We got a new coffee grinder yesterday. My wife like to make espresso at home and our old grinder will not grind the coffee fine enough to do that. So the new one showed up, and much to my delight, it's called the Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder. This is an impressive word mashup, and though I'm not sure where to put the emphasis in the name, I'm intrigued by the whole infinite aspect of it.
Does that mean that it can grind the beans infinitely small? What would that even look like? Would I be able to see it when I spill it on the floor. Do I need infinitely smaller holes in the brewer to keep the grounds from seeping through into the coffee? I'm dubious, because the grind selector merely twists to allow you to select from "Coarse" to "Very Fine." With a name like Infinity, it would seem like you ought to be able keep turning it in either direction for as long as you wanted, forever even.
I decided to look in the instructions for clues, but as usual, none were to be found. I gotta say, not even the warnings we very dire or (therefore) interesting. It seems like the less dangerous the product, the more drastic the warnings. Maybe because to do dangerous things with something that's not inherently hazardous requires more energy and creativity and with as a result be more potentially catastrophic.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Vet's Day
I spent Sunday night at the University of Pennsylvania. Crash course in Linear Algebra? Dance Performance at Annenberg? Hoops at the Palestra? Trying to pick up sorority girls on Locust Walk? Nope, none of the above. I spent 2 1/2 hours Sunday night, or more accurately Monday morning, at the Veterinary Hospital emergency room, with our ancient Welsh Corgi, Greta.
Dogs are like kids, I suppose. They seldom get sick at say, 10AM on a Tuesday. Nope, shortly before midnight on Sunday, the dog starts upchucking (I must say, I had a pleasingly large choice or words I could have inserted there) dinner, trembling, and looking like she'd prefer to continue the upchucking but no longer had any chuck to up.
It being that time of night, we (me and Ronnie, not me and Greta) had to debate whether or not to take her in to the hospital, but ultimately thought we wouldn't be able to go to bed with her in that condition, so we carried her to the car and drove her down to West Philadelphia. I used to room with a vet student, back in the day, so I know where it is.
We weren't the only ones in the ER, but there were curiously only people there. A nurse came out quickly and took Greta away, I suppose to do triage on her. She said they'd examine her and then the vet would speak to us. We then sat and waited for quite a while, watching, and I am not making this up, Vanilla Ice Goes Amish. It was pretty heartwarming, watching the washed up but good with construction materials former rapper bond with his Amish friends, at one point hustling one of them into wagering and losing his buggy. It's basically a construction makeover show, with a sidelight of the buggy guy pimping out Vanilla Ice's new ride.
As we drifted through this, the nurse came out with a box of (living) cat, which she gave to a woman waiting. Then she came back out holding a small dog, which a waiting couple embraced and then left, crying (the people, not the dog) on their way out.
Eventually it was our turn. The on-call vet went through her whole spiel, recommending that we leave Greta there overnight for observation and then full physical in the morning. her estimate of cost, $2000. As a friend once noted, you can get several new dogs for that. We said we though we'd like to take her home and bring her to her regular vet in the morning, and she said, "Of course, that will be fine." So if that's fine, what's with the keep her overnight for observation thing? Is that some sort of fundraising technique?
So we went home, pushing 3:30 AM at this point. As it turned out, she was fine; she just needs to take antacids. And we thought things would be easier as empty nesters.
Dogs are like kids, I suppose. They seldom get sick at say, 10AM on a Tuesday. Nope, shortly before midnight on Sunday, the dog starts upchucking (I must say, I had a pleasingly large choice or words I could have inserted there) dinner, trembling, and looking like she'd prefer to continue the upchucking but no longer had any chuck to up.
It being that time of night, we (me and Ronnie, not me and Greta) had to debate whether or not to take her in to the hospital, but ultimately thought we wouldn't be able to go to bed with her in that condition, so we carried her to the car and drove her down to West Philadelphia. I used to room with a vet student, back in the day, so I know where it is.
We weren't the only ones in the ER, but there were curiously only people there. A nurse came out quickly and took Greta away, I suppose to do triage on her. She said they'd examine her and then the vet would speak to us. We then sat and waited for quite a while, watching, and I am not making this up, Vanilla Ice Goes Amish. It was pretty heartwarming, watching the washed up but good with construction materials former rapper bond with his Amish friends, at one point hustling one of them into wagering and losing his buggy. It's basically a construction makeover show, with a sidelight of the buggy guy pimping out Vanilla Ice's new ride.
