This is my scientific history in a series of short acronyms.
I know the author is thinking of recent events in space technology, but it’s also applicable to biology. I’ve had embryos undergo “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
Although, actually, I’ve never felt a need to resort to euphemisms. “The experiment failed” is usually good enough.
You know I’m no fan of college football and think the whole institution is a perversion of the academic life, but there is an event coming up that makes me want to scream “GO DUCKS!”
The No. 8 Oregon Ducks (11-2) will play in the Fiesta Bowl against the No. 23 Liberty University Flames (13-0) on Jan. 1, the Bowl Season Committee announced on Sunday morning.
After a heartbreaking 34-31 loss to the No. 2 Washington Huskies (13-0) on Friday night in the Pac-12 Championship Game, the Ducks knew their playoff chances were gone, but still had a shot at making a New Year’s Six Bowl game.
As an alumnus of the University of Oregon, and as someone who utterly despises that bogus Christian sham of a “university”, Falwell’s Folly, I’d be tempted to watch the game so I could snarl my contempt of the jumped-up Bible college for a few hours. If it’s actually broadcast I might even put it on (but no, I don’t care enough to cough up cash for pay-per-view).
I didn’t even know about the playoff between my undergrad university, UW, and my grad school, UO, so I can’t get worked up about that game, either way. But hell yeah, stomp all over Liberty “University”. Make a Falwell cry. Although they probably don’t care either, Jerry (their ex-president) would probably be too busy having a ménage à trois with a poolboy.
It’s the worst time of the year. I have to review everything I’ve taught this semester, I have to give final exams and papers, I have to grade everything that comes pouring in, and I have to do it with a hard deadline — everyone disappears after Friday. I also have to do this damned debate on Friday. And then I fly away to Seattle this weekend.
Oh well. One last surge of effort, and then I’m off until mid-January.
Last night, I saw that hbomberguy had put out a new video, and I started to watch it. Couldn’t finish it. So I resumed this morning. Still haven’t finished it. It’s almost 4 hours long! This is like some epic fantasy movie!
But it’s really good, so I’ll link to it here, in case anyone has more stamina than I do. It’s all about plagiarism on the internet.
It’s incredibly thorough, giving multiple examples, going through the details, and explaining why they are plagiarized. I teach some writing classes here at UMM — one of them in the coming spring semester — and I hammer on plagiarism as one week’s topic. This video is so comprehensive that I wish I could assign it to the class, but I can hear the groans if I tried to do that (although I’m sure they’d find it entertaining). Maybe I should rip out 20 minutes of the video and present the words in my class as my own? Wait, no, that would be bad.
I’ll probably tell them that it’s an optional video they could watch if really interested, and use hbomberguy as a boogey man and let the students know that if they plagiarize, a guy with 1.3 million subscribers might feature them in a massive youtube video that gets over a million views and comprehensively drag them over the coals.
I got up at 4:30am, went straight to work and hammered out the exam & exam key for my students, and prepped my lecture for today. I was on fire, gettin’ stuff done, and then I made coffee and decided to whip up a breakfast burrito, as one does.
I am out of hot sauce.
What is the point of our existence anyway? Nothing matters. We come from the void, we go into the void. Why did I get out of bed? Why am I here? There is nothingness all around me.
Big Bluestem roots
Good deep roots make a difference. The photo to the right is from the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, and it shows how deep and strong and tangled the roots of the prairie bluestem are. It’s impressive how robust prairie ecosystems are, and we rip them up and replace them with Kentucky Bluegrass, which has the most pathetic shallow mat of a root system. See?
My mother is in the hospital right now — she’s been declining for years, but she keeps bouncing back because she has deep strong roots. I’ve taken her for granted for my entire life, because she always perseveres. I’m hoping she pulls through this time, too.
No barbarous carnivores here! Well, except for the spiders.
Our plans have changed. The original idea was that we were going to stay at home, and I’d grade lab reports and make a vegetarian shepherd’s pie. My son called, though, and now we’re driving to St Cloud (about 2 hours away) to join him for a mid-afternoon meal, probably at an Indian restaurant. I’ll make the pie and grade the lab reports tomorrow.
I adopted Zoom in all of my classes when the pandemic hit — I liked the flexibility it provided for the students. I would offer the full combo: I’d have class in person, and simultaneously broadcast it over Zoom, and also record video that I’d put online. All exams were online, which opened up opportunities, because I wouldn’t have to waste a class hour watching students scribbling on paper. I’m done, though. It just doesn’t work, and this week has highlighted the problem.
It’s a short week because of Thanksgiving break, and instead of losing one lecture hour to proctoring an exam, I’ve lost a whole lot of student hours. Attendance is way, way down. I think some students have decided to start their break on Monday instead of Thursday, because I’ve fostered a classroom culture where everyone thinks they can make up absences on the fly. I’m a bit concerned that I’m going to go to class today in a nearly empty room.
So, next semester…no more Zoom. I’m going to block off days for exams and quizzes. If students don’t attend classes, they will just miss out. I’m going to be so traditional and old-fashioned, and I hope that turns things around.
