Oh, say...

 Next in the series. If you were following then this would be as easy as, um, pie. I sent this out to my students. We'll see if they get it.

-----------

I just threw this list together. See if you can figure out what all the words on the list have in common. They are listed in no particular order -- I just wrote them down as I thought of them.

Love

Oat

Rust

Able

Rack

Lick

Hair

Hick

Hill

Hat

Hasten

Hart

Hum

Hunk

Hive

Hump

Lean

Lass

Lose

Raze

Lout

Limb

Ripple

Row

How

Hew

Over

Up

At

I don't know if this exists anywhere online, but try to figure it out without looking for the answer on the web. 

Divided we stand

 Sorry for an unpopular or uncomfortable post, but I gotta speak what's left of my mind.

I'll just start by saying that you don't know how I voted. I'm pretty darned sure of that. Heck, I'm not even sure how I voted. Probably by mail, but possibly female also. The details are cloudy; ask again later.

But now that the election is over (though sans fat lady, because of the practice of not body shaming anyone, who can be sure?) politicians everywhere are calling for unity.

I don't know what unity is and I sense that it is impossible.

Democrats and republicans have, if you boil it down, 2 different underlying views of the role of government. There are opposing notions of the US's position on the world stage and the diplomatic moves that we should be taking. If we all could find a way to agree, we wouldn't have the system that we have -- we simply see the structure, function and position of government and the country differently from each other.

Then the calls come for unity. But even if I am willing to accept person A or B as the president and I will do my best not to spit every time his name is mentioned, I still, on a deep and philosophical level, disagree with policies, practices or positions that person A or B champions. We cannot be unified because we are, at the deepest level, still divided. Are we supposed to act unified in some public forum for the sake of appearances? Or is the call for unity a call for "you lost, now compromise your values - I won so I don't have to compromise mine!"

I remember very little from Social Studies class in grades 6-8, but I recall that I was taught that the responsibility of the majority is to protect the right of the minority to disagree. If enough people find the disagreement position persuasive, then it will eventually become the majority, and will have to protect the new minority's position. Unity is NOT to goal -- partisanship is not only inevitable but necessary. What are we expecting other people to do -- abandon their beliefs? Suddenly concede that because a majority feels a certain way, it is meaningless to feel stridently otherwise?

Yes, I know, a house divided will not stand and all that, but a house built on a foundation of resentment and superficiality will collapse at the first breeze. I won't ask anyone to defend, support or condone moves that I feel, at my core, are abhorrent and destructive. I won't ask for unity. I'll ask for respectful division as protected by the laws of legal expression and the democratic process. Don't ask me for anything different.

Class where? For?

 

News has come out that Pfizer has a potential Covid vaccine, one which is 90% effective. If we assume that this 90% is enough to embolden those vaccinated, we are on the cusp of some sort of progress back to “normal.” But will we ever actually go back to the way things were before last March? In some ways, maybe, but the pandemic has fueled innovation and driven technology while making us reevaluate how we live and I think that in some ways, we will not take steps back. Companies will allow more workers to stay home and work virtually. Contactless check-out lines in supermarkets will become the standard. Restaurants that introduced delivery will not stop delivering. People who have concerns about their health will take more opportunity to wear masks, stay distant and not shake hands or hug. Telemedicine, once offered cannot be taken away. The same holds true in education.

Schools, like it or not (speaking as a teacher) have been operating on a distance model either entirely or in concert with live classes. Teachers who are in school buildings are still, simultaneously, teaching students who are at home. Whether or not a teacher thinks that the “Zoom” class is as effective or personal as a live class, it is an option that it will be hard to deny. Snow days, students who are a little sick but want to listen in, or who are on vacation but don’t want to miss content will be able to join their classes. Though this was available before Covid-19, it was rarely used. Students out for extended periods sometimes had a friend Face-time them in but the teacher, even if aware, made no accommodation for that mode of learning. Only schools that specialized in this method of delivery offered it. But now, I foresee that all changing.

I anticipate not only students’ opting to stay home more and yet still wanting to be “in-class” and teachers confronted with poor weather or personal demands not wanting to miss a full day’s salary teaching remotely. If we think that the platform is an effective mode of instruction, so much so that we continue to use it AT ALL after a vaccine appears, then we should be leveraging its advantages, the primary one being that we are free of geographical constraints. Colleges offering all their classes digitally (synchronous and not) have students going to Hawaii or elsewhere, figuring “I can attend the classes from anywhere, so why should I be where the weather isn’t perfect?”

Private schools, then, need not limit themselves when recruiting to students in their vicinity! A private school can offer an experience as academically rich to a student in a small town who, otherwise, would either have to move to take advantage of what the school has to offer, or would be out of luck, having to be satisfied by a (possibly less rigorous or specialized) public school. Students from anywhere can learn from the caliber of teachers that normally would be out of reach, or cover material and curricula that would never find its way to a building in every physical corner of the world.

True, the “campus experience” would be missing if the student was confined to a Zoom classroom, but the extra-curriculars (at least ones that can’t include a virtual participant as easily as a classroom can) are only one dimension of the time in school. Homeschooled students miss the same opportunities and have found ways to supplement their classes with trips or meetings that supplement the intellectual part of their daily lives. If we truly value the academics in our schools and the teachers are already making alterations to include the resident students who choose to be on Zoom, then offering that option to outsiders adds no additional prep work or financial investment. The trade-off for the student could be a reduction in tuition as the students gets only a part of the overall experience. Would there be some missed socializing? Yes. But there would also be some otherwise missed acculturation. A student who would not expect to have access to a religious school because of the lack of one in a community could become part of the intensive religious education that another community has to offer.  Affiliations via other facets of culture can be explored and a student can find himself virtually surrounded in both classrooms and informal meetings by likeminded students and faculty. Additionally, students whose families move would not need to abandon their social niche – they could finish their schooling in the school at which they began it.

This would change recruiting models, increasing certain aspects of competition, but it would increase opportunity in all directions. Marketing would shift as would economics since local students might opt for the same on-line experience, but class sizes and staffing could also be reconsidered with the school offering entire Zoom classes populated only by virtual students. Local, smaller communities could have students who band together and rent a local room and attend class as a group, creating a satellite campus in areas in which any particular style, mode or approach towards education would never have been available.

Unless we ditch virtual learning and assume that everything will truly go back to the status quo ante, we will continue to incorporate these parallel modalities of instruction. Once we are doing that, we should look ahead to see how we can parlay these innovations into a new model and eventually standard of educational offerings.

FE? FU!

 

So I was sitting down and tucking in to my dinner of cottage cheese and almonds, or as I like to call it, "sadness" and I figured I would review the health benefits of said food. I was sure that I was getting enough protein and even a smattering of fat, but I was curious about the amount of iron because I'm still working on growing a solid exoskeleton so I need to keep track of stuff, you know.

I looked at the almonds...1 milligram of iron in 28 nuts (or 1/28th of a milligram per nut, for those fans of fractions, or "franctions" as I like to call them) which accounts for 6% of what some fat cat in congress decided I need to eat each and every day. Politics...amirite?

Then I looked at the cottage cheese label (Friendship, 2%, small curd because I can't handle the big curds). Here's what I noticed when it comes to iron:

Yep, that's right -- zero milligrams in a half-cup serving. But don't worry, that 0 mg is 2% of the recommended daily allowance.

Let's review, shall we?

One milligram is 6% but zero milligrams is 2%. This, clearly, is why I failed math all those times I tried to not fail math.

And theoretically, while I only get 2% by eating half a cup, the zero milligrams I could get if I choose to eat a full cup would add up to 4%. If I eat 25 cups of cottage cheese, then I will get zero milligrams of iron that will be 100% of my daily allowance! The possibilities are endless. In fact, I can choose to eat all sorts of other things that also have zero milligrams of iron, and get my daily allowance that way, right? I'm hoping this works for other nutrients as well. Vitamins more honored in the breach than the observance, indeed.

Not letting the dog lie

 

He's a liar. I love him so much, but Sparky is just not being fair or telling the truth.

You might have read his most recent claims about us here and I want to defend myself and explain a few things.

First, we let him sleep on the bed, so much so that he often pushes me off the edge of my side and he takes my blanket. I do nothing about it because, well, frankly, I'm scared of him. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and he's sitting there, watching me, glint in his eye. I mean, he's cute and all but I wonder if he's planning something.

I often ask him in the morning if he wants to go out. He growls at me and snaps. He likes to sleep late so I let him and he gets let out on his schedule. He goes out and uses the facilities and I wait for him to come back in on his schedule. If he wants to hang out, I let him. Then when he comes in (on days when I'm home) we sit together on the sofa or I make a little bed for him in a sunbeam so he can relax.

I try to ask him throughout the day if he wants to go out (I don't want any accidents in the house!) but usually he just sits there like a lump, rejecting the offer unless he hears a squirrel, a dog, a delicious child or a particularly noisy leaf outside. Then he runs to the door and I run after him to open it up. If I could teach him to open it, I would but 'til then, I'm the doorman.

He also does not eat his food so much. Part of this is my fault. When I eat (because of my low-carb diet) I focus on fats and proteins. Sparky thinks that there are two food groups -- fats and proteins so he constantly asks for my food and I indulge him. I eat chicken, he eats chicken. I eat hamburger, he eats hamburger. I eat eggs, he eats eggs. I eat fish, he eats fish. Bottom line is that he eats my dinner at larger volumes than I get to. But I spoil him because I'm afraid that the sentence will read "I eat my own food and he eats my face while I sleep."

But we also fill his bowl with one food that he is willing to eat. But he doesn't just walk over to the bowl and eat -- he plays this game where he sits in the middle of the room until someone gets between him and his bowl. Then he runs to the bowl and growls, "defending" it. Weird, right. But if you walk away to let him eat, he won't eat. You have to return to his bowl and pretend to block his access and he growls and snaps louder and louder. Eventually, he starts to eat, once he feels that he has "earned" it through showing how brave he is. I get a headache from the noise and find it very inconvenient, but if this is what gets Sparky to eat, nothing is too good for him. But anything he says about not feeding him simply untrue. He will look at me while he is still chewing the last bite of cheese and make a face that says "you never give me anything!" Hello! You are still eating what I just gave you, Sparky! 

He is like a boy dog version of a teenaged drama queen. So please, don't believe him. We treat him very nicely and he has anger issues. Thanks for your understanding.

two tired

I got a flat tire yesterday.

Thank you for your sympathy. Fortunately, the weather was nice and there was ample room for me to put on the spare so I spent 20 minutes in the evening air and moved on with my life. Just slower and more carefully.

This isn't the first time I have gotten a flat. This particular car seems to have a tendency to invite flats. Behavior that other cars laugh off, ours takes personally. I know, it isn't the car, but the tire, right? So the tire should stand up to how the road rages, but I think that the car is insulting the tires, making them more likely to be deflated.

So a few years ago, I came out of a gas station and had to merge onto the highway. I didn't quite clear the curb so I popped 2 tires -- both on the passenger side. I found my way to the local branded tire place and waited and waited, and then paid and paid. I shelled out money for 2 new tires and made sure to get the warranty because, you know, tires.

Yesterday, after putting on the donut (and before driving away) I called said tire store to invoke the warranty. 

"Come on in," they said, "and we'll take a look." So I did. And they did.

I was told that this tire was not one that was covered. Strange, I thought...this is the same place on the car -- front right. Why wouldn't the tire be the same? I got lucky, though. He checked in the computer and found an earlier incident which required that this tire be changed so I was covered, just not because of the more recent incident. While I'm happy that I will get a slight discount on the replacement tire, I'm confused. Why wouldn;t the tire be covered based on what happened more recently?

Then I saw it -- and a conspiracy theory was born. And I thought, what better place to post a conspiracy theory than on my blog? So here it is.

When they replaced both passenger side tires, they also rotated them figuring "if this is where this guy gets flats, he is likely to get another flat in these tires and we will have to keep servicing him on the cheap! We should move the tires around so he won't be covered!" And that's what they did. they moved the new tires to the driver's side (I have yet to confirm this by looking at the serial numbers as I'm afraid that this might destroy a perfectly unreasonable conspiracy theory) and moved the driver's side tires into the passenger spot.

The joke was on them, though, because an even earlier incident had forced them to replace the driver's side tire, so they still had to honor the warranty! This is a hollow victory and I'm still going to be out another hundred bucks (plus time, energy and my dread as I drive on the donut), but at a certain point in life, I celebrate the hollow victories also.

Stop depresses

 

I'm not going to feel bad. Understand that. I am a mean old man and I lack certain sympathy for those situations which seem to reflect things that really aren't that bad.

In this part of the world, we are subject to limitations on our behavior because of the current pandemic. Masks, distance and a reduction of social contact. Word has gone out from some quarters that we need to be especially concerned about our young people and the sense of despair and depression that these limitations will engender. 

Oh, boo hoo.

Am I being callous? Maybe. Are there those already saddled with depression whose feelings this will exacerbate? No doubt. But they need not be isolated in any extreme way and their needs do not need to be ignored because of the current rules about school, religious outings and personal contact.

And I hate to turn into the old man who starts sentences with phrases like "when I was a boy" but, Hell, when I was a boy, we survived without the constant contact with peers afforded by technology. If you lived someplace distant from your friends, then from the time you left school to the time you returned to it, you simply didn't have contact with your friends. I also had significantly fewer TV channels, little to no internet or equivalent and much more rudimentary electronics to amuse me. And yet somehow I emerged with only the garden variety of emotional trauma.

Have we raised our children to be so dependent on interpersonal contact that they can't adjust to standing a few feet apart, not having sleepovers or (heaven forbid) spending time with their own family or reading a book? Are they starting so debilitated as to suffer incredible harm if we tell them to sit outside and a bit away from others instead of in the basement, sprawled out with legs intertwined? Can they not adjust to the new normal of wearing a mask and being aware of their bodies during the day that they must cry themselves to sleep at the loss of I don't even know what?

Some break the rules. Some also break other rules and we come down on them when appropriate in ways that are appropriate because we have these rules to maintain social order and well-being. If that means that a kid can't spend his sabbath afternoon playing basketball with his friends and maybe has to stay inside holding a conversation with a parent, then so be it.

Those who are in that exceptional category and do need to have clinical issues should have them addressed, but that is not the rule, so let's start expecting that our children are less fragile and explain to them that they are doing their part to protect lives.

And if WE can't follow the rules because we find them unfair, illogical or onerous, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when the laws become mandate and absolute. And we are probably the ones who have been poor role models and poor parents so we can't expect any better from our children.