As we drifted through this, the nurse came out with a box of (living) cat, which she gave to a woman waiting. Then she came back out holding a small dog, which a waiting couple embraced and then left, crying (the people, not the dog) on their way out.
Eventually it was our turn. The on-call vet went through her whole spiel, recommending that we leave Greta there overnight for observation and then full physical in the morning. her estimate of cost, $2000. As a friend once noted, you can get several new dogs for that. We said we though we'd like to take her home and bring her to her regular vet in the morning, and she said, "Of course, that will be fine." So if that's fine, what's with the keep her overnight for observation thing? Is that some sort of fundraising technique?
So we went home, pushing 3:30 AM at this point. As it turned out, she was fine; she just needs to take antacids. And we thought things would be easier as empty nesters.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Old White Men in Suits and the Unfortunate Suckiness of Things
Discussing different groups of frightening people with my students the other day, I came to the conclusion that Old White Men in Suits were the scariest of all. Unless you are one of those, just ask yourself, do old white men in suits have your best interests at heart? I mean ever?
Unfortunately, I realized that I'd herded most politicians and especially Republican politicians into a neat little group. And even more unfortunately, these people have an inordinate amount of control over our lives, and they certainly do not have our best interests at heart.
The current sad state of publicly owned and run things was set in motion by white man in suit in sheep's clothing Ronald Reagan, who famously stated the government isn't the solution, government is the problem. I agree that the government is nothing but trouble in some instances, but it can be extremely helpful in others (Social Security, Medicare, roads, etc.) and to lump it all together in the "bad" pile is flat out wrong. It has also started a push by these men for a whole bunch of things that have made our lives worse.
It's hard to settle on one example, but to pick one that's easy to oversimplify for narrative purposes, let's talk about the Post Office. The Post Office has never been a shining beacon of high performance anyway, but for the last couple of decades it's being slowly starved to death. Here's how it works:
1. Politicians, again, this is particularly Republicans, though some Democrats go along, state that the Post Office, being part of the government, is bad.
2. Because the goal of Republicans is to prove that government can't do anything right, rather than invest money in trying to improve the Post Office, they begin to drain it of money, because who can support funding something that's "bad?"
3. Every year, the Post Office asks for a certain amount of money, including a chunk to improve their facilities and operations. The congressmen in charge of this sort of thing, who get lots of campaign contributions from companies that compete with the Post Office for business, like UPS and FedEx, rather than go along or suggest further improvements, set a funding level maybe close to but somewhat below the minimum level necessary to keep the Post Office healthy and solvent.
4. The Post Office, whose operations are constrained by these congressmen as well (for example, can't raise prices, have to deliver junk mail on Saturday, and do other things that lose money), have no choice but to limit the quality of service they deliver. Shorter hours, few people at the service window, anything they can control to cut costs.
5. Service gradually gets worse, and they continue to lose money. The congressional funders say "We can't be giving full support to an organization that can't balance it's budget," ignoring the fact that they set up the budget parameters in a way that guaranteed failure. So they cut the budget more, and so on. The Post Office continues to decline, to this day.
There are plenty of other examples of this- Amtrak, public schools, public transit, roads and bridges, municipal services like sanitation. The hope for these people is that these government services simply shrink up and die. It's systematic, and they've been working at it for years and are very good at it. So they've won the battle for the past 25 years. But the war isn't over yet.
We still have the opportunity to throw these guys out on the street and elect people who are committed to having the government do the part of its job that's to the direct benefit of the population at large, rather than the big money campaign contributors. It's going to be a long fight, but it's worth it for anyone not satisfied with the current suckiness of things.
Unfortunately, I realized that I'd herded most politicians and especially Republican politicians into a neat little group. And even more unfortunately, these people have an inordinate amount of control over our lives, and they certainly do not have our best interests at heart.
The current sad state of publicly owned and run things was set in motion by white man in suit in sheep's clothing Ronald Reagan, who famously stated the government isn't the solution, government is the problem. I agree that the government is nothing but trouble in some instances, but it can be extremely helpful in others (Social Security, Medicare, roads, etc.) and to lump it all together in the "bad" pile is flat out wrong. It has also started a push by these men for a whole bunch of things that have made our lives worse.
It's hard to settle on one example, but to pick one that's easy to oversimplify for narrative purposes, let's talk about the Post Office. The Post Office has never been a shining beacon of high performance anyway, but for the last couple of decades it's being slowly starved to death. Here's how it works:
1. Politicians, again, this is particularly Republicans, though some Democrats go along, state that the Post Office, being part of the government, is bad.
