Interesting videos: go, learn something, listen to people who really do think. 

What a relief after grading.

Love this site.  http://www.ted.com/

Explore, watch. :-)

Happy Birthday!

Not my place to give details. Still, CEPT towards Damien down around Melbourne way....
And for his wife, Jazzerat.

(CEPT now. If permitted, rant session later.)

Edit. Jazzerat has posted the explanation in here lj. Here's the link. http://jazzerat.livejournal.com/47535.html

:-(

Robert Asprin

God damn it, he was one of the good ones.  :-(

for yeah, I say unto you, as of this day, my family is debt free

I just paid off the car loan. 2.5 years early. 

(now, don't anybody dare jinks it!)

And / or the final.  Not doing all of the test.  Not making the word minimums on writing assignments.  Not doing all of the assignments, especially the big ones.  Not doing the assignments as set out in the directions.

Lots of ways to fail.  And failure happens.

Really.  It does. It's not a myth; really, it's not.

This isn't high school anymore: there's no more social promotion to keep everyone moving along, just as there's no longer a financial motive to move students along (in K-12, failing a student means the district pays for that student to get an extra year; in college, failing a student just means another semester worth of income because the student pays for it).

So, really, fail to do the work.  Enjoy the results.  Welcome to college. ....

*collapses in exhaustion*

When I went through college, I think the big grammatical sins were split infinitives, confusing "that" and "which" or confusing "affect" and "effect" (depended on the teacher), and spelling.  (Ok, some of that isn't grammar, I know. Work with me here.)

As an English Prof type now, I don't worry about spelling much: they have their computers, I permit a dictionary during tests. Complaining about split infinities has, well, been terminated by an actor's intoning "to boldly go" for far too many years in re-runs.  (Terminator and Star Trek referenced in one sentence; one reference is as a pun so poor I feel the need to point it out.  I really should finish my first cup of coffee before I post.)  "That" and "which" I never really felt helped clarify much, and "affect" and "effect" is just one of many such pairs of terms.  Learn to check the words you use before you use them, blah, blah, blah.  We know the drill.

So, what are the major sins these days?  I'm putting two on the list: misused apostrophes (they don't pluralize, damnit) and misused quotation marks (they don't emphasize, double damnit).

What would you add?

And would you add the sort of intentional misspellings that come up because of text messaging / IM conversations / and such? I suspect I would call that a style sin (and often a very annoying one), but style sins really should be for another post.

Edit: I would misspell a word.  Thanks for the correction.  I so need to crash, but I still have more to grade.

PSA: Students who intentionally cheat infuriate me.  I can't prove it, because the papers used aren't from the free websites and Turnitin hasn't caught the content of the paid sites yet. 

I've spent hours this week looking for the original papers. No dice.

But when a student is that stupid in class, he / she can not be that smart on paper.  Just not possible.

*growl*

I ain't dead yet...


;-)

The cake is not a lie.  It will be moist and delicious.

I'm teaching Introduction to Cinema this summer: just found out.

I also just read the course description.  I need 2-4 Indie / Art House movies.

Suggestions?

(I need other movies, but the Indie / Art House ones are my weak suit.)

Well, yeah, like that's going to work.  Seriously, a day away isn't going to inspire change, in my not so humble opinion. And how is a day away going to communicate any specific concerns? If you really are angry, head off for insane journal (yeah open source software), or to some other service, and don't come back.  Though leaving in droves isn't going to help lj get better.

If you really want to make lj better, create a online petition with plans for follow-through, recommended solutions, and statements of consequences if certain basic needs are not met.  Or actually have representatives of the lj customer base insist on meeting with the upper management to negotiate solutions.

Normally I would not have posted today--I'm heading to Chicago for a treat, thanks to ded_guy.  But I didn't want my journal to seem to be participating in what I believe is a knee-jerk, insufficiently thoughtful, and unproductive process.

Please.  LJ needs to prepare a communications plan, based on a solid organizational change strategy, to avoid infuriating the customer base.

I fear that lj is like much of the technology industry, run and staffed nearly completely by technology experts. Technology experts are great, but they are not communications and organizational change management experts.  And technology experts make the sorts of mistakes that lj makes time and again, because they don't have the depth of knowledge and the skills needed to not make those mistakes.

In other words, Geeks can not do it all: there are times when you really do need a people person or two.  I like lj, but it's killing itself slowly because of the communications and organizational change failures.  So I'm getting really angry at lj's management.  Don't kill off lj!

Sometimes I wish I could create a new political party, one that is based on care.  And before anyone assumes that this party would be touchy feelly, no.

People can't care for other people, for the world around them, in a society without justice.  So to have a caring society, we must first have a just one.

Of course, a just society doesn't mean a police state.  Justice does not have to always come from courts and a prison system: cultures that use shame and praise successfully seem to just need fewer jails. (I don't have the details to support that, but I vaguely remember reading that such can be the case.)

But to have a society of care, one would have to care for what one can care for first: one's self, one's family, one's friends, one's neighbors; one's home, one's neighborhood, one's town.  First we would take care of our own, our infrastructure, both human and physical.  Then as there is wealth built from taking care of one's own, that politics of care would reach out beyond what is close by to what is further away.

Only if we can first take care of our own would we consider helping others to take care of their own;,and such help would be help, as equals.

Such a party would never have invaded Iraq, given that this country was headed for recession and that this country was developing extensive human and physical infrastructure problems   Such a party would help countries closer, then further away.  Mexico, Haiti, and all need help. And if we are in a position to give it, we should look first to our near neighbors.  Only if all is well nearby should we send help halfway around the world.

And what if all people and all countries did this?  Help would come to those who need it, but from those who can nearby.

But in some ways, we are instead caught in the prisoner's dilemma, if I understand that concept correctly.  If we all did this, I think it would work.  And if any one of us broke trust, that one would get advantages, while the rest suffered.  So, why try? 

I just did a clean up on the friends list. If you were removed by accident, please respond here to be added back, with my apologies.

Also, this page is mainly friends only, so if you want on, please ask to be added.

Abend from the channel that must not be named, again, because of ident.

Looking pretty seriously borked this time.  I'm pretty much ready to give up ever going into undernet again.

*hazelnuts you with many happy wishes*

Until the server decides that my lack of ident isn't a problem, I will again be abend from the channel that must not be named.

Hopefully it won't be more than a few days.

I do hate when there's lj drama, just as I hate the excessive drama that can occur in the channel that must not be named.

Apparently someone was rude in one of my friends' lj's.  (It happened when I had a house guest, so I don't know the details.)  And now this person has decided that those of us without her/his phone number/address are not worth the effort.  No more lj.

I've been trying to get a real connection with this person and his/her family for months.  I respect this family, care for them, but we're still only acquaintances.

So I got thrown into the bunch that can "have a good life."

Damn.  I don't even know what triggered this result. 

When will we all just grow up?  Not hurt others, not blame a group for the fault of a person or persons? 

I want the company of grown, interesting, thoughtful adults.

Hi SUP, bye SA.

Much of lj's problems with its user base have been preventable or controllable, but to do so, lj needs plans to be in place before major changes hit that user base.

This time, we heard about the lj ownership change through a push communication (well, sort of, the user still has to decide to check the messages), which is better.  But not good enough, and there's far too little information on the new company easily available.

The information should have been on the portal page, in the messages, and links to information about SUP should have been included. Also, lj isn't necessarily interested in the hype: too much of the message about the change reads like ad copy, not like solid, trust building details.

I need to create a communications plan for lj, and subplans for crisis control, and send them to the new "Russian Overlords."  This barely good enough communications with the users has got to stop.