Passing thoughts
jstemwedel | December 9, 2009I have a couple of substantive posts percolating, but I need to scrape some ice first. (Plus, you know, attend to some grading and administrative tasks.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share a sampling of some of the search queries that have brought people to this blog:
"originally designed with good intention but no longer makes sense"
"do people willingly vaccinate their trees?"
"ANATOMICALLY CORRECT COOKIES"
"philosophy paper grading drinking games"
"my work has been tolerated"
"animals that lay perfectly round eggs"
"three toed sloth sex jokes"
"america stop listening to scientists"…
jstemwedel | December 3, 2009As DrugMonkey reminds us, it's time for the year-in-review meme.
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month.
January
... as drawn by the younger Free-Ride offspring.
February
Some of you may be aware that, at least in certain corners of the blogosphere, November is celebrated as International acaDemic Writing Month.
March
During our second day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium last weekend, I finally got my much needed jelly time.
April
I've gotten word that another blogger who has been tracking IP addresses associated with comments (on his own blog and on the blogs of…
jstemwedel | December 1, 2009At the end of one of my class meetings today, one of the students noted that her professor for another of her courses this term died about a week ago.
Not that anyone said out loud that this semester is what killed him.
Anyway, a few other students asked her what was happening with that course to finish out the term. She said that the home department for the course was giving the students the benefit of the doubt and giving them all A's. (I don't know if this is for the final exam/project/whatever in that course, or for the final course grade. I suppose it depends on whether the deceased…
jstemwedel | November 30, 2009It's the last day of November. I have three more meetings with each of my classes before finals. I have oodles of grading to do before finals. I have one big administrative task and at least a dozen smaller ones to do before the end of the semester.
And, at the moment, I feel as though the weight of the semester is pressing down on me, like the stones used to press to death that one man so sentenced in the Salem witch trials.
I have always thought I preferred the semester system to the quarter system, as academic calendars go -- a longer calendar giving you a more reasonable amount of time…
jstemwedel | November 22, 2009The younger Free-Ride offspring's soccer team has been playing in a regional tournament this weekend, and we're girding our loins and guarding our shins to go out and play a second day of tournament games. I'm happy that they're playing so well, but I have to say, watching games in late November is a different experience than spectating in mid-September. (Bone-chilling cold + bad sunburn = some kind of tangible sign of a parent's devotion. If only one's child took it seriously.)
Anyway, in the meantime, I wanted to test your knowledge in the identification of some turkeys.
Specifically,…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2009Let's say you're a college student.
You have a class meeting today at which a short essay (about 400 words) is due. The essay counts for about 5% of your grade for the course.
At that class meeting, your instructor will be lecturing on the reading assignment upon which that short essay is focused. The material from the reading assignment will likely appear on the final exam, which is only a few weeks away.
The thing is, you're not quite done with the essay (which needs to be handed in by the end of the class meeting), and class time is rapidly approaching.
Do you:
Skip the lecture in…
jstemwedel | November 17, 2009As I was driving home from work today, I was listening to Marketplace on public radio. In the middle of a story, reported by Nancy Marshall Genzer, about opponents of health care reform, there was an interesting comment that bears on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline. From the transcript of the story:
The Chamber of Commerce is taking a bulldozer to the [health care reform] bill. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the Chamber is hiring an economist to study the legislation. The goal: more ammunition to sink the bill.
Ewe Reinhardt teaches economics at Princeton. He…
jstemwedel | November 12, 2009Chalk dust thigh:
Indeed, this was the state of my pants after I walked partway across campus from my classroom to my office, so the level of chalk dust had decreased from its maximum level when I snapped this picture.
jstemwedel | November 10, 2009It's been a long day, between teaching and attending to committee work, giving a colloquium talk, dealing with an emergency drill, and coming home to make a later-than-planned dinner for the kids (since my better half had to help a sprog with an arithmetic emergency during the anticipated dinner hour).
Tomorrow is a day off from school ... but for the sprogs, too, and me with piles of papers that must be graded and returned by Thursday.
What I need right now is to see Stephen Colbert dance:
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
National Treasure Pt. 1
www.colbertnation.com…
jstemwedel | November 9, 2009Because, as it happens, I tend to notice patterns in student papers, then end up musing on them rather than, you know, buckling down and just working through the stack of papers that needs grading.
