French grin in a review of Colin Jones’ The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris:
[Jones] begins with the stiff, courtly smile of supercilious superiority that emanated from the court of Louis XIV and which was associated with succeeding Bourbon monarchs – a look predicated on gross inequality, but also the result of appalling dental hygiene and care. … Courtly smiles were rare – La Rochefoucauld claimed to ration himself to one laugh a year – and could be treacherous when they cracked the facade of imperturbability. Tight-lipped smiles were part of a system of bodily control needed to survive in the duplicitous world of the royal court. They were also a social marker: no courtier wished to be seen (much less portrayed) as open-mouthed, which was at best a sure sign of demotic credulity, levity and bad manners, and at worst a feature of madness.
The 18th-century cult of sensibility, spread through performances on the Parisian stage and nurtured by novels of deep emotional intensity by the likes of Samuel Richardson and Rousseau, loosened the grip of the costive, courtly smile. Charming and tender smiles – transparent expressions of feeling intended to be shared by all men and women, though, in practice, chiefly enjoyed by the Parisian cultural and social elite – became fashionable. Teeth and smiles were chic – and so were dentists.
On a related note, Sarah Smarsh recently considered the psychological cost of living without dental care in 21st-century America:
My family’s distress over our teeth – what food might hurt or save them, whether having them pulled was a mistake – reveals the psychological hell of having poor teeth in a rich, capitalist country: the underprivileged are priced out of the dental-treatment system yet perversely held responsible for their dental condition. It’s a familiar trick in the privatization-happy US – like, say, underfunding public education and then criticizing the institution for struggling. Often, bad teeth are blamed solely on the habits and choices of their owners, and for the poor therein lies an undue shaming.
‘Don’t get fooled by those mangled teeth she sports on camera!’ says the ABC News host introducing the woman who plays [Orange Is The New Black‘s] Pennsatucky. ‘Taryn Manning is one beautiful and talented actress.’ This suggestion that bad teeth and talent, in particular, are mutually exclusive betrays our broad, unexamined bigotry toward those long known, tellingly, as ‘white trash.’
(Image: Portrait of Louis XVI of France, 1785, via Wikimedia Commons)
Dean Obeidallah salutes the Middle Eastern comedians, like the Kurdish satirists in the above video, who are ridiculing ISIS:
What’s truly remarkable is that some of these comedic performers are waging their comedy battle in countries were ISIS is fighting them, such as those involved in the new Iraqi TV show that began airing Saturday that lampoons ISIS. Unlike us, they don’t need to watch ISIS on TV; they can see ISIS from their front window.
No one doubts that these comedians will be killed if ISIS captures them. ISIS doesn’t want to be laughed at, they want to be feared. In fact, just a few months ago, ISIS threatened to cut the tongue out of anyone who referred to them as “Daesh,” which is the Arabic acronym for ISIS. Why? Because ISIS learned that many Arabs use that term as an insult, because Daesh in Arabic also can mean “a bigot who imposes his view on others.” And keep in mind that even pre-ISIS, an Iraqi comedian was killed in 2006 for comically mocking those in power.
Though Halloween was yesterday, it still seems fitting to feature a classic, frightful short story, W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey Paw,” this weekend. The story begins with the White family at home on a cold and wet night, with father and son playing chess, when a visitor arrives at their door:
The Sargeant-Major took hands and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly as his host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.
At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples.
“Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. “When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him.”
“He don’t look to have taken much harm.” said Mrs. White politely.
“I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, just to look around a bit, you know.”
“Better where you are,” said the Sargeant-Major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass and sighning softly, shook it again.
“I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,” said the old man. “What was that that you started telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or something, Morris?”
“Nothing.” said the soldier hastily. “Leastways, nothing worth hearing.”
“Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White curiously.
“Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps.” said the Sargeant-Major off-handedly.
Keep reading here. For more of Jacobs’ short fiction, check out The Monkey’s Paw and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre. Previous SSFSs here.