2. Because the goal of Republicans is to prove that government can't do anything right, rather than invest money in trying to improve the Post Office, they begin to drain it of money, because who can support funding something that's "bad?"
3. Every year, the Post Office asks for a certain amount of money, including a chunk to improve their facilities and operations. The congressmen in charge of this sort of thing, who get lots of campaign contributions from companies that compete with the Post Office for business, like UPS and FedEx, rather than go along or suggest further improvements, set a funding level maybe close to but somewhat below the minimum level necessary to keep the Post Office healthy and solvent.
4. The Post Office, whose operations are constrained by these congressmen as well (for example, can't raise prices, have to deliver junk mail on Saturday, and do other things that lose money), have no choice but to limit the quality of service they deliver. Shorter hours, few people at the service window, anything they can control to cut costs.
5. Service gradually gets worse, and they continue to lose money. The congressional funders say "We can't be giving full support to an organization that can't balance it's budget," ignoring the fact that they set up the budget parameters in a way that guaranteed failure. So they cut the budget more, and so on. The Post Office continues to decline, to this day.
There are plenty of other examples of this- Amtrak, public schools, public transit, roads and bridges, municipal services like sanitation. The hope for these people is that these government services simply shrink up and die. It's systematic, and they've been working at it for years and are very good at it. So they've won the battle for the past 25 years. But the war isn't over yet.
We still have the opportunity to throw these guys out on the street and elect people who are committed to having the government do the part of its job that's to the direct benefit of the population at large, rather than the big money campaign contributors. It's going to be a long fight, but it's worth it for anyone not satisfied with the current suckiness of things.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Bully for you
Before I seriously discuss this, how awesome is it that the guy's name is Incognito? Honestly, I don't follow football that closely, and for at least a week I thought they were concealing someone's name.
Anyway, we seem to be entering the "he said, she said" phase of this, where Martin's side is contrasted to Incognito's side. With all due respect to those weighing the conflicting statements, calling this stupid is an insult to stupid people. Asking Incognito if he was really bullying Martin is like asking the head of Aryan Nation if he's a racist. "Of course not," he's say, "I'm just standing up for the people of my own race." Or something like that. Nobody admits to being a racist or to being a bully for one (or both) of 2 reasons- either because even the aforementioned stupid people know that admitting to being a racist or bully is a bad move, and/or because they don't realize that they are.
Does anyone really think the bully every has a genuine understanding of the feelings of the person he or she is bullying? Or is even attempting to gain and understanding? It's antithetical to the whole bully mentality. You can't take the other people's feelings into account and act like that, unless you're a sociopath, which from my angle doesn't make it look any better from Incognito's perspective. If someone is beating the crap out of someone else (and I mean physically or otherwise), who do you ask if it hurts? The aggressor or the victim? Which one of those two will have a better idea?
As I've noted here before, football is a simple and brutish game. I'm not suggesting that all football players are dumb brutes, but it's not a sport that excludes dumb brutes either. That's fine, but you don't put those guys even unofficially in charge, as it seems Incognito was with the 'phins.
Anyway, we seem to be entering the "he said, she said" phase of this, where Martin's side is contrasted to Incognito's side. With all due respect to those weighing the conflicting statements, calling this stupid is an insult to stupid people. Asking Incognito if he was really bullying Martin is like asking the head of Aryan Nation if he's a racist. "Of course not," he's say, "I'm just standing up for the people of my own race." Or something like that. Nobody admits to being a racist or to being a bully for one (or both) of 2 reasons- either because even the aforementioned stupid people know that admitting to being a racist or bully is a bad move, and/or because they don't realize that they are.
Does anyone really think the bully every has a genuine understanding of the feelings of the person he or she is bullying? Or is even attempting to gain and understanding? It's antithetical to the whole bully mentality. You can't take the other people's feelings into account and act like that, unless you're a sociopath, which from my angle doesn't make it look any better from Incognito's perspective. If someone is beating the crap out of someone else (and I mean physically or otherwise), who do you ask if it hurts? The aggressor or the victim? Which one of those two will have a better idea?
As I've noted here before, football is a simple and brutish game. I'm not suggesting that all football players are dumb brutes, but it's not a sport that excludes dumb brutes either. That's fine, but you don't put those guys even unofficially in charge, as it seems Incognito was with the 'phins.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Thumbs up for Gravity
We decided to go to the movies on Saturday night. We like movies a lot and used to go often. It's something we got out of the habit of doing when the kids were little and it requires a bit of redirection to get us back and going again.
So we were discussing with some friends maybe going to see Gravity, which we'd originally talked about seeing in Imax. But now we were left with choices of regular movie theaters, which led to a discussion about seeing it in 3D. My friend was saying that he really wanted to see it in 3D, to which I found it necessary to reply, "You know it's not actually 3D, dude."
I'd never seen a 3D movie before. I'd seen people with the stupid glasses, but it just seemed like a gimmick to me. I should say though, that for Gravity, it was very effective. I knew there was lots of explosions and space debris, and I was kind of dreading the prospect of having virtual space junk flying at my head for 2 hours. But it really wasn't like that at all. It was very nuanced and save for one gratuitous moment near the end, it was a complement to the storytelling in an effective way.
The movie itself was great. Totally gripping from beginning to end. I know there have been complaints about how unrealistic it was. Oh my God! A movie with unrealistic stuff going on? Who'd have imagined such at thing!
So we were discussing with some friends maybe going to see Gravity, which we'd originally talked about seeing in Imax. But now we were left with choices of regular movie theaters, which led to a discussion about seeing it in 3D. My friend was saying that he really wanted to see it in 3D, to which I found it necessary to reply, "You know it's not actually 3D, dude."
I'd never seen a 3D movie before. I'd seen people with the stupid glasses, but it just seemed like a gimmick to me. I should say though, that for Gravity, it was very effective. I knew there was lots of explosions and space debris, and I was kind of dreading the prospect of having virtual space junk flying at my head for 2 hours. But it really wasn't like that at all. It was very nuanced and save for one gratuitous moment near the end, it was a complement to the storytelling in an effective way.
The movie itself was great. Totally gripping from beginning to end. I know there have been complaints about how unrealistic it was. Oh my God! A movie with unrealistic stuff going on? Who'd have imagined such at thing!
Friday, November 08, 2013
Sims Brain
Speaking issues, let me touch on the topic of ADD for a moment, before I feel the need to quickly move on to something else.
I've always subscribed to the SIMS theory of humanity. And I say that by virtue of having never actually played The Sims, so if I'm wrong about the details here try to ignore that aspect of it. My understanding is that when you make a person in the Sims, you have 100 points or percent worth of stuff to bestow upon your creation. You can choose to give them superior intelligence, nicer looks, better personality, and maybe some other stuff. But it all has to add up to 100. No person gets more than 100 points of attributes.
In the real world, of course there are some people who get 105 or 110, (or 95 or 90, but we won't talk about them), but for the most part, most of us have more of some things and less of others. You rarely will meet someone with looks, brains, and sparkling personality.
OK, trying to get back on track here. I think that many of the people I deal with in and around the school suffer from ADDOD, of Attention Deficit Disorder Obsession Disorder. What I mean by that is that a certain person may have been diagnosed with ADD and therefore needs some sort of accommodation to get their schoolwork done.
Because I always follow the rules, I always do that for students. But for the most part I think it's hooey. I daresay that most of us could find a competent psychologist who can truthfully diagnose us with some level of ADD, because none of us have perfect attention. Shoot, I wouldn't even want that. I have enough trouble acting human- the last thing I need is a greater ability to shut out the world and focus on something singular. Focus is a human construct that is not necessarily genetically programmed into us. It's to the human consciousness what newspapers are to the distribution of information. It's a phase. It may be a phase that never completely goes away, but it's not an inherent condition that has always and will always be with us.
Yes, of course you need to focus well enough to complete tasks, but what do you mean by enough and what do you mean by complete? I'm not a big fan of putting labels on people or assigning them to groups to be treated in a certain way. All of us have some level of ADD and all of us learn how to cope. The best thing we can do for our kids is to teach them to do this based on our experience and empathy. Medication can help sometimes too, but unless you want to be on meds the rest of your life, you'll need to learn to do without.
Now back to whatever I was doing before.
I've always subscribed to the SIMS theory of humanity. And I say that by virtue of having never actually played The Sims, so if I'm wrong about the details here try to ignore that aspect of it. My understanding is that when you make a person in the Sims, you have 100 points or percent worth of stuff to bestow upon your creation. You can choose to give them superior intelligence, nicer looks, better personality, and maybe some other stuff. But it all has to add up to 100. No person gets more than 100 points of attributes.
In the real world, