My Own Thoughts

I am providing my own competition. I told a friend who is looking for work about my SLAC’s open position. Based on what happened with me, I don’t think she will get the job, but she might. She is qualified. However, I also applied for the position… I am less qualified on the topic than [...]

Study Hacks has the story of a student who dropped off Facebook and gained significant educational ground. I was wondering if the time I was spending on Facebook was keeping me away from my work. So from Monday through today, I have only been on fb to read and reply to my inbox. It has [...]

Very interesting map that shows unemployment from 2007 to 2009 can be found here. You know, Obama said 1 in 10 is unemployed. I was like, really. Ten grownups in my family. Mom- not employed, doesn’t want to be Dad- not employed, doesn’t want to be baby sister- not employed, doesn’t want to be BIL- [...]

Of course, it is out of China and they’ve had some fake stuff, but this looks real. The BBC says: Professor Benton explained that differently shaped melanosomes produced different colours, with blacks or greys produced by “sausage-shaped” melanosomes, and reddish or “russet” shades found in spherical ones. “A ginger-haired person would have more spherical melanosomes, [...]

I won a writing award from my college system! What’s funny is that I didn’t check my email today until 9 p.m. I read from the most recent on down. So, the first inkling I received is when a friend wrote and said, “Kudos for winning the writing award!” I am very excited. Unfortunately I’m [...]

I was just grading an assignment I graded in a dream four years ago. It’s in my online class in Angel, which my college didn’t have four years ago. Very strange.

The Math Curmudgeon has a great post on Game-Changing Graphics. It is well worth looking at. Want to see how a Russian Winter decimated Napoleon’s army? It’s there. How cholera was identified as coming from a septic tank? That, too. Scary view of sex at Jefferson High. (When did that come out and how did [...]

It shouldn’t be that hard to clean out a closet. It shouldn’t take hours to decide on categories like: give, keep, throw away. But it is hard. Would R want this? Do we need boxes? How many are too many? Should I get rid of this? How do I get rid of that? (Boxes of [...]

Scientists used and re-used this information without ever checking it. I am guessing part of the reason for the lack of checking (especially since it was never published in a peer-reviewed journal which should have checked it) is that it matched what the scientists were expecting to find and so they accepted it. The scientist [...]

I am not sure what has happened. I assume someone hacked it. But my blog that my students must write to will not open. I’m going to have to get the Computer Programmer Superwhiz on that. Great. The blog I use for teacher education isn’t working either.

I was looking at an old email for some information and found in it a wealth of information which I had not seen before. I received the email about two weeks ago and I just totally missed a whole entire section. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was skimming? I also missed the implication of [...]

I dreamed I was riding in a huge van with my mother. My mom was driving. We were going from one place to another, though I don’t remember where now. She started going down a hill that was at the incline that makes me paranoid because I rolled down one in a car when I [...]

I could not find a lot on this. Even when I tried various different combinations of words it was mostly on winter survival. When I limited my search to not include winter, there was very little available. Most of what I found is for seniors in a heat wave. Not exactly useful discussion for how [...]

a president who entered office with enormous support and an unprecedented amount of goodwill. The Commentary is talking about Obama. He got 53% of the vote. I’m not sure that is enormous support. He did get 8 million more votes than McCain. Of course, in a country of 305 million people, an amazingly high 127 [...]

An intriguing article/title from the NYTimes. This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive [...]

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/1/20/worldupdates/2010-01-20T080717Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-455265-3&sec=Worldupdates It says it is copyrighted in 2008. It also says Coakley conceded. No one else does though. The Denver Post says he won. Is this a Dewey-Truman moment? We’ve already had those. One news center posted election returns yesterday.

I have grading to do and I have done everything but the grading. There’s a paper coming up and I haven’t written it. I need to lose weight, but I’m eating a lot. I lack self-discipline today. That is a terrible realization. I am going to grade now.

from my friend Jill: During a recent password audit at our company, it was found that a receptionist was using the following password: “MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento” When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

I am finishing up my online class. Turns out it isn’t good enough (despite the fact that people did it last semester) to be ahead of your students. You must be finished. So I’ve got a load of work to do. I don’t know when I will be doing it either. Today is almost over. [...]

A job in Abilene may be opening up. How do we make a decision? Let’s say that Ron makes X. I would expect the opening in Abilene to pay 1/2X. Average home price in Houston is $198K. Average in Abilene is $140K. Not 1/2. We’d get a substantial break on tuition for the youngest munchkin. [...]