In my philosophy of science class, I have my students write short essays (approximately 400 words) about central ideas in some of the readings I've assigned. Basically, it's a mechanism to ensure that they grapple with an author's view (and its consequences) before they hear me lecture about it. (It's also a way to get students writing as many words as they are required to write in an upper…
jstemwedel | November 8, 2009Remember how I mentioned that we had some soccer tournaments this weekend?
Well, it looks like we're going to need a bigger shelf.
In contrast, we're doing just fine as far as Fuyu persimmons go.
jstemwedel | November 7, 2009Yo dawg! This is a soccer tournament weekend for the Free-Rides. (First game: 8:00 AM. Time of departure from Casa Free-Ride: 6:30 AM. Zombification complete!)
At the moment, the younger offspring and I are chilling before the younger offspring's team's second game; the younger offspring is watching Fred videos, while I am filling in gaps in my knowledge with the help of Know Your Meme.
Know Your Meme is a good way to catch up on memes that are currently part of the collective memory of the internets, but which might have peaked before some of us Luddites were sufficiently plugged in to…
jstemwedel | November 5, 2009Including this question which, apparently, led a popular search engine to direct someone to this very blog:
Is philosophy tested on animals?
No. No, it isn't.
(Actually, it's not clear to me that all of it is tested on humans, either.)
jstemwedel | October 31, 2009Is it too soon to dip into that bowl of "fun-size" candy bars while we wait for it to get dark?
jstemwedel | October 27, 2009The times in question being, in this case, the last days of October.
Once upon a Tuesday morning, while I wandered, cold and yawning,
Up the grimy stair steps winding skyward toward my office door,
On the wall's bile-greenish surface, noticed I a note whose purpose
Took more consciousness to process than I'd had the step before.
"English majors strike," I murmured, "with tactics I've not seen before,
Reciting Poe and nothing more."
Folks on campus today may find themselves caught in the middle of insurgent Poe recitations. It's likely that "The Raven" will claim the most victims, but I'll…
jstemwedel | October 21, 2009Since being tenured, I've tried to shift to a pattern of only coming in to campus three days a week, working from home on Mondays and Wednesdays (and giving the earth a little break by not doing my freeway commute on those days).
However, today, a Wednesday, I figured I should go in to campus to catch up on committee-related work. I envisioned a day where I'd make good progress on some things that needed doing, plus maybe get a chance to go out to lunch at a local eatery (something that never seems to fit in my teaching-days schedule).
Suffice it to say that there was barely enough time…
jstemwedel | October 17, 2009From my friend Vance, on Facebook, a link that announces an option for your Hallowe'en entertainment:
Halloween Book Burningâ¨
Burning Perversions of God's Word
â¨October 31, 2009
7:00 PM - Till
Great Preaching and Singing
Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God's Word the King James Bible.
We will also be burning Satan's music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and…
jstemwedel | October 8, 2009After my last class today, I participated in a Future Faculty Seminar at Stanford. I was on a panel about negotiating faculty jobs, dealing with the two-body problem while on the academic job market, balancing work and life once you have a faculty job, and so forth. It was a fun panel, and lots of good questions were asked.
But then I had to race home through a bunch of really slow traffic so I could play the sprog zone and let my better half out of the house for a Thursday night class.
And, not surprisingly, the stress of trying to get home in time while traffic was stop and go done wore…
jstemwedel | October 6, 2009Actually, it might be a philosophical question.
Younger offspring: One of my classmates told me that you fart every second.
Dr. Free-Ride: What, me personally?
Younger offspring: No, humans.
Dr. Free-Ride: Each individual human farts every second?
Younger offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: No, I don't think so.
Elder offspring: Well, there's gas exchange with your butt all the time.
Dr. Free-Ride: I don't think super-low levels of gas exchange count.
Younger offspring: Gas-exchange is a fart.
Dr. Free-Ride: No, I think there needs to be a macroscopic quantity of gas released all at once for it…
jstemwedel | September 22, 2009Imagine you are looking ahead to a furlough day and taking seriously the piece of the agreement that specifies that you won't actually do any work on that furlough day. To prevent yourself from backsliding by doing work to pass the time, do you:
A. Schedule a spa-day at a local salon (thus also helping offset, if only just a little, the hit local businesses take during furlough days).
B. Let chores at home pile up, ensuring that your time will be gobbled up by doing them (or by hiding from those depending on you to do them).
C. Come down with some gnarly cold that knocks you on your butt…