*twitch*

First exam time.

Two scenes from an exam:

1. Student asks me, "Do you want me to be more specific on this question?" I had written "State an example of an acid." S/he had written, "Acid." Um, yeah. I would like you to be more specific.

2. Student hands in test and s/he says to me, "You didn't say THIS TOPIC would be on the exam" pointing to one of the questions. I said that yes, in fact, I had noted that it would be, right at the start of class the previous day. (I REMEMBER THAT). Student huffs and grumps his/her way out of the room. Really? This kind of grade grubbing is starting this early? And anyway, when did it happen that I have to explicitly list everything that's going to be on the exam? Back in my day, if it happened in class, it could show up in the exam. (Sort of a reverse "What happens in Vegas...")

It's too damn early in the semester for me to be this fatigued.

It happened again.

This is one of the things that makes me craziest.

In my town, a guy (I'm not gonna call him a "man") was arrested for allegedly molesting one of his girlfriend's kids. The police have put out a request that anyone else who might have had "contact" with him to come forward (allegedly, there are up to 7 kids he's abused).

There's a lot of culpability to go around. The child-molestor, of course, is the primary guilty party. (I wonder: are there people out there who have desires they know are wrong, they know they should not act upon, who DON'T act upon them? And what do they do? Avoid being around kids? Get treatment? But surely there are people with self control....I know there have been men I have been attracted to, where as soon as I found out they were married, I was like, "Okay, that's a big No-Fly Zone right there" and I took steps never to be alone with him, to only socialize with him when his wife was also present.)

Anyway. The primary blame falls on the molestor, but what about the mom? This is something I don't get. When you're a parent, isn't the safety of your kids supposed to be paramount? Aren't they your first priority?

There have been so many cases here of "mom's boyfriend" abusing (physically, emotionally, or sexually) her kids....in a few cases a kid even died. I wonder - are there women who are so desperate to have a man around that they will be willing to put their kids in harm's way just for a bit of fun? I've read about how hard it is for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, but is it also that hard to avoid getting into one in the first place?

Is it really that necessary to have a man in your lie that you're willing to let some guy into your home that you know so little about, that you're not 100% sure he's safe with your kids before you let him share your bed?

I mean - I won't go out on a second date with a guy if he's rude to the waitress and drives like he has a chip on his shoulder. I just don't want to deal with it - being alone, as much as society tells you you're a loser for that, is better than being with a guy with an anger problem or who could get abusive.

It just makes me so sad. It's such a waste. Probably the molestor will go to prison, he might meet the fate that I hear child molestors tend to meet there, but that makes no difference, really - he already stole something from those kids that can never be put back, he damaged them in a way that's very hard to overcome even with good counseling and lots of hard work.

I'm generally not an enormous fan of the death penalty, for both practical and philosophical reasons, but if we're gonna have a death penalty, I wouldn't have too much trouble including "serial child molestor" within those who are eligible for it.

"Molly"

I have no idea if this is an actual growing tragedy*, or whether it's something ginned up by the news media right now.

There's a new form of Ecstasy out there, they are allegedly calling it "Molly." There have apparently been a couple overdoses, and at least one death, among teens in the area where I live. There have been a few violent acts committed, beatings and stuff, and it's alleged the perpetrators were high on the stuff at the time. (Though I thought Ecstasy didn't generally make people violent....)

And you know? While I feel for the parents who are grieving their child, my overwhelming feeling is this: If you take illicit drugs, ESPECIALLY drugs cooked up in God-knows-what back room, you're an idiot. You're playing Russian Roulette with your life.

For one thing: I have seen how our Chemistry and Biology majors make solutions or compounds in class. Now, these are smart kids. They have experience in a chem lab. And still, sometimes they screw it up. What about the person who might have no chemistry background (Breaking Bad notwithstanding) cooking up drugs in a hotel room, or in the back of a car, or who knows where? Someone who might themselves be high or be coming off a high?

