I'm just sayin'. There are a lot of things I miss about having left the Upper Midwest, but Duke's mayonnaise makes up for at least some of them. (They don't put sugar in it, for one thing.)
I'm surprised Crichton didn't get his butt busted for plagiarism. (Probably more to the story). In the internet era, plagiarism is easier to do but exponentially easier to catch.
(I've caught perhaps 25 students down through the years. Most often justification given: "Aw, man, I didn't think you'd check" followed by "I just ran out of time" (I assign review papers and the like a month or more ahead of the due date, so that's on them))
I've read some Orwell. "Down and Out in Paris and London" is interesting but not nearly as factual as it is presented as being.
I remember the whole killer bees thing of the 1970s.
Part of it was yes, it was that much in the news, but part of it was I was utterly terrified of bees as a kid, so "killer" bees were kind of seven-year-old-me's "WAGD" moment.
Supposedly they are now where I live. I had a student who kept bees as a hobby and he said he had to euthanize a couple of hives because they got taken over by "killer" queens.
Still, no one I've talked to - right OR left of me - has said my desire (if I only could) to take my annual 2 weeks' vacation to begin the evening of Nov. 8, and to go hide out in the woods or be in my house behind a locked door, is at all paranoid or silly.
At the VERY least, I'm going to heavily censor my access to social media for that time, because there will be, regardless of outcome, some football spiking, some name-calling, and some doom-saying.
That also explains why, when I have a meeting scheduled at 10:30 am, I am sitting in the room where the meeting is at 10:20.
I always thought it was too many Prussian ancestors, but maybe it's my fundamental pessimism. ("You should leave early in case you have to wait for a train at the railroad crossing.")
I have hopes of being able to help band Monarch butterflies (yes, such a thing is possible) at a wildlife refuge near me. They are having some kind of "citizen science" day and while technically in this I don't qualify as a strict "citizen" (I am, by profession, sort-of a scientist*), I think they'll let me in.
I just need a day doing something other than grading and dealing with upset students.
(*Though I publish almost nothing, do little research, and most of my time is spent teaching and grading, which probably means to "real" scientists I'm not even one, but whatever)
no, no mail-in ballots, but there is "early voting" a couple days (usually the Friday) before the election. I did that in, I think, 2012? It was a pain because the line was horrific - everyone in town who wished to vote early had to go down to the small, cramped Election Board and wait in line, and then sign an affidavit we would not try to vote on Tuesday, show ID (I live in a state that still is allowed to request ID), get our ballots, and vote.
I had a busy day on that Tuesday so I went Friday afternoon. Waited in line well over an hour.
For off-year elections, I've always voted on the day in person and never had to wait more than about 10 minutes at the most, usually for the little local elections I can just walk right in and get it taken care of.
I don't know about this year. Not sure if I'm going to go the early route or take my chances on how long I'll have to wait in line after I get out of class for the day. But there better be no one slowing things up taking selfies, that's all I can say.
My only real concern with ballot selfies is if it slows down the voting process. In my polling place, in the past, there have been as few as three stations set up in which we have some "privacy" to vote (we use Scan-tron ballots). I'd be annoyed if I wound up standing in line an extra 15-20 minutes because all the people ahead of me had to get the "perfect" selfie of themselves voting.
Otherwise, I can't be bothered by it. If it causes drama between friends ("OMG you voted for THAT PERSON?!!?!"), fine. People overshare anyway.
(I also wish we still had the kind of voting set-up they had in Ann Arbor back when I was first registered to vote - the giant old machines with levers that you flipped for various candidates or questions, and then a big lever - like a slot machine lever - on the side that you pulled to register your vote. The "scan-tron" voting we do is much less satisfying, as was the punchcard voting they had when I lived in Illinois.
I also remember joking about the machines that they should have had them set up to make the sound of a toilet flushing when you pulled the lever. I guess I was cynical about politics from the get-go.....)
What the "7-11 election" tells me is that maybe ordinary Americans are just sick of being told they have to share their political opinions/choices with the world. (Or, alternately: they're sufficiently afraid of being harassed or attacked for holding an opinion others might disagree with).
Also: an awful lot of states have no 7-11s. I didn't realize my state didn't because my town is small and I wouldn't expect it to, but I guess there aren't any anywhere?
My workplace has a few "wellness" things in place now. I HATE them. The worst is the "fitness challenge," where the first two weeks of the semester, we are bombarded by video e-mails. (I'm sorry, but if you cannot WRITE IT OUT I am not going to spend five minutes of my life watching something I could read in 30 seconds or less). There's food-shaming ("Donut-free zones!") and exhortations for people to exercise during the workday, with exercise times scheduled when those of us in the lab sciences are in class.
My major objection? I've been exercising on my own, for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour a day, for more than 20 years, but because it's not "official," it's not monitored by a fitbit (I refuse to wear one, I refuse to have what feels to me like an electronic leash), it's not in the "official" spaces exercise is done (I work out at home, to a video, or on a cross-country ski simulator), it probably doesn't count, and if the program becomes more draconian, I will have to find time to run around the track here on campus just to please some admin.
There's also the "carrot" of getting a one-time, $250 reduction on our health insurance deductible if we fill out a long health assessment and agree to be spammed with messages about our particular "health concerns." I don't LIKE being nagged - I know I'm overweight. I know my blood pressure is too high unless I take meds for it. I know I don't handle stress as well as I could. Guess what? Nagging me will only make my stress worse.
A colleague took the assessment. He is less paranoid about these things than I am and HE said it was "intrusive," so that tells me I don't want to do it until we get to the point of "Fill out the assessment or you can find your own health insurance on the ACA exchanges...."
I am going to be sleeping as two of the big projects riding on my back are now finished. Oh, there's always stuff - I have grading this afternoon - but at least there isn't a drop-dead-deadline staring me in the face for a little while.
I also need to get to a grocery store better than the crappy local wal-mart, so I guess I've got that hour-and-a-half drive in my future this weekend.
47 and older than dirt, apparently. I never learned typing explicitly in school (my parents perhaps subtly pressuring me into a more "academic" track? They are both scientists). But one of the big, early, clunky PCs my dad brought home came with a learn-to-type program and I did SOME with it. But more often if neatness was needed, I used a typewriter and to this day, for "important" writing (anything bigger than a quiz), I have to compose it longhand on paper and THEN type it. Because of needing to have it as final as possible to avoid errors and having to retype (old habits die hard)
(I also - perhaps I was a hipster before it was cool? - typed some of my high school essays on the enormous manual Underwood we inherited from my newspaperman granddad)
I call it "touch typing." I taught it to myself in grad school on the keyboard of the old IBM I had at the time. Very useful skill to learn. (As was ten-keying, for data entry). I'm a prof now and the days of having secretaries to type your exams (my dad did) have long, long gone away.
I personally dislike "keyboarding" because it sounds to me like a verbed noun, and verbing weirds nouns.
In the last year before they retired from the Illinois state university system, my parents had to take an online ethics test.
Mandated for all state employees by then-governor Rod Blagojevich.
I teased my father about that for *weeks*.
I have to do the anti-harassment ones annually as part of my employment.. I find them slightly galling, considering that my personal policy tends to be "don't be an a-hole" and that pretty much covers all the behavior covered in the program. But I figure my uni needs to cover its nether regions so I roll my eyes and put up with it.
I don't have any children but I think I was *born* middle-aged. I haven't voluntarily stayed up past 11 pm in....gosh, more than 15 years now.
I own a steam vac but haven't used it in a long time because it's kind of effortful to get out and set up and it just seems easier to fill a bucket with hot water and soap and get down on my hands and knees and scrub.
weeking for the workend. (I have to write my annual productivity report and have it in by Thursday, and I've had too much to do otherwise to get it done yet)
I have heard a few commentators already making that point, that either women are "stupid" with their votes or only their husband's vote should count.