Above, photographer and conservationist Dr. Robin Moore captured the gaze of a Cuchumatan Golden Toad in Guatemala. Moore traveled to more than 20 countries looking for amphibians once thought to be extinct, a project he documented in the recently published In Search of Lost Frogs. Moore explains:
One of the things about amphibians that continues to enthrall me is the never-ending diversity of species, behaviors, colors, shapes and sizes. Pulling together this huge expedition also taught me how little we really know about the status of many of these animals in the wild. There are over 7,000 species of amphibians, more than 250 of which have not been seen in well over a decade — this is a humbling reminder that we are just scratching the surface in terms of knowing and understanding our world.
Pete Brook adds:
Moore is one of a growing number of photographers to raise awareness of the need for greater conservation and protection of threatened animals and habitats. He cites Cristina Mittermeier, James Balog, and Joel Sartore as particular influences, but is quick to celebrate everyone within the International League of Conservation Photographers. He hopes that his work, like theirs, will inspire others to take up the cause.
See more of Moore’s work at insearchoflostfrogs.com.
After spending a month testing the predictive text system in Apple’s iOS8, Robert Lane Greene assures us that phones are a long way away from literary greatness:
What is striking … is that though the software can pick words that are likely to follow the previous word, the trick does not produce great phrases. Repeatedly pressing the middle of the three choices on my phone results in
The day I have a great way of the year and the other hand is the only thing that would have to go back and I don’t think that I have a great way of life and the day I have to go back and the other hand…
Curiously, sometimes the system repeats its own predictions (“and the other hand” occurs twice). But sometimes it doesn’t (“I have a great way of” is once followed by “the year”, and the second time followed by “of life”). And if I clear the whole mess and begin again, repeatedly tapping the same button gives me a different string. What is going on behind the scenes is unclear. (Apple did not respond to requests to clarify.)
When this new predictive feature was announced, a few observers harrumphed: offering the next potential word allows a writer to skip the work of choosing words. Well, to choose just one word: nonsense. At the most, iOS8 will allow you to avoid typing some fairly long but frequent words. But it’s not ready to appease your boss, apologise to your spouse or do your homework for you.
Screenwriter Carey Hayes, who co-wrote the 2013 horror flick The Conjuring, discusses “the religious supernatural,” his term intended to distinguish his work from other scary movies:
I coined the term to identify a certain framework, and, I suppose, to suggest a history. Today there is a lot of focus in popular culture on the supernatural or the paranormal. It’s almost all secular. In the past, the supernatural and paranormal occurred within a worldview that allowed for the supernatural but within a religious framework. People had tools like prayers to deal with the supernatural, which, you have to admit, is scary.
We wanted, in our movies, to return to that. We thought that, in many ways, religion deals with the big questions, and the supernatural is usually a scary thing that interrupts daily life and causes people to think about the big questions. So, we wanted to pair the two, religion and the supernatural, and remind audiences that this is, ultimately, what scary movies are about: ultimate questions about life.
Stuart Vyse wonders:
Halloween is a kind of Rorschach test of our common fears, and the available evidence suggests our nightmares fall into different categories. For example, we are afraid of murderous people and monsters, but we find them particularly frightening if they have some kind of extra deficit.
So, for example, zombies (an entirely fictional concept), as portrayed in contemporary movies and television shows—are fearful because, in addition to having the single motivation of gobbling up humans, they are amoral, soulless creatures, machine-like in their unwavering pursuit of flesh. In the case of common horror film villains, an additional creepiness is derived from a mixture of evilness and madness—amoral blankness and psychopathology. Thus the most successful of horror villains, such as Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, combine both the absence of a moral anchor and the unpredictability of mental illness.
Of particular interest to me is the portrayal of scientists as fearsome crazies.
Science and reason are supposed to be the antidote to paranormal beliefs, and yet fictional scientists often appear as villains of paranormal horror films. Why? Part of the explanation must be the addition of madness to the character of the conventional scientist stereotype.
Cari Romm gets Vyse to expand on that thought:
Romm: In other realms, we don’t find the combination of genius and mental illness to be as threatening—there’s no “mad artist” trope, for example. Van Gogh isn’t scary. What is it about science in particular that makes the mad scientist frightening?