And that's even assuming the manufacturer or the seller is ethical and isn't intentionally putting other stuff in the drug, or cutting it with things that might be toxic. (I have a relative who is a forensic chemist. She's told me horror stories of people being taken into morgues with the needle still in their arm from bad heroin - that's how fast it kills. And she's told me horror stories of the stuff that coke is "cut" with)

I'm not going to get into the "legalize it and regulate it" argument. I know the reasons given for that and some of those are good reasons. However, I also suspect that legalizing drugs would (a) not affect the black market in them greatly and (b) it might lead to certain idiots getting addicted, because "If the government allows it, it must be okay" and then (c) those addicts demanding SSI disability or whatever, because addicts can't hold down a good job. (I have seen statistics predicting either no change, or a rise in the number of addicts under a legalization scenario. I don't know which one's correct but I'm not sure I'm wanting to gamble on it)

But as I said: if you're buying mystery chemicals off of some guy at a party, with the intention of getting high, you're an idiot. There's a good chance you will die, either right away because of an OD or poisoning, or later, because of chronic problems brought on by screwing with your body's chemistry in unpredictable ways. I realize I was in some ways an unusually mature teenager but I knew that fact when I was like, 12. And as a result, I avoided situations where drugs were being used, just because I didn't want to be around that junk.

I suppose if you don't have much of a life, and much promise ahead of you, you maybe don't care whether you live or die, and that's part of the problem. I don't know what to do in the cases of kids who are just stuck in bad situations and don't see any way out other than becoming the drug dealer or meth cook or something. I don't know how we can reduce demand for drugs, which is what I think it would take to cut into the problems with gangs and meth labs and everything else. I mean, short of mandatory death sentences for dealers and cooks and importers and stuff, which I'm not sure would do anything more than raise the stakes and make the drug violence worse.

It's a problem I don't see a way out of, unfortunately. It's a problem we've had for a long time....apparently enough people find reality sufficiently distasteful that they're willing to risk their health to escape it via chemical means. And the cost is, in some ways, paid by those of us who have no desire to use that chemical means....the violence, the degradation of public areas (there is one park in my town that is unusable, because of the syringes that are found there), the folks who wind up in the ER because of an overdose or bad drugs or whatever and can't pay their own way, the houses that blow up because of inexperienced meth cooks.....


(*Yes, of course, if your kid dies of it, it's a tragedy for that family. However, I think a fault in our news media currently is to take individual stories and milk them for all they're worth - on the one hand, manipulating the emotions of the viewers, generating outrage when none might be really necessary, and also, stripping the grieving family of a certain amount of privacy and dignity)

I'm glad it's not my job

I'm glad it's not my job to decide what to do about Syria.

On one hand, I find it sickening and repulsive to hear news stories, like the one this morning, that stated a napalm attack had been leveled on a school. I hate the thought of poison gas - stuff that is forbidden under pretty much all the UN conventions that civilized world leaders follow - has been used against innocent citizens.

On the other hand - I'm not convinced that taking out Assad is going to do anything but lead to his being replaced by someone even worse. It seems like a lot of the Middle Eastern countries are on the brink of something really bad, and I don't see a good way (either diplomatic or military) of preventing that.

I also heard that Israelis are being told to keep their gas masks handy. I mean, I know they do a lot of the time, but still, that's chilling to think about. It takes a level of guts that most Americans can't imagine to be able to go about your daily life with the knowledge that you might be bombed or might be gassed in the back of your head.

The world's a very screwed up place. I'm not sure if it's any more screwed up than it used to be or if we're just hearing about it more.

Dear students:

Please, please, RTDD. (read the damn directions). They are not that unclear.

If I give an instruction and the entire class cannot follow it, or more than half the class cannot, I probably donked up and didn't give good instructions.

But when 90% of the class manages without any further explanation from me, and one person can't follow the directions correctly - I probably DIDN'T donk up, it's probably you.

Wow, entitlement.

So, I am needing to teach one of my classes this fall as a "hybrid" (it's a long story, but blame the idiots who can't pull their own weight for making stuff harder for the rest of us. And this may be the last time I do an 'arranged' class).

Anyway, "hybrid," for those outside the seething pits of academe, means part of the time the class meets online (as a series of discussions on a moderated board - and whoopee, guess who gets to moderate! This girl!) and part of the time, we meet in person. (I'm really hoping everyone has the same hour out of the week free, so I don't have to carve out three or more separate meeting times when we need to meet).

Anyway, as I had never made discussion boards in BlackBoard before, I wanted to go and learn rather than blundering around myself and maybe breaking it. So I made an appointment with the person in charge of all this stuff.

