otoh

Is This Thing On?

I’m dealing with some technical difficulties. Hope to have them all worked out soon. Be well!

Body-Part-Verbing

I am on my feet a lot when I teach, moving around the room, answering questions [or not -- read the instructions!], giving advice and demonstrations. This week we’re giving final exams. The last ones are tomorrow. It’s going reasonably well so far. My two least well-behaved classes had their tests on Monday. [Buh-Bye....]

Anyway, I’m on my feet while kids are taking their exams, too, but to keep from being a distraction I usually stand at the back of the room. I walk around a little to monitor their progress and pick up their work when it’s finished. This feels more tiring than teaching. Sometimes I doodle to keep from getting bored.

Yesterday I wrote this:

mind-numbing

Because, seriously, my brain was on situational Procaine*.

I’d rather, I thought, be doing something mind-blowing. To some of my students, though, the test is probably nerve-wracking. Maybe even stomach-churning. [Is that better, worse, or the same as gut-wrenching?] I had an eye-popping list started by this point. Not exactly spine-tingling excitement, but it was keeping me from taking a bone-jarring header into a concrete wall.

And that kept me entertained for a while. Until I saw some of the scores. That was heart-rending.

*On two different sources that I checked “Novocaine” redirects to “Procaine.” I never knew….

Or You Could Just Keep Pressing F5 - part sixteen

It has been almost exactly a year since I’ve done one of these posts — listing some of the quotes that appear up there in the header. I do not lack ideas for posts lately, just the energy to follow through and complete them.

Anyway, here is the next group of quotes:

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice. ~ Robert Smith Surtees

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth–more than ruin–more even than death. ~ Bertrand Russell

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill

Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries. ~ Richard Wagner

I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man. ~ Bob Dylan, when asked if he thought of himself more as a singer or a poet

Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. ~ Michael Chabon

If anyone asks why I write gloomy novels, they need only know that my father came from the South and my mother from the North. ~ William Trevor

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t. ~ Theodore Roethke

We love those who know the worst of us and don’t turn their faces away. ~ Walker Percy

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful. ~ Marilyn Monroe

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball. ~ Deborah Tannen

I have had just about all I can take of myself. ~ S.N. Behrman

That’s how politics works. The best liar wins. As long as our choices are limited to liars, we’ll keep electing them and wondering what went wrong. ~ Scott Adams

The life of the creative man is led, directed, and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. ~ Saul Steinberg

We [humans] are the species that clamors to be lied to. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~ Blaise Pascal

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. ~ Helen Keller

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do. ~ Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes”

Youth is given; age is achieved. ~ May Swenson

There’s no such thing as a born writer. It’s a skill you’ve got to learn, just like learning how to be a bricklayer or a carpenter. ~ Larry Brown

Usually I link to all the old posts. But, you know what? There’s a search box up there and it works. If you want to see the earlier installments you can look them up. [Just using "f5" as the search term should bring up all of them and at least one photo post. You're welcome.]

Cue Balls: Head Shots, Part II

Building on a comment to my post about movies with gorgeous bald women, here’s another triple feature film fest this time featuring bald men. [I will leave it to the women to determine whether these are gorgeous bald men....]

Since unowhat requested Jean-Luc Picard [the character] and not Patrick Stewart [the actor], we’ll start with Star Trek: First Contact.

Then we’ll see Ben Kingsley in Searching for Bobby Fischer, because we can be geeky without being sci-fi and this film never got the respect it deserved.

Finally, we can’t go wrong [smirk if you know the tagline] with Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger in Westworld, because we can be geeky and sci-fi and wild west and 70s retro all at once.

I was going to have Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman on this list, but it turns out he wore a skullcap and didn’t shave his head. I think I need more popcorn…..

Betty, Mary Ann, and Bailey

Everything happens in threees. I think.

The WGN America cable station is running episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati as part of its Outta Sight Retro Night Sunday lineup. In some of the promos they went on the streets to ask, “Bailey or Jennifer?”

They referenced the much older pop-culture question, “Ginger or Mary Ann?”

I remember thinking, “I wish I could think of the third part to this so I can write about it.” It completely eluded me though. Until, that is, Dogs and Jeans jogged my memory by announcing that Archie has finally made his choice between Betty and Veronica. [I knew there had to be a third!]

