(6) Comedy of Err ... Comedy of The Onion

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Now I see that there was reason why I rarely read "The Onion." To wit:

The Onion is an American digital media company and news satire organization. The publication's origins are rooted in its distribution as a weekly college print publication beginning in 1988, but in the spring of 1996 The Onion put its content online in the form of a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news. Starting in 2007, the organization began publishing satirical news audio and video online, as the Onion News Network. In 2013, the publication ceased publishing the print edition and launched Onion Labs, an advertising agency.

The Onion‍ '​s articles satirically comment on current events, both real and fictional. It satirizes the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, editorials, op-ed pieces, and man-in-the-street interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. The publication's humor often depends on presenting mundane, everyday events as newsworthy, surreal or alarming. Comedian Bob Odenkirk has praised the publication stating, "It's the best comedy writing in the country, and it has been since it started."

Reference: The Onion.

BTW: The "Fake news sites" list in the image is from Facebook “satire” tag could wipe out the Internet’s terrible hoax-news industry.
  

(5) What about The Onion?

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I've read The Onion only a few times over the years, and it describes itself as such:

The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1765, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full- and part-time journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.

The Onion is now available exclusively online without charge in order to take advantage of various charity tax benefits.

Reference: About The Onion
  

(4) How many handcuffs on Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

“The question is not whether we’re going to put handcuffs on Arne Duncan,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky of Third Way, a centrist think tank. “The question is how many handcuffs.”

Reference: Even as Congress moves to strip his power, Arne Duncan holds his ground
 

(3) More on the Curious Case of Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

Salon writer Diane Ravitch:

"It will take years to recover from the damage that Arne Duncan’s policies have inflicted on public education. He exceeded the authority of his office to promote a failed agenda, one that had no evidence behind it. The next president and the next Secretary of Education will have an enormous job to do to restore our nation’s public education system from the damage done by Race to the Top. We need leadership that believes in the joy of learning and in equality of educational opportunity. We have not had either for 15 years."

Reference: Diane Ravitch’s devastating Arne Duncan critique: The education secretary earned his F.

You see, friends, education matters a lot to me. I agree with a lot of advocates that it's the royal road out of dire circumstances: poverty, crime, and violence. But if delivered incompetently or corruptly, then that very same "education" becomes a farce at best and a disaster at worst.

The following are three of the "accomplishments" in Duncan's Secretary of Education resume, which Ravitch lists:

(1) He used his control of billions of dollars to promote a dual school system of privately managed charter schools operating alongside public schools;

(2) He has done nothing to call attention to the fraud and corruption in the charter sector or to curb charters run by non-educators for profit or to insist on charter school accountability or to require charters to enroll the neediest children;

(3) He pushed to require states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, which has caused massive demoralization among teachers, raised the stakes attached to testing, and produced no positive results.

Very unfortunate, indeed.
 

(2) The Curious Case of Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan with Jon Stewart

"The subject of [Washington Post education journalist Lindsey] Layton’s reporting, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was the bipartisan stud when the Obama administration debuted but has now devolved into the bipartisan flop as new bills in Congress seek to do all they can to neuter the secretary [yikes!] and make sure future secretaries never do what he did ever again [whoa!]."

Reference: Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point 

It was Secretary Duncan who hired the curious Kelsey Alexander, whom I was curious about in my previous post. Apparently the Secretary has been a colossal flop!
 

(1) The Curious Case of Kelsey Alexander

Kelsey Alexander (?)

So I read this short article - Department Of Education Hires Art Teacher To Spread Evenly Across All U.S. Public Schools, in The Onion - and on first blush I really liked it. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised the recent hiring of art teacher Kelsey Alexander. She is tasked with promoting art for all students across all public schools in the US.

If you're scratching your head, and wondering what is wrong with this story, then you're in the same boat as I am:

(a) There 98,000 schools for Ms. Alexander to visit, and she is slated to teach at every single one (hmm). She will cycle through these schools, and when she's finished, she will cycle again.

(b) “An education in the visual arts is a vital part of every child’s education, and with Ms. Alexander’s hiring, we can now guarantee that each student in America will have an art class at some point during their K-through-12 years. We know she will make a wonderful addition to every single school district in the country," says Secretary Duncan.

I thought: Wouldn't it make more sense to craft a strategic plan to engage current art teachers, train and hire more of them, and fund their curriculum and materials? This way, students actually get a program, as opposed to one-off, "40-minute art course."

(c) Speaking of "fund," apparently the 26-year old art teacher has already spent about $3.2 million on art supplies out of pocket for her cross-country lessons. $3.2 million (huh), an art teacher has this sort of wealth (huh)?

(d) Who is Kelsey Alexander anyway? Here is a Kelsey Alexander who's a dancer, choreographer and director.  Here is another Kelsey Alexander who's an art teacher at Asheland Studios.
 

With great power comes great ability...

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True (lol)! The statistician knows that if he or she cannot reject the null hypothesis, then the results are much more difficult to interpret. So great power is definitely key!