We’re having an online fundraising celebration this evening. Check back here in a few hours, and I’ll post a link to the YouTube live video. Bring your checkbook, we need donations!
Nah, just kidding. Donations are nice, but we mainly want you there to celebrate our victory over Richard Carrier!
That was fairly quick and unexpectedly mostly painless, because I did something I haven’t done before, and that now I’m going to have to do every year. These are all first year students who generally have that deer-in-the-headlights look in class, and I have to coax them to participate. So this year I dedicated one class hour to how to answer an essay question. I told them that grammar and spelling matter, and that one simple recipe for a coherent answer is to describe a few facts and details, and then synthesize in a concluding statement. Facts without synthesis doesn’t mean much, and synthesis without outlining the basic things you’re explaining makes it sound like you haven’t been paying attention in class. We went through a bunch of examples in groups, and I’d evaluate and give them a likely score on the spot.
It worked! The quality of the answers went up — knowing that I had reasonably high expectations meant they took the questions very seriously and answered carefully. It made them much more pleasant to read.
The catch is that it’s expensive. This class only meets twice a week, and dedicating a class hour to something so basic meant that there were other things I didn’t have time to cover. I hope this is a skill they remember, though, so I don’t have to do it again in every class they’re in.
Well, I was so fried yesterday that I went to see this new Sonic Hedgehog movie. Boy, was I disappointed. There was absolutely nothing about cell signaling, or the patched receptor, or midline development. It was all about the adventures of Baby Karl Urban and some electrically charged blue mammal battling a guy with five Ph.D.s, which made no sense at all. Why would you have five degrees? And none of them were in developmental biology or molecular genetics. He seemed to be some kind of robotics expert, although being a perpetual student who can’t land a credible job are not credible qualifications for much of anything.
You’re better off watching this balanced summary of Star Trek history from Mikey Neuman. I learned a few things, although this, too, is seriously lacking in the departments of developmental biology and molecular genetics.
Is my brain still fried? Yes, but it’s OK. I’m about to go lock myself in a coffee shop and grade first-year biology exams. After that, I’ll probably need to go drink.
I have mixed feelings about it — my son Connlann was active in Boy Scouts for years, and I think he had great experiences there. I was on a couple of camping trips with him and the other boys, and I think they benefitted from a good scout leader who was tolerant and undogmatic…but you couldn’t trust that every scout leader was that way, and higher-ups were all conservative jackholes who believed that antiquated rules and judgments were a necessary part of being a boy growing up.
So now the organization is declaring itself financially bankrupt, admitting the reality. I’m not going to shed any tears over it, since they wallowed in religious and paramilitary bullshit for so long and refused to change. Let them die and better organizations rise.
I got an odd request in email. Someone named jeffreydavidmorris wants me to take down an old post.
Hello can you please kindly remove despite ‘the law’ and request of removal re: privacy, misc – https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/02/11/i-have-concluded-that-i-am-a-natural-boob-magnet/.
I would appreciate it please, thank you. I’m not trying to be the bad guy here a truce if anything please.
This was 2 or 3 years ago, and I did not remember this fellow — I get so much of this nonsense. Normally, I’d consider this request, but then I looked back at what prompted the original post…and oh yeah, that guy was a major pest. He had to remind me. So…no.
Also, telling me that this was a “truce”, as if we have been battling back and forth, is annoying. I’ve had him blocked for years, haven’t engaged with him since that one post. Apparently he’s been seething over it for some time, but really, all that is doing him harm is publication of his own lunatic words.
Yes, I’ve got so much economic anxiety nowadays that I’m imagining voting for Trump. It’s the irrational solution. Good thing I’m not that irrational, so don’t worry, I’m voting for either Sanders or Warren, probably the former.
The rational solutions:
Don’t worry if you can’t afford anything now — there is no degree of economic anxiety that will convince me to vote for Trump.
Mark your calendars! This Sunday, 23 February, at 6pm Central time, the victorious defendants in that ridiculous SLAPP suit will be gathering on YouTube to serve tea and mock the silly plaintiff and just generally have a good time celebrating getting out from under the legal action (if not the legal debt). We’ll spill the inside dirt on the ugly affair and laugh and maybe get a little bit inebriated and also try to answer people’s questions about the whole mess.
You can join in the chat, too — we’ll post links to the live YouTube event later, here and on The Orbit and maybe on the Skepticon blog, and encourage everyone to chime in with your comments. Even the haters…it’s always nice of you to show up and get giggled over.
It’ll look just like that.
I have a frantically overloaded day ahead of me, so I’ll have to leave you with a picture of a happy granddaughter.
Here’s a less happy photo of our grandson, who was hospitalized for croup.
But the happy news is that he’s all better now!
I do, that’s who. With the first one you feel some sympathy for the candidates, who get a long grueling day of non-stop meetings and conversations and questions, but ’round about the third one, you begin to wonder who is suffering more in this process. It’s going to be another late night for me.
Also, I’ve got to escape to get a haircut. Today will be impossible, tomorrow is a heavy teaching day, maybe Wednesday? It’s rather annoying when work takes over and makes it nearly impossible to take care of basic grooming tasks. Well, the candidate is just going to have to get the impression that “shaggy” is the standard style at UM Morris. Except that I sure hope he learns our style standards from the other committee members, not me.
I have discovered that one of the unfortunate side effects of opening my new Patreon account is the flood of new spam. I opened up my email this morning and had to scroll down a couple of screens worth to get to anything that matters from people I know.
What’s worse is that it isn’t even interesting, entertaining spam. It’s the dregs of internet advertising: insurance, online gambling, and Indian lottery tickets. I’m going to have to work on training my filters again.