I didn't know the thing about Schalfly discouraging women from going to college. That's kind of sad because you DO need to be able to take care of yourself in this life. My mother - who only worked outside the home after my brother and I had grown - once commented, "There are a lot of good men out there like your dad, but you don't want to have to DEPEND on one" (meaning: get an education, learn a career). She had seen two sisters bury "good men" who died too young, one of those sisters wound up working as a cocktail waitress because she couldn't get any other job.
(My mother has a Ph.D. in botany, she taught college before I was born and after I was grown)
Also, I wound up single. Where would I be if I hadn't gone to college?
I miss malls and I wasn't even a mall-rat, by virtue of one not being in my town. (We had a v. posh, v. expensive "downtown" of little shops that mostly sneered at - and sometimes harassed - unaccompanied teens).
But yeah. Being around bustling commercial enterprise CAN be fun. Too bad there doesn't seem to be that much left.
That presupposes one has a decent home center carrying decent brands near one. I'm going to TRY the local place but if they don't carry a good brand, I'm gonna go online rather than accept whatever cheapjack solution they offer. I'm not replacing this ceiling fan again in two years. I'm done with buying cheap crap that breaks fast.
secret confession: I hate gift cards. (Or maybe: "unpopular opinion: I hate gift cards"). I get that they're "easy," I get that they're a good fallback if you don't know the person you're giving to well, I get that if you're disabled or elderly it's easier to get them than to go out and shop, but it means getting gift cards for, say, my birthday, means:
a. I have to go out and shop, and figure out what it is I want
b. There's almost no element of surprise in the gift, you know what it is when it arrives.
c. Some of the stores are miiiiiiiiles from me so I have to plan a trip or shop online
d. if it's for somewhere like Target, I have the dilemma of "buy fun stuff?" vs. "buy dish soap and underwear and stuff I need anyway?" which makes it not-fun then.
Yes, I'm a spoiled brat. I acknowledge that. But I hate gift cards. I'd rather get just a nice greeting card on my birthday. A gift card is an *obligation*.
For me, the internet is really only good for "directed" shopping, in the sense of "I need a new ceiling fan" and less the type of "My niece's birthday is coming up, what should I get her" undirected shopping. (Yes, algorithms, but I've never had good luck with them).
I find Wal-mart depressing. That may be my local wal-mart though, which is one of the "redlined" ones (I suspect) that Business Insider or somewhere wrote about - it's always dirty, it doesn't restock quickly, it carries "good" stuff for about three weeks and then abruptly drops it. And it's about the only choice in town absent a few small gifte shoppe things and a small, locally-run grocery.
The rare times I get somewhere that there is better shopping, I spend more than I should and sometimes buy stuff I don't actually need because my sense of "scarcity" kicks in.
Some malls formerly had grocery stores/supermarkets here. There is a nice old YouTube video of the "first mall" in Minnesota, it had a Red Owl grocery in it. Apparently you could even order your food and have it delivered to the curb, to your car, when you were ready to leave: southdale mall
(The video makes me nostalgic even though it's from over a decade before I was born. Red Owl was the grocery store in my grandmother's town in Northern Michigan, and the mall footage reminds me of my childhood mall trips to Chapel Hill Mall (Akron, OH) in the 70s)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Morning Ed: Listicles {2016.10.05.W}”
Don't trash mayo until you've tried Duke's.
I'm just sayin'. There are a lot of things I miss about having left the Upper Midwest, but Duke's mayonnaise makes up for at least some of them. (They don't put sugar in it, for one thing.)
On “Morning Ed: Education {2016.10.03.M}”
I'm surprised Crichton didn't get his butt busted for plagiarism. (Probably more to the story). In the internet era, plagiarism is easier to do but exponentially easier to catch.