Vyse: It’s the idea that they have powerful knowledge. As an example, I’m an experimental psychologist. I’m a scientist. But if I’m traveling on an airplane and somebody asks me what I do for a living, if I say I’m a psychologist, they sort of become nervous and worried that I’m going to analyze them. There’s this sense that you have knowledge, that you’ll be able to find out things about me that I don’t want you to find out. And I think in the case of science, that’s exactly the case—that genius, combined with the power of science, is frightening, is potentially something that could be used against you in an evil way. If you think about it, there are a number of horror films in which the villain is a psychiatrist or a psychologist. It’s combining this idea of special knowledge that can be used powerfully to make that person frightening.
(Image: Young Frankenstein screengrab from Flickr user twm1340)
Adrienne Raphel reveals some fast food items on secret menus you’ve probably never heard of:
In-N-Out Burger, the West Coast chain, has perhaps the most notorious fast-food secret menu. Since the nineteen-seventies, customers have been ordering Animal Style fries (fries smothered in sauce that resembles Thousand Island dressing and topped with melted cheese and diced grilled onions) and 3x3s (burgers with three patties and three slices of cheese), along with several other modifications that don’t appear on the menu. The corporate Web site now acknowledges some of these options as In-N-Out’s “not-so-secret menu”; they’ve trademarked “Animal Style,” “Protein Style,” “3×3,” and “4×4.” Yet, Carl Van Fleet, the company’s vice-president of planning and development, told me, “We don’t see ourselves as having a secret menu at all.”
These kinds of denials have been successful enough at presenting the impression of secrecy to attract a fair amount of attention. Liz Childers, in a Thrillist article, describes her mission to request secret-menu items at eight chains; J. Kenji López-Alt, the managing culinary director at Serious Eats, ordered every possible item at In-N-Out; and BuzzFeed provides list after list of secret-menu items. Web sites like HackTheMenu aggregate user contributions, encourage customers to rate items, document successful finds, and add new discoveries.
In another area of food secrecy, Phil Daoust test-drives some dessert recipes with an unsettling substitution, and one that’s perfect for your Halloween baked goods today:
Back in January, in a report that British bakers have shamefully ignored, the Copenhagen-based Nordic Food Lab explained how pigs’ blood can replace eggs in sweet dishes. Both ingredients, it pointed out, contain a similar mix of proteins, and both will coagulate when heated. This was great news, it declared, for all those suffering from egg-white intolerance.
The accompanying recipes ranged from pigs’ blood ice-cream to pigs’ blood pancakes. … [Elisabeth] Paul’s recipe was for chocolate sponge cake, which she recommends as the basis for “blood forest gateau”. But that sounded a bit involved for cooking with kids, so I decided to make fairy cakes instead, adapting a recipe from that culinary authority Dr Oetker. I combined 110g of butter with the same weight of caster sugar, 75g of self-raising flour, 25g of cocoa powder and two medium eggs – or rather, 130g of pigs’ blood. According to the NFL, 65g of blood will do the work of one medium egg, while 43g of blood can stand in for an egg white. (To put it another way, since a slaughtered pig yields between 2.25kg and 4.5kg of blood, a single porker can replace three to six dozen eggs. And, come to think of it, you can get bacon, sausages and egg substitutes from the same animal. Isn’t nature wonderful?)
Meanwhile, Roberto A. Ferdman praises John Oliver for pointing out in the above segment how much hidden sugar is “in everything from fruit drinks to salad dressings, cereals, crackers, and ketchup.”:
The FDA, for its part, has proposed a new nutrition label that will better communicate the amount of “added sugar”—how much of any given food’s sugar content wasn’t in the food before it was produced and packaged. But the proposal, which was first put on the table at the beginning of the year, has met fierce opposition from the cash-rich sugar industry. “Being forced to reveal how much sugar you are adding to people’s food might seem pretty mild, but there is no way the food manufacturing industry is going to let that happen,” Oliver said.
The Dish 