I arrived a little early. She motioned me into the classroom area (she was in her office, which has windows out into the classroom). She was on the phone with someone. Guiding them through something. Apparently it was something difficult, the woman kept trying to tell the person what to click on and apparently was being told, "No, that page isn't there!". Finally, she said, "Oh. Well. If you changed your name you need to log in under that name." And then, "No. We don't keep separate accounts for you under both your names. No, I'm sorry, we can't do that. Just log in under the official name you go by now. Does that work? Okay. You're welcome."

(it wound up in her being a few minutes late for our meeting, but no big deal - that was the last thing I needed to do today).

She shook her head as she was coming out. "This person couldn't log in because her name changed and she thought she could log in under her old name."

I looked at her, baffled: "But don't you specifically have to request if you want your name officially changed? Didn't she know her name was changed?"

"Oh, yes, and she did request it. But she thought we'd keep separate accounts for her under both names so she could log in with whichever one she felt like using."

Wait, what? First you send in a form to change your name, and then you get all upset when your old name is no longer accessible? Because, I don't know, we have enough storage space and worker-bees to keep track of everyone having multiple accounts? And okay, I get that maybe some marriages don't work out and you want to get rid of the guy's name as fast as you can.....but wouldn't you realize you had to file another change form, if that were the case?

I'd hate being a computer help-desk person; I'd probably blow up at someone on the first day and lose my job. I feel for them, the crazy stuff they have to deal with.

(Also, IF I ever were to marry? I might change my name "socially" but I think I'd keep my maiden name on campus; it seems like an effort to go around to all the offices and change stuff. And then I'd have to remember to log in under my new name, which might be HARD, har de har har)

That said? The stuff I had to learn was surprisingly quick and easy and I probably could have figured it out on my own but maybe I learned more quickly with an expert to help me.

First week's done

First week of the semester is in the can (as movie lingo goes). Mostly good, it seems a critical mass of my incoming freshmen this fall had The Fear Of God put in them somewhere along the line, so they have been polite. (As in: during a slack time in lab, a young woman puts up her hand. I go over to see what's up and she whispers, "Is it okay if I leave to use the restroom?" Yes, it is, of course.) I had a young man ask me, "Are we going to need the textbook every day?" And I chuckled and said no, I'd give page numbers for stuff they needed to refer to, because the textbooks are awfully heavy (seriously, they must be 10 pounds) and I'd rather they not have to carry them around with them.

I actually would rather answer the respectful-scared questions in a reassuring way (I am always reassuring to scared freshpeople) than have people assume stuff...I once had a student walk into my class AS I WAS GOING OVER THE SYLLABUS ON THE FIRST DAY, stop me cold, and demand to know where a certain room was. Okay, number one: you don't just waltz into a class and stop the prof. Number two, you don't interrupt. (And I will observe: on some campuses, walking in to a classroom uninvited when you are clearly not part of the class may well get you tackled, pinned down, and searched for weapons, these days)

Once they left, I looked out at the class and they all had "What the Hell just happened" expressions, too.

But this semester's crop, I'm hopeful about. (I'm always hopeful). I also have a mostly-three-day-a-week schedule. (Three days of lecture plus lab, and Thursday I just have one lab, Tuesday I don't have any classes, which gives me a good break to work on longer-term stuff like research or revamping class material).

In my prayers....

The Christians (and other "minority religionists" who were mostly minding their own business)  in Egypt. I was busy over the weekend and yesterday and hadn't kept up with the news, but wow, it looks ugly,ugly, ugly for Christians and other "minority" religions right now. I don't know what we can do about it. My first, knee jerk thought: send a bunch of planes over there, tell all the adherents of "minority religions" that if they are willing to sign a document denouncing violent acts, they will be granted asylum here. But I also realize that wouldn't work.

I really hate the strain in Islam that says "convert or die." I'm perfectly okay with the varieties of Islam that say "I'm going to live my own life according to my conscience BUT AT THE SAME TIME follow the laws of my country" (because some of the strict interpretations in the Islamist group run counter to some of our freedoms, and I so do not want to see the freedoms of the US compromised in the name of multiculturalism) but I'm not okay with the branch that advocates things like honor-killings and repression of women and other groups and who want to make the whole world Islamic.

I know, I know: Christianity went through something like this a bit more than a thousand years ago and we mostly got it out of our systems and I admit on good days I hold out hope that a more moderate and sane belief system will displace the violence-advocating one in Islam.

But right now it's really ugly and the worst sides of humanity seem to be showing.