(I've caught perhaps 25 students down through the years. Most often justification given: "Aw, man, I didn't think you'd check" followed by "I just ran out of time" (I assign review papers and the like a month or more ahead of the due date, so that's on them))
I've read some Orwell. "Down and Out in Paris and London" is interesting but not nearly as factual as it is presented as being.
On “Linky Friday #186: Guns, Bombs, & Dead Raccoons”
I remember the whole killer bees thing of the 1970s.
Part of it was yes, it was that much in the news, but part of it was I was utterly terrified of bees as a kid, so "killer" bees were kind of seven-year-old-me's "WAGD" moment.
Supposedly they are now where I live. I had a student who kept bees as a hobby and he said he had to euthanize a couple of hives because they got taken over by "killer" queens.
"
Still, no one I've talked to - right OR left of me - has said my desire (if I only could) to take my annual 2 weeks' vacation to begin the evening of Nov. 8, and to go hide out in the woods or be in my house behind a locked door, is at all paranoid or silly.
At the VERY least, I'm going to heavily censor my access to social media for that time, because there will be, regardless of outcome, some football spiking, some name-calling, and some doom-saying.
On “Weekend!”
That also explains why, when I have a meeting scheduled at 10:30 am, I am sitting in the room where the meeting is at 10:20.
I always thought it was too many Prussian ancestors, but maybe it's my fundamental pessimism. ("You should leave early in case you have to wait for a train at the railroad crossing.")
"
I have hopes of being able to help band Monarch butterflies (yes, such a thing is possible) at a wildlife refuge near me. They are having some kind of "citizen science" day and while technically in this I don't qualify as a strict "citizen" (I am, by profession, sort-of a scientist*), I think they'll let me in.
I just need a day doing something other than grading and dealing with upset students.
(*Though I publish almost nothing, do little research, and most of my time is spent teaching and grading, which probably means to "real" scientists I'm not even one, but whatever)
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.09.29.Th}”
no, no mail-in ballots, but there is "early voting" a couple days (usually the Friday) before the election. I did that in, I think, 2012? It was a pain because the line was horrific - everyone in town who wished to vote early had to go down to the small, cramped Election Board and wait in line, and then sign an affidavit we would not try to vote on Tuesday, show ID (I live in a state that still is allowed to request ID), get our ballots, and vote.
I had a busy day on that Tuesday so I went Friday afternoon. Waited in line well over an hour.
For off-year elections, I've always voted on the day in person and never had to wait more than about 10 minutes at the most, usually for the little local elections I can just walk right in and get it taken care of.
I don't know about this year. Not sure if I'm going to go the early route or take my chances on how long I'll have to wait in line after I get out of class for the day. But there better be no one slowing things up taking selfies, that's all I can say.
"
yeah, well, from looking at what the established parties have given us as candidates...
(And yes, I get that it's partly a 'we get what we deserve' thing, but still.)
"
My only real concern with ballot selfies is if it slows down the voting process. In my polling place, in the past, there have been as few as three stations set up in which we have some "privacy" to vote (we use Scan-tron ballots). I'd be annoyed if I wound up standing in line an extra 15-20 minutes because all the people ahead of me had to get the "perfect" selfie of themselves voting.
Otherwise, I can't be bothered by it. If it causes drama between friends ("OMG you voted for THAT PERSON?!!?!"), fine. People overshare anyway.
(I also wish we still had the kind of voting set-up they had in Ann Arbor back when I was first registered to vote - the giant old machines with levers that you flipped for various candidates or questions, and then a big lever - like a slot machine lever - on the side that you pulled to register your vote. The "scan-tron" voting we do is much less satisfying, as was the punchcard voting they had when I lived in Illinois.
I also remember joking about the machines that they should have had them set up to make the sound of a toilet flushing when you pulled the lever. I guess I was cynical about politics from the get-go.....)
"
What the "7-11 election" tells me is that maybe ordinary Americans are just sick of being told they have to share their political opinions/choices with the world. (Or, alternately: they're sufficiently afraid of being harassed or attacked for holding an opinion others might disagree with).
Also: an awful lot of states have no 7-11s. I didn't realize my state didn't because my town is small and I wouldn't expect it to, but I guess there aren't any anywhere?
On “Morning Ed: Health {2016.09.28.W}”
My workplace has a few "wellness" things in place now. I HATE them. The worst is the "fitness challenge," where the first two weeks of the semester, we are bombarded by video e-mails. (I'm sorry, but if you cannot WRITE IT OUT I am not going to spend five minutes of my life watching something I could read in 30 seconds or less). There's food-shaming ("Donut-free zones!") and exhortations for people to exercise during the workday, with exercise times scheduled when those of us in the lab sciences are in class.
My major objection? I've been exercising on my own, for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour a day, for more than 20 years, but because it's not "official," it's not monitored by a fitbit (I refuse to wear one, I refuse to have what feels to me like an electronic leash), it's not in the "official" spaces exercise is done (I work out at home, to a video, or on a cross-country ski simulator), it probably doesn't count, and if the program becomes more draconian, I will have to find time to run around the track here on campus just to please some admin.
There's also the "carrot" of getting a one-time, $250 reduction on our health insurance deductible if we fill out a long health assessment and agree to be spammed with messages about our particular "health concerns." I don't LIKE being nagged - I know I'm overweight. I know my blood pressure is too high unless I take meds for it. I know I don't handle stress as well as I could. Guess what? Nagging me will only make my stress worse.
A colleague took the assessment. He is less paranoid about these things than I am and HE said it was "intrusive," so that tells me I don't want to do it until we get to the point of "Fill out the assessment or you can find your own health insurance on the ACA exchanges...."
On “Morning Ed: Creatures {2016.09.19.M}”
Given what I remember of my Douglas Adams, the dolphins may be discussing their exit plans.
(Wouldn't be at all surprised. 2016, after all).
On “Weekend!”
I am going to be sleeping as two of the big projects riding on my back are now finished. Oh, there's always stuff - I have grading this afternoon - but at least there isn't a drop-dead-deadline staring me in the face for a little while.
I also need to get to a grocery store better than the crappy local wal-mart, so I guess I've got that hour-and-a-half drive in my future this weekend.
On “Feeling old, typing edition”
Aw, shoot. Another piece of my young adulthood gone.
"
47 and older than dirt, apparently. I never learned typing explicitly in school (my parents perhaps subtly pressuring me into a more "academic" track? They are both scientists). But one of the big, early, clunky PCs my dad brought home came with a learn-to-type program and I did SOME with it. But more often if neatness was needed, I used a typewriter and to this day, for "important" writing (anything bigger than a quiz), I have to compose it longhand on paper and THEN type it. Because of needing to have it as final as possible to avoid errors and having to retype (old habits die hard)
(I also - perhaps I was a hipster before it was cool? - typed some of my high school essays on the enormous manual Underwood we inherited from my newspaperman granddad)
I call it "touch typing." I taught it to myself in grad school on the keyboard of the old IBM I had at the time. Very useful skill to learn. (As was ten-keying, for data entry). I'm a prof now and the days of having secretaries to type your exams (my dad did) have long, long gone away.
I personally dislike "keyboarding" because it sounds to me like a verbed noun, and verbing weirds nouns.
On “Kilgore Trout: Diversity-Training Stereotypes — The Cure Is Now Worse than the Disease”
In the last year before they retired from the Illinois state university system, my parents had to take an online ethics test.
Mandated for all state employees by then-governor Rod Blagojevich.
I teased my father about that for *weeks*.
I have to do the anti-harassment ones annually as part of my employment.. I find them slightly galling, considering that my personal policy tends to be "don't be an a-hole" and that pretty much covers all the behavior covered in the program. But I figure my uni needs to cover its nether regions so I roll my eyes and put up with it.
On “On Nesting and Steam Vacs”
I don't have any children but I think I was *born* middle-aged. I haven't voluntarily stayed up past 11 pm in....gosh, more than 15 years now.
I own a steam vac but haven't used it in a long time because it's kind of effortful to get out and set up and it just seems easier to fill a bucket with hot water and soap and get down on my hands and knees and scrub.
On “Weekend!”
weeking for the workend. (I have to write my annual productivity report and have it in by Thursday, and I've had too much to do otherwise to get it done yet)
On “Linky Friday #183: Downtown”
the "Soviet vision of Future Transportation" image is making my inner 12-year-old snicker. That is all.
On “Hannity Before There Was Hannity”
I have heard a few commentators already making that point, that either women are "stupid" with their votes or only their husband's vote should count.
I didn't know the thing about Schalfly discouraging women from going to college. That's kind of sad because you DO need to be able to take care of yourself in this life. My mother - who only worked outside the home after my brother and I had grown - once commented, "There are a lot of good men out there like your dad, but you don't want to have to DEPEND on one" (meaning: get an education, learn a career). She had seen two sisters bury "good men" who died too young, one of those sisters wound up working as a cocktail waitress because she couldn't get any other job.
(My mother has a Ph.D. in botany, she taught college before I was born and after I was grown)
Also, I wound up single. Where would I be if I hadn't gone to college?
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.09.06.T}”
I miss malls and I wasn't even a mall-rat, by virtue of one not being in my town. (We had a v. posh, v. expensive "downtown" of little shops that mostly sneered at - and sometimes harassed - unaccompanied teens).
But yeah. Being around bustling commercial enterprise CAN be fun. Too bad there doesn't seem to be that much left.
"
That presupposes one has a decent home center carrying decent brands near one. I'm going to TRY the local place but if they don't carry a good brand, I'm gonna go online rather than accept whatever cheapjack solution they offer. I'm not replacing this ceiling fan again in two years. I'm done with buying cheap crap that breaks fast.
"
secret confession: I hate gift cards. (Or maybe: "unpopular opinion: I hate gift cards"). I get that they're "easy," I get that they're a good fallback if you don't know the person you're giving to well, I get that if you're disabled or elderly it's easier to get them than to go out and shop, but it means getting gift cards for, say, my birthday, means:
a. I have to go out and shop, and figure out what it is I want
b. There's almost no element of surprise in the gift, you know what it is when it arrives.
c. Some of the stores are miiiiiiiiles from me so I have to plan a trip or shop online
d. if it's for somewhere like Target, I have the dilemma of "buy fun stuff?" vs. "buy dish soap and underwear and stuff I need anyway?" which makes it not-fun then.
Yes, I'm a spoiled brat. I acknowledge that. But I hate gift cards. I'd rather get just a nice greeting card on my birthday. A gift card is an *obligation*.
"
For me, the internet is really only good for "directed" shopping, in the sense of "I need a new ceiling fan" and less the type of "My niece's birthday is coming up, what should I get her" undirected shopping. (Yes, algorithms, but I've never had good luck with them).
I find Wal-mart depressing. That may be my local wal-mart though, which is one of the "redlined" ones (I suspect) that Business Insider or somewhere wrote about - it's always dirty, it doesn't restock quickly, it carries "good" stuff for about three weeks and then abruptly drops it. And it's about the only choice in town absent a few small gifte shoppe things and a small, locally-run grocery.
The rare times I get somewhere that there is better shopping, I spend more than I should and sometimes buy stuff I don't actually need because my sense of "scarcity" kicks in.
"
Some malls formerly had grocery stores/supermarkets here. There is a nice old YouTube video of the "first mall" in Minnesota, it had a Red Owl grocery in it. Apparently you could even order your food and have it delivered to the curb, to your car, when you were ready to leave: southdale mall
(The video makes me nostalgic even though it's from over a decade before I was born. Red Owl was the grocery store in my grandmother's town in Northern Michigan, and the mall footage reminds me of my childhood mall trips to Chapel Hill Mall (Akron, OH) in the 70s)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.