My Own Thoughts

This is a day to remember those who serve this country and those who have lost loved ones who served this country. The photo is from Blackfive.

I have not been doing too well at stuff recently. Last weekend when I left town, I asked M to do a whole bunch of stuff for me. This weekend, I had forgotten a whole thing and again asked M to do something (though fairly minor). Today I forgot to grade all the papers that [...]

And I don’t think it’s different in the US, although our kids can go to school for free, if you don’t count money for clothes. A NYTimes Op-Ed says: Two M.I.T. economists, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, found that the world’s poor typically spend about 2 percent of their income educating their children, and often [...]

The Common Room’s “Homeschooling the Little Ones” refers to a British study which found: Far from getting cleverer, our 11-year-olds are, in fact, less “intelligent” than their counterparts of 30 years ago. Or so say a team who are among Britain’s most respected education researchers. After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools [...]

Here are two views on the same situation by respected academic writers. (Well, I respect them. They’re on my personal blogroll.) Threatened with the mass lay-off — and knowing 800 applications have come in for the school’s 93 jobs – the union agreed to “Gallo’s initial requests, including two weeks (rather than one) of summer [...]

Caroline says they won’t make it. That if they run from each other, they won’t come back together. Bones is going to be investigating these I believe. The writers tend to use real life situations. Lance gives up Daisy. He tells her not to wait for him either. And yet next year there is another [...]

I did not realize how hard it is to look for work, full-time reasonably remunerated work, and not find any. Jobs not gotten: M 3 K 3 SJ 2 CF 3 T 1 N 2 Hb 2 Hc 1 I’m emotionally invested in having a full-time job and it is just not happening. Now I’m [...]

Dweck and her collaborators have demonstrated that praising children for their intelligence can backfire. When young people’s sense of self-worth is bound up in the idea that they are smart—a quality they come to understand as a genetic blessing from the sky—at least three bad things can happen. Some students become lazy, figuring that their [...]

When I was in first grade, no one would hold my hand when we were supposed to grab hands because both my thumbs were covered in warts. I cried. My folks took me to a doctor and the warts on my right thumb, the lesser covered thumb, with only 23 warts, were burnt off. A [...]

Sometimes I get grumpy. the unexcitingly-named My Own Thoughts, said Assistant Village Idiot. Why did the author have to add that? I don’t know.

I was not chosen for the second interview at one of my earlier adjunct schools. I am very disappointed. I enjoyed the students and the administration there. I thought I did well in the interview. But I didn’t get the second interview… Dang it. Wait! Maybe when they said they would be calling for on-campus [...]

I had a job interview today. I think I did fairly well on the questions. I think I am what they need. Now we’ll see if I am the best of the folks they interviewed. They did two days of phone interviews and will choose 5 or 6 to come to campus and interview. NEXT [...]

I found an interesting article about an interesting book. Being a fan of WWII spy strategies, both The New Yorker article and the book it is about, Operation Mincemeat, seem fascinating. The story of Major William Martin is the subject of the British journalist Ben Macintyre’s brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining “Operation Mincemeat” (Harmony; $25.99). [...]

I have another interview coming up soon and I am not sure what to do about it. I would really like this job and the job search has not gone too well to date. So… I didn’t get one job because I was too old. I didn’t get one because I told them the non-PC [...]