Seems about right:

(From one of the many Cheezburger sites, where I go while taking research breaks)

This can't end well

The previous policy in re: disability accommodations on my campus was this:

The office of disability concerns sends a letter out to the instructor, usually a few days before classes start, informing him or her of the accommodations a student is entitled to.

It worked pretty well. By getting it a few days in advance we knew what to prepare for: for example, a couple semesters I had students who had had back surgery or who had been in car accidents and for whom it was difficult and uncomfortable to use the standard classroom chairs, so we could arrange for an alternate chair. (Disability Concerns would bring them over and then pick them up at the end of the semester). Also, we were mentally prepared: is there going to be someone requiring a note-taker? Is there someone with low vision, for whom you might have to change how you teach?

The new model, to reflect that Disability Concerns has been downsized*, is that the STUDENT gets the letter and then brings it to us the first day of class, and then we get to make arrangements. Yay. (What about faculty like me - or faculty who might actually be on the Autism spectrum (it's possible) who have big problems with stuff bring sprung on them? I mean, I'm not in any way autistic but I LOATHE being told "you need to make this change" at the last minute and it really throws me off my game. So much better to know and be able to take care of things a couple days in advance).

But I have a bigger issue about laying the onus on the student to bring the letter in. First of all: do they get one letter only, so I have to look at it, remember what I need to do, and then hand the letter back? So now in addition to remembering to send an exam needing more time over 48 hours in advance (it used to be 24), now I have to be sure to remember who I have to do that for?

But the bigger issue is this: it's totally on them to show us the letter. If they don't show us the letter, we don't know we have to accommodate them. And that can, I suspect, lead to all kinds of bad things. I realize I'm paranoid here, but I was burned one semester by a student. I don't know if he was really less with-it than I thought (for example: he missed lab one day and came and demanded a make-up lab. When I told him I couldn't do a make-up lab, he remarked, "I have a very bad sense of time. I forgot to set the alarm on my phone so nothing reminded me it was time to go to lab." Um, that's not my fault? But I went through the rigamarole of allowing him to make up the lab (thank God it was one he could do on his own time) because I didn't want to run afoul of Disability Concerns). Or maybe he was gaslighting me - on several occasions he claimed I was not present for appointments he had made to see me. And the time he quoted for the appointment was a time I was actually in class and NOT THE TIME I MADE THE APPOINTMENT FOR. And he went to one of the administrators with that story and I had to try to explain myself.

So I'm paranoid: what if someone either forgets to bring in the letter and then gets embarrassed that they did, and figures it's better to throw the instructor under the bus than to fess up to their mistake, or what if they out-and-out decide NOT to bring the letter in so they can cry foul and get all kinds of sympathy? I could see someone going at the end of the semester, "My professor never made my required accommodations!" and the professor going "But I didn't know you deserved them!" and it's all he-said, she-said, because there's no clear evidence of a letter being shown to the prof. (Yes. I asked several of TPTB if there was going to be a receipt we signed to verify that we had seen the accommodation letter. Apparently not. I hope that changes JOLLY fast.). I'm wondering if we'll see instructors or adjuncts let go - or perhaps the few untenured tenure-track people we still have having their tenure and promotions requests affected - because a student didn't bring in their letter and then cried "Foul!"

Yes, I know that's paranoid. But when you're getting calls from a Dean saying, "I hear you weren't in your office when Student X had an appointment with you, and he's not very happy about that," and you WERE in your office, and Student X just never showed.....well, it's easy to BECOME paranoid.

(I will also note: if the person in question really had as bad time-management skills as he claimed: as in, if no one told him "you have to be in place X now" he wouldn't know he had to.....well, he shouldn't be in college. He just shouldn't. I'm sorry. I know that makes me a hater but there's a point where you just have to say "Enough.")

(*As I have said to multiple colleagues: "The ONE bureaucracy on campus that ACTUALLY DOES A GOOD JOB and they cut its budget and take it down to one employee. Smaaaaaart.")

I don't need gum to keep a clean mouth

Coming back here after a lunch at home, I managed to slam my (heavy, wood) front door on the tip of my left ring finger.

Here is an exact transcript of what I said:

"Golly day! Ow! Man-oh-man, that HURTS!"

I guess all my years of being a Youth Group leader have trained me well. (No one else was around, FWIW, so I could have cursed like a sailor if I had wanted).

I did go back in the house and run cold water over it to try to make it stop hurting. I don't think I actually injured it, other than maybe a bruise, but wow, that is one of those things that hurts far, far more than it seems like it should.

Sad

But probably true.

Comment made during a discussion in faculty meetings yesterday: "Because we get so many underprepared students, we have to be even better as professors."

This raises all kinds of issues with rigor vs. retention. Right now, "retention" is a big buzzword on campus and it makes me twitch because frankly, there are some students who just should not be retained in certain programs....if you can't pass basic intro bio after three tries, I think your dream of becoming a neuroscientist probably needs some rethinking.

And: I'll be damned if I make my classes easier just to "retain" someone who might either be lazy and not doing the work, or who genuinely lacks the chops to pass.


Also: is a discussion on academic freedom in the classroom really going to be an open discussion if you have several administrators, including the ones that might be directly involved in disciplining people who step out of line, in the room?

Why are people so damn rude?

This is something I contemplate on a regular basis - perhaps along with a lot of other people whose parents raised them to say "please" and "thank you" and not to talk loudly in a public setting and not to push to the front of a line.

Dave raised this issue in his recent post. The precipitating factor: a story about a person who proposed separate movie theaters for people who wish to text, talk on their cell phones, etc. - so the people who do not wish to do that, and who do not like being disturbed, can have their movie experience the way God (or at least Louis B. Mayer) intended.

And people went nuts about that. As I said in a comment over there, people often get tunnel vision about stuff (I admit, at times I am guilty of it) and they see what they want to see and get OUTRAGED! and it all led up to lots of breath being wasted. Some people thought it was a call for ALL theaters to allow, willy-nilly, every behavior (cats and dogs dancing together! or something like that). Others, including Anil Dash, thought it was jerkish for people to expect that the movie they paid $10 or more to see shouldn't be interrupted by someone telling their boyfriend when to pick them up....

Okay, here's my two cents: If you go out in public and act like being in public is no different from being at home on your sofa, you're a jerk. If you don't consider that there are other people around you who might not appreciate your noise, either your parents did a poor job raising you or you're a jerk.

And if you're in some kind of position of authority - an usher (do theaters even still have ushers?) a store manager, a restaurant manager, and you see someone ruining everyone else's experience, and you do NOTHING, you are spineless. (And yes, I get it: some people are violent jerks. But most jerks aren't, and threatening to throw them out might just shut them up). And if you are spineless, then you deserve for the decent people who don't want to sit through a barrage of loud cell-phone convos while eating dinner at a nice restaurant to leave and never come back.

Some years back, when I was visiting my parents, it was my last night there. We went out to one of the old, established, well-thought-of restaurants in town. We wanted a quiet dinner together. We had the bad luck to get stuck next to a table where a guy who apparently had had some travel problems was sitting - he had called up his secretary (? At 7 pm at night? Not very fair) and was cursing her out. I mean CURSING. Using the m-f word, using the "c" word you should never use to a woman....all because she made a mistake. The waiter walked up to him and said, "Sir, either end your call now or leave. You are disturbing everyone else here." I can't remember if the guy hung up or just left in a huff (I think he just left), but I know my dad doubled the waiter's tip after that bit. But really? How hard is it NOT to say the m-f word in public, even if you're really angry?

But we see this stuff all the time now - so much so that, as I said, the idea of separate "go here to play with your cell phone; go there if you want quiet" theaters seems reasonable. (I would be a lot more prone to go to movies again - well, if my town had a theater, which it does not - if I was reasonably sure of not having people who talk loudly through the film. Otherwise...I have a dvd player and I can sit at home and watch movies in blissful silence - in fact, I can even turn off my phone during them).

But there are other things you can't avoid. I don't have grocery-delivery in my town, so I have to trek out (usually to the Wal-mart, which is the only grocery store of any size within an hour's round trip of me) and deal with people. And you know? I've had people nearly run into me because they were walking the aisles and texting. I've had people push ahead of me in line. I've had to go around people engaged in a massive argument ("Get a room!" should apply to more than amorous displays). I've had kids nearly trip me, or knock over displays, or bang those stupid mini-carts some stores used  to have into my shins, because apparently it's haaaaaaaaard for a parent to encourage their kid to obey at the grocery.

I try to shop early on Saturday mornings so I can avoid the crowds and also the worst of the pushy or loud-rude people. But some days I have to go after school, and I've walked out of there on occasion shaking or angry at humanity or swearing I'd rather just go hungry next time.

And then there's the issue of noise. I use a reel-type lawnmower which makes almost no noise, but when I have to use the noisy edger, I wait until after 10 am on a weekend day, just to be sure I'm not waking anyone in my neighborhood. It's how I was raised. Most of the people in my neighborhood follow rules similar to that - not mowing before 10 am, not mowing after 9 pm or so. Even though it's awfully hot here in the summer and those times might be marginally less hot.

One thing I noticed during my recent visit to family: my parents live in a VERY quiet neighborhood. There are no through-streets (really, it's a good innovation, even if it makes getting places more involved), so no one uses them as a regular route - only the people who live in the neighborhood use them. I live near the corner of a street that is a through street and I regularly get lots of street noise,  even late at night. Boom cars, cars that have been badly tended to (Okay, for some that's an economic issue, but I have also known guys to get muffler cut-outs because they "like" a loud car). 

But what gets me? The guys with the "boom cars." I am not sure what possesses a person to think it's OK to share their particular choice of music, played at volumes sufficient to rattle any sheet metal in the car (for a while, there was a fad to use older-model Cadillacs and similar land-yachts, because apparently they have lots of metal to rattle). And to do that at 11 pm. Or 2 am. Or some damn hour. (Even midafternoon on a Sunday, I find that mildly offensive.)

And I get it: some people DON'T think. I once asked a student who was a former smoker why smokers thought it was okay to drop their butts everywhere, including in park areas, and she shrugged, and said, "I guess I never thought about it. I guess you don't think when you are doing that."

But, it's part of what I see as a coarsening of life: getting awakened at midnight by a booming bass car is just not good. It's not pleasant. It's not a huge thing, but it's one of those small things. And the small nasty things build up: getting stuck in a grocery line behind someone who is going over the details of their recent surgery in a level of detail I don't want to hear; the person who lets their dog run loose and it dookies in my yard; getting awakened in the middle of the night by noise that I consider frankly unnecessary. And it just sucks out some of the goodness of life. I know, it seems like a little thing - but little things build up.

And it feels to me some days like the rude irresponsible people are winning. And it makes me want to become even more of a hermit than I already am. Which means they win even more. Sometimes I wonder if American culture will split, not into Morlocks and Eloi exactly, but into a group that dominates the public square, is loud, is rude, figures that they "own" the public square rather than "sharing" it, and a second group that winds up venturing into public as rarely as possible. (I think part of my fantasies of a cabin somewhere high up in the mountains stems from the "avoiding the jerks in public" desire.)

Why?

Why, for the love of all that's good, do students NOT show up to my office hours with questions or problems during the semester, but the MOMENT the final exam is turned in, they are e-mailing me either begging me for "extra credit" (Oh honey. Oh honey. Don't ask me to do something unethical. And yes, it is unethical to offer one student extra credit that the others don't have the opportunity to receive) or berating me for not teaching them something well enough (I am required by law my admins to hold ten hours of office hours a week. They are so you may meet with me about things you don't understand. Everyone else in the class got the topic; it is not my place to back the truck up to catch up one person who may simply not be paying attention).

I'm just TIRED. I almost snapped at a student during the review session the other day because she kept stopping me and asking me to repeat stuff I had covered five or more minutes previously. This is also someone who would sit in the back of the room - with spaces open on the two front rows - and then yell "I can't read what you are writing on the board!" at me, which would make me sigh, and increase the size of my handwriting.

I mean, it's good to be diligent about stuff, but it's another thing to constantly berate your prof.

(I have three e-mails - in a class of 15 - that are all about extra credit and were all mailed within three hours of the exam being finished. Dammit.)

Gets me right here....

Heard this on the radio this morning. I had to sit down on the foot of my bed and cry for a couple minutes:

Man undergoing chemo films his "father-daughter dance" in case he won't be around for her wedding.

My own father is healthy, but he's closing in on 80, and so every story like that gets to me a little, because like every adult kid that loves their parents, I know some day there will be that phone call that will change everything.

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

"I could have been Trayvon Martin," you said.

REALLY?? REALLY?

Facepalming, forever,

ricki

Arrrgh, it's 6 pm

First off:: Fair enough, Joel. I haven't seen the article (I don't care that much for Rolling Stone) but it seems often our culture has the habit of glorifying that which should not be, so it sounds like they did a better job than I might have hoped.

My last lab of the summer ended. It should have ended at 5:30 but I have two SLOWPOKES who just can't get done on time, and I can't justify turfing them because there's no class after mine in the room. (During the regular semester, they'd be so gone).

But today, they overstayed their welcome by a half hour. So gone are my plans of working out tonight (it was way too humid to this morning) or even mowing my lawn.

I can't really get too angry at them - it's not that they goof off, they're just methodical and SLOW.

But I've been on campus since 7 this morning and I'm tired. And I don't get a weekend this morning because it's prepwork for fall time. So blah. Anyone who believes college profs are lazy bums with too much free time on their hands are welcome to come do my gig for a week and see. I'm lucky if I get 45 minutes of an evening to do what I "want" to do. (Well, unless you count sleeping. If I could get by on five hours of sleep then I could have maybe 2 hours a night. But I can't, so I don't.)

The "Rolling Stone" cover

Some years back, I commented to a friend that pirates, which were once viewed as hateful, murderous scum (And rightly so: some of the accounts I've read of what they even did to one of their own, were he to desert or simply not live up to "the pirate code" are pretty horrific). But now, they've been rehabilitated: they're figures of fun, almost-heroes in movies, romantic. There is even a very small children's show featuring a pirate crew. (Granted, everything's been sanitized even more than what Disney did to Grimm's Fairy Tales - but still: pirates. Who were by definition thieves and killers).

And I remarked: I wonder if in a couple hundred years, what remains of our culture will treat the terrorists of today the same way? If they'll be seen as almost-heroes, as romantic figures, as people living "outside the box" (I think that's part of the attraction of pirates, for some: they don't have a 9 to 5 job, they don't follow the rules of polite society, and somehow that's cool).

Well, I didn't need to wait that long. One of the murderous thugs who tried to cause a mass killing (and succeeded in killing 3 and maiming far more) at the Boston Marathon has been given the Glamour Shots treatment by Rolling Stone.

Granted, Rolling Stone is known for wanting to be "transgressive," I suspect for them, "But it won't play in Peoria" is probably considered high praise. But really, I wonder how Bostonians feel - how people who know someone injured feel - to walk past a newsstand and see that. I admit I growl low in my throat, and I didn't even know anyone injured.

And supposedly the article addresses "How his family failed him"?  Um, how about how HE failed his adopted country - the one that granted his family asylum when they claimed mistreatment at the hands of non-Muslims in their own country?

I don't know. I still feel angry over every stupid teenybopper (or superannuated teenybopper - there are women out of teenybopper age who said this) who claimed he was too "pretty" to be evil. NO. Often evil hides behind a mask of attractiveness, that's how it sucks you in. Stop being stupid.

What do I hope happens to this guy? I hope he is quietly tried, quietly found guilty, and either quietly executed or spends the rest of his live in isolation bored in prison somewhere. That he DOESN'T become any kind of a romantic figure. There's NOTHING romantic about wanting to kill innocent people.

Here's an idea...

They upfront note it's a "gamble," but I think this is an interesting concept:

Oregon to let college-bound choose: pay up-front, or pay over the course of your career. Either students can pay the roughly $25K per year upfront, or they can "mortgage" the first 24 years of their career at 3% of their earnings per year.

It's an interesting concept, though now that I read it, there are some problems:

1. Apparently the IRS would have to administer it. I don't want the IRS involved in more things; I want them involved in fewer things.

2. The higher-earning-potential students will opt to pay up front, so the university system won't "win" off of them - if you're going to be an engineer or architect or lawyer potentially making six figures a year, you're not going to opt for 3% of that to go for half or more of your career. Lower-earning-potential students will opt in, and some will "win" whereas others - say, someone who goes into writing and strikes it big with a couple novels that get optioned by Hollywood - will "lose" and the university system will "win." But I suspect most in the humanities, and many in the so-called "helping professions" (outside of, maybe, nursing) would be money ahead to take the 3% deal.

3. It will probably come back to bite state taxpayers somehow, or else the school will find itself needing to cut corners when it has unexpected shortfalls.

On the other hand, I like the idea of a tuition plan where no student can come back and sue the school because they "aren't making enough money." (There have been a few cases of graduates trying to sue their alma maters, either because said graduates believed they were "guaranteed" a job upon graduation, or that they weren't makign the big bucks the brochures implied they would).

Would it be a reasonable deal for someone like me? As an out-of-state student at a Public Ivy back some 20 years ago, I was probably paying close to $20K a year (Well, *I* wasn't, per se....I was one of those evil trust-fund kids - when my grandparents' estate was sold, the money went into an eduction trust for my brother and me, and we wrote our tuition checks out of that. But $20K seems reasonable including room, cheap board (I ate a lot of beans and rice) and textbooks).

So. I'm making roughly $65K a year (let's not count capital gains on investments, though I'm sure Oregon would like to do that). Three percent of $65K is $1950. So, presuming my entire undergrad costs were on the order of $60K (I graduated in 3 years: APs and taking summer classes at a local commuter community college helped), and assuming my earnings remained constant.....it would take 30.7 years to pay off my cost of education at my current income. (Of course, with experience, ones income goes up, and in some years at least, we've gotten inflation-indexed pay raises).

Of course, if they included everything the IRS likes to look at - capital gains (yes, I do have some investments), interest, dividends, income from stuff like textbook reviewing (it's small, but it's something).....they'd probably get at least their money back out of me, likely more. Of course, at today's prices for Oregon, it would be a little longer for the payoff, but still. (I don't even want to know what a four-year degree at my alma mater would cost these days. If I were doing it again I'd go to a smaller school, possibly a private one, maybe even a church-affiliated one. The culture at my alma mater did not always agree with me.)

I don't think it would work in practice but it's an interesting idea in theory. I also wonder if a university's various committees would be so eager to approve new majors in less-marketable fields (e.g., Peace Studies) if they thought a large number of those majors would opt for the "3% of my income for the next 24 years" option.

My main thought:

Added, later on: To all the people (ESPECIALLY white hipsters) putting on hoodies and declaring "I am Trayvon Martin," stop it. You can sympathize with him and his family. But you - especially if you are from a more-privileged background - are NOT him. This is annoying me.This is not the same thing as walking a mile in someone's shoes; this is co-opting someone else for your own purposes.

Okay, disclaimer: I watched as little of the Zimmerman trial as possible. (Trying to find "other" news of the world in the middle of a "trial of the century number 5" means you wind up seeing some of that trial). So I don't know all the facts. Hell, I suspect that no one, outside of God, really knows all the facts.

But a phrase keeps going through my head: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

I'm willing to accept that Zimmerman acted in self-defense; that seems to be what the jury found. But now, the folks calling for his head, what does that solve? It doesn't make Martin any less dead. It doesn't make two families' lives any less awful now.

And I fail to see what the non-peaceful, property-damaging protests solve - why is burning stuff or breaking the windows of someone who probably never did anything to you an answer? I'm wondering if some of the people are acting that way because they feel like they have been told to act a certain way, or that it's the only way they will see "justice" - to make some other person, someone probably totally uninvolved, to make their life worse. (My minimum goal in life is to not make the lives worse of innocent people around me. It's a pretty small goal.)



Or is it just easier to be angry about this? I don't know. I've been avoiding social media since Saturday night because the frothing on the part of some just gets to me.

For that matter, if we want to be angry about unnecessary deaths, what about all the kids who are dying in Chicago due, mostly, to gang violence? What about the report (I have not been able to substantiate it from what I consider a reliable source, so it may not be true) that a 17 year old kid in Chicago was killed by gang members because he refused to join a gang?

Our society is broken in a lot of ways but it seems that the media wants to focus on only certain ways.Yes, it's awful that Trayvon Martin died. Yes, there were probably things he could have done differently, things Zimmerman could have done differently, maybe even things the local police could have done differently that would have led to a different ending - but that didn't happen. It's sad and unfortunate but I don't think it's the huge indictment of "A Racist America" that some people are playing it up to be. (There is no solid evidence that Zimmerman used a racial slur, for example - if he had been witnessed chasing Martin down the street screaming epithets at him, then I'd say it was definitely a crime in which race played a part. But from what I've seen of the case, that does not seem to be the situation.)

I don't know. This just makes me feel more and more like we're living in a fractured country, where people are being taught to distrust even their neighbors - and while there are genuinely people out there you cannot trust, distrusting and being suspicious of everyone is a bad way to have to live.

I find myself watching less and less news, because I feel like I'm being told what to think, what to feel, what someone else thinks is important - rather than what might actually be important.