American Thanksgiving is coming this week! Many of the students are planning on escaping the university this weekend, traveling to visit family and getting away from homework (I’m assigning some anyway.) And then I read this complaint.
Dear Boomers,
I wanted to let you know why you’re all sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves because your children and grandchildren didn’t come to Thanksgiving.
Because after the last few times you guilted us into driving an hour to visit Because you “never get to see” your grandchild, you sat and stared at the TV (Fox News) obviously, watching people check ballots for bamboo. We were there 3 hours and you didn’t engage or play with your Grandchild. We all sat around, watching you watch TV.
Because we are tired of the passive aggressive jabs you make to our spouses. We are tired of the temper tantrums you throw if anything less than a parade is thrown in thanks to the dinner you made. A dinner that, all the ingredients were purchased by us, as we have always gone to the grocery store multiple times as thanks for letting us stay. A dinner that we volunteered to help make, and clean up.
We’re tired of your racism, the racism you only really show around family, and despite the fact it is 2023 and we’ve made our feelings known on the subject, you can’t help yourself. Maybe you do it out of spite in front of us because you know it bothers us. Regardless, we refuse to allow our children to be around racists that throw around the N word with such ease. To speak about anyone non white non “American” . You see, we can’t wait for the lot of you to go extinct and take your racism and homophobia with you.
Because we are tired of listening to you talk shit about everyone. Your “friends” and family cannot do anything right, according to you. Everyone is out to get you. The world is so unfair to YOU.
Because when we had kids of our own we found how easy it is to make it through the day without screaming, yelling and hitting our children.
Because after years of the above mentioned,. we feel physically ill around you. Because despite the fact that we are grown, professional, adult people, our bodies immediately tense up and ready us for the attack that will come.
Because you are toxic and angry and I don’t have to subject myself to a toxic environment, and I will not subject my partner and my child to that toxic environment either.
Uh, yeah, as a boomer myself I am simultaneously feeling insulted and thinking there’s a lot of truth to what they say. Some of you might have similar stories and similar concerns. I suggest you all invite Leslie Jones to your Thanksgiving.
I have to admit, though, that I have not had this unpleasant experience. I come from a family of blue-collar liberal Democrats. I was always happy to hang out with my brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts. A few individuals might have been closet conservatives, but they weren’t going to cause trouble at the dinner table, unless they wanted to be shouted down.
It’s true that my father had to have the TV on, but it was all football and never Fox News. He would also get upset at bad football and retreat to the bosom of the family, and was generally the primary cook and spent a lot of time in the kitchen. In fact, the last words I heard from him were when I called on Christmas, and he couldn’t come to the phone, and all I heard was “Goddamn it, cat! Get off the table!”
My kids all turned out well and I’m always happy to see them, but they’ve all dispersed, and we live in a place where the weather tends to screw up travel plans.
So I have the opposite problem. My wife and I will have a quiet time alone pining for our families. We do have some freedom, though, so if Leslie Jones would like to stop by for a respite, the door will be open. I’m planning to fix a vegetarian shepherd’s pie, if she’s interested.
A few things made me feel good at work this week.
#1: We’re wrapping up the Evolution section of my Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development course. After a month of lectures and tree drawing exercises and discussions about good examples of evolution, I gave the students an overview of human evolution and a primary research paper, the Lee Berger stuff about Homo naledi. They were asked to critically evaluate the claims: did they really have fire? Did they bury their dead? Did they create crude art? As you probably know, Berger is emphatic about answering “YES!!”, but I urged them to think carefully…and they did. They stated some concerns and doubts, and talked about what they’d like to see to confirm the claims, like good little scientists. Then I gave them a paper by Martinon-Torres and others, “No scientific evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and produced rock art,” and they saw what an active debate in science looks like. Warmed my heart, it did. This is what a good science class is about, tricking students into thinking for themselves.
#2: I’ve had nightmares about this one thing. Our university enrollment has been way down — I’m teaching a second year required course in cell biology, and I have TEN (10!) students enrolled. Most years I’ve had 50. Sure, a small class is nice in many ways, but not so great if you want to get active participation and discussion going. It took about 12 weeks to get the class warmed up and regularly asking questions! What was causing me some anxiety, though, is that I’m offering a 4000 level elective in ecological developmental biology next semester, the kind of course that lives or dies with student engagement, and really needs a critical mass of students if it was going to fly. I’d been dreading getting 3 or fewer students signed up (the administration would cancel it), or perhaps worse, 5 or 6 students, and I’d have to struggle all semester to get them active while not throwing too much of a burden on individuals. My ideal class size for this kind of course is 10-12 students, and I was dreading getting too few students for all the work involved.
Spring term registration started this week. I’ve already got 10 students enrolled! Maybe next semester will be fun, after all.
Sometimes there are little defeats, too. Our football team qualified for the NCAA DIII playoffs, and will be playing at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse tomorrow. This is a very big deal! So I get to my cell bio class this afternoon…I’ve got two students. One has to leave early for an interview. So I get to lecture to a nearly empty room.
This sort of thing happened early in the semester and I just cancelled class, but I warned them that next time I’d go right ahead and lecture to empty seats, so that’s what I did. At least now I have a set of questions that will definitely go on the next exam.