And [as if I really had a choice] all of these were easy decisions for me.

Spiders and Snakes

This critter was on my patio recently.

It’s not a great photo and I didn’t want to get any closer than I needed to with a long lens. From what I can tell from this fuzzy shot and an online search, I think this is an orchard orb weaver. Not that it matters. I’m glad that spiders eat insects. In central Florida we have plenty for them to eat. But spiders? Kinda creepy if you ask me. And walking through a cobweb? Ick! As long as spiders stay away from me and don’t block my path with their webs, I leave them alone.

The other day while mowing the lawn I saw a black snake slithering in the grass a few feet away. [I don't carry a camera while doing yard work, so no photo.] It [I am forever grateful] quickly headed away from where I was cutting. I have seen brown striped snakes more often in my yard here. [Twice, when I let the grass get way too long I saw pieces of brown striped snakes when they didn't retreat from the blades quickly enough. Sorry about that.] I appreciate the role snakes play in nature. The snakes around here eat rodents and other small critters. They don’t bother people if we don’t bother them. And I try not to. Really. Because snakes? They totally creep me out. No matter how far away we stay from each other. If I can see them, I’m getting the willies. Even though that black snake probably left my yard immediately, I started imagining it was over there in the taller grass waiting for me. Or hiding in the shed where I would have to put the lawn mower. They are crafty little devils.

Head Shots

The movie G.I. Jane was on TV the other day. As I flipped through channels I happened to catch the scene where Demi cuts off all her hair.

That reminded me of the scene in V for Vendetta where [the always yummy] Natalie Portman gets shorn.

Since everything happens in threees, I had to recall the character Lt. Ilia [played by Persis Khambatta] in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Her head was shaved before filming began, but according to IMDB, “At first, she shed tears over the haircut, but smiled after the finishing powder was applied to her scalp and her facial features were more defined by Fred Philips.”

Anyone up for a triple feature film fest featuring gorgeous bald women?

Nine Circles

Ms. Cornelius over at A Shrewdness of Apes has written “When teaching school is like… a divine comedy.” It’s way better than anything I have today. Go on over and take a look.

YoS

What one of my colleagues refers to as the Year of Suck, an especially difficult and frustrating school year, is coming to a close. Senior exams are finished and graduation is tomorrow Doh! — graduation is next Friday. See how tired I am? [for most of them]. We have another week with underclassmen before their final exams begin. Trying to keep them focused and on task is rather like herding [big, obnoxious, self-centered, rude] cats [with an exaggerated sense of importance and entitlement (but I'm not bitter)]. I am SO ready for this year to be over, but I refuse to give in to the temptation stop teaching and coast for the last few days.

But… I’m just so damn tired.

Days of Future Past

I’ve been on a bit of a non-fiction reading streak lately. I recently finished Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. I like it, but I don’t love it. [It was here, though, that I read about unmitigated bovine fascination. You may wonder what that could possibly have to do with scientific study of the afterlife. I would if I hadn't read the book. smirk.] I do love though that it reminded me that I had planned to write about A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, a book that I’ve read a couple times so far and that I do love. This book is a fairly comprehensive and humorous overview of what we know (and a great deal that, surprisingly, we don’t know) written for non-scientists by a non-scientist. I like the historical perspective on scientific inquiry and how what we think we know changes over time. I like the anecdotes about the people doing the inquiring. I like that he does a fairly good job of putting complex topics in relatively simple terms and tying it all together. Most of all, I share his curiosity and I appreciate the breadth and depth of his research.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Mary Roach approaches serious subjects with humor. Some readers will, I think, find this a little off-putting in this case. Beliefs about the afterlife may not stand up to scientific scrutiny; perhaps they should not have to. Given that, Roach presents a fairly broad, if not especially deep, overview of the many facets of our search for an answer to the question, “What comes next?”


View all my reviews.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love this book. I first read it a couple years ago (and re-read it last fall). I think Bryson is best known as a travel writer and he brings humor to everything of his that I’ve read. Here he writes about science from the perspective of an interested non-scientist. I think this makes it a really good book for people that may not have a strong science background. It’s packed full of scientific facts and history wrapped in the foibles of the all-too-human scientists. Bryson puts complex topics in relatively simple terms and frequently points how how much we still don’t know about the world in which we live.


View all my reviews.