Definitely a senior moment

I’m puttering about in the lab, waiting for students to show up, and was mainly just cleaning a lot of glassware. Then I had to make up some solutions and culture more flies, and then as reflex dictates, I had to label everything.

This is a rule. Every time you make a bottle of something, you slap a label on it that says what’s inside and the date you made it. If I didn’t, I’d probably have a seizure trying to get to the container, even if gorillas charged in and snatched me away. It really is that important.

So tape goes on, sharpie comes out, I start writing. “16 March…”, and then, brain freeze. I forgot the decade. “81”, my fingers itched to write. I was in grad school. This is when I got into this habit. It must be…

No, that’s ridiculous. It’s not the 20th century anymore, that’s over. “01”? Maybe?

20 fucking 21? NO WAY! That’s the distant future, I’m a young man working in the lab. After a brief discombobulation, though, I realized it really was 2021, a date that belongs in a science fiction novel, and most of my life had just flown by. It’s going to take a while to get used to this.

So that must be what senility is like, just a whole series of shocks over the most mundane moments. Maybe my brain is going.

Nah, not really. I got very little sleep last night, work has been piling up again, I’m dog tired and stuck doing the most mindless routine tedium. I’ll mention this incident next time I see a doctor for a checkup (that should happen next month, once I’m fully vaccinated), but I think what I really need to do is catch up on my sleep and put a lot of work behind me. A nap and a vacation, that’s what I need.

Well, that was challenging

Today I tried to lead my students through some simple genetics problems over Zoom. In class, it would be easy: put up the problem, have the students pull out a piece of paper and try to solve it, while I wander the classroom seeing what they were doing, offering hints and suggestions as I go, and at the end I’d have an idea of where the individuals were struggling.

On Zoom, nope.

I’d present the problem, and then…no, I have no way to observe the process. I told them they could let me know their answer over the private chat, and if it looked good, I’d call on them and they could explain how they solved it.

First difficulty: these are smart students, and they quickly figured out the flaw in my plan. If they gave the answer, I’d call on them; simple solution: sit on the answer for as long as possible. The first problem I put up produced a deadly silence, with all those black rectangles not showing anything, and my chat window being totally blank. I’d try to nudge them along, but not knowing where they were in the problem meant I had no idea where they were stuck. Or if they even were stuck.

They started to warm up as the hour went on — probably as they realized these weren’t really that hard, and they were seeing how to reach the solution — but it was still agonizing. It took us the whole hour to do 3 problems. And I’ve promised/threatened to do it again on Thursday. As it stands, they’re getting an exam next week and I’ve had little opportunity to interact with them to work through even simple problems.

Stupid virus. Let me get back into a real classroom again.

It’s not too late to shower us with rubies

Last year was our 40th wedding anniversary, which we had to spend apart because Mary got caught by the lockdown in Colorado. This year, Tuesdays are my heaviest teaching days, so I’m just spending the whole day on zoom and in lab.

We’re such a glamorous couple.

I note that the traditional 40th anniversary wedding gift is rubies. If you’ve got a few you can spare, drop them in an envelope and send them here. You all forgot to send them last year; to be honest, I didn’t even notice then.

I think there’s something wrong with this place

In Morris, there is a 4-way stop at the intersection of Columbia and 7th Avenue. I usually avoid it, because 4-way stops ought to be a crime in Minnesota, but I mistakenly went that way the other day. I came to a stop last at the intersection. Three other cars were stopped there, their drivers all smiling and waving at each other to go ahead. It was an impasse. Who would be the first to be less nice and proceed?

It was me. I let them have about 2 seconds of indecision before I gunned the engine. I blame it all on 7 years of driving in Philadelphia, which is kind of on the other extreme of impoliteness.

Anyway, this video reminded me of fairly typical Midwestern norms.

Birds vs. Spiders

It’s been snowing all day. The birds have been frolicking in my backyard. So I aimed a camera at them and recorded a timelapse video.

I have a sneaky purpose, though. Do bird videos draw in more viewers than spider videos? I’ll let you know in a few days.

Or a few hours. Within 3 hours, a video with just birds in it passes the traffic count accumulated by a spider video over 3 days.

I could just cry.

Republicans steal money…FROM PUPPIES!

You’re sinking pretty low there, Lara Trump.

A dog rescue charity with links to Lara Trump has spent as much as $1.9 million at former President Donald Trump’s properties over the last seven years and will drop an additional quarter-million at his Mar-a-Lago country club this weekend.

According to a permit filed with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, Big Dog Ranch Rescue estimates it will spend $225,000 at the club where Donald Trump has taken up full-time residence since leaving the White House. All the profit from that spending winds up in his pocket.

Lara Trump, the Donald’s daughter-in-law, wants to run for the US Senate from North Carolina. Do North Carolinians hate puppies? I hope they remember this grift.

Oh, go away, John Richards

I want nothing to do with that wretched hive of villainy, Atheist Alliance International. This is the organization that was led by Michael Sherlock, and has Gad Saad, Thomas Sheedy, Lawrence Krauss, and Michael Shermer on their advisory board. They seem to be shaking up a bit; Sherlock is out, and John Richards, their editor, resigned in January.

So why am I getting spam email from John Richards, who is starting a new atheist organization? Did he walk off with their mailing list? Add another strike to their list of unethical slovenliness.

No, I’m not going to tell you what Richards’ new venture is. I hope it dies. And rots. And leaves an ugly stain on his carpet.

Dread teaching

I’m caught up on a lot of grading, but today I now have to explain while they got so much wrong. The mean on the last exam was 75, which isn’t bad, but a lot of students are certain they deserve an A on everything, so I have to tell them today that the grade they got was the grade they deserve, and then explain how to solve the problems correctly. Many of the errors were due to invalid assumptions. For example, some people were confused by the term “wild type” — they had it in their heads, largely from their introductory population genetics course, that wild type was simply the most common phenotype in the cross, so for instance, whatever the phenotype of the heterozygotes was in a simple hybrid cross, that was “wild type”. Yikes. So now I also have to reset my brain and stop assuming they know all the basic conventions.

Next bit of fun: we’re wrapping up a standard complementation assay in the lab, so I have to talk to them about writing up a lab report, which means that, while I’ve finished a painful backlog of grading, I’m about to tell them to create a lot more work for me.

Somehow, in all that, I also have to teach them about deletions, duplications, and translocations this week, and then next week we plunge into the happy world of recombination and gene mapping, and more math. Sometimes I wonder how I can keep going, since I’m pretty sure that by the end of the semester all of my students hate me.

I guess that’s one method of wealth redistribution

I guess we could impose a stupidity tax.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposes a $14,500 civil penalty against an airline passenger for allegedly interfering with flight attendants who instructed him to wear a face mask and stop consuming alcohol he had brought on board the aircraft.

On a Dec. 23, 2020 jetBlue Airlines flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York to the Dominican Republic, the passenger crowded the traveler sitting next to him, spoke loudly, and refused to wear his face mask, the FAA alleges. Flight attendants moved the other passenger to a different seat after they complained about the man’s behavior.

A flight attendant warned the man that jetBlue’s policies required him to wear a face mask, and twice warned him that FAA regulations prohibit passengers from drinking alcohol they bring on board an aircraft. Despite these warnings, the passenger continued to remove his face mask and drink his own alcohol, the FAA alleges.

A flight attendant issued the passenger a “Notice to Cease Illegal and Objectionable Behavior,” and the cabin crew notified the captain about his actions two separate times. As a result of the passenger’s actions, the captain declared an emergency and returned to JFK, where the plane landed 4,000 pounds overweight due to the amount of fuel on board.

I have no sympathy for this fellow, but I generally feel he’s going to be paying the price for his own idiocy for most of his life, and the main purpose of such a fine is to dissuade him from harming others.

Maybe first class is a more useful wealth tax? Charge the rich extravagantly for privilege of a few inches of space in a tin can, with freely available Airplane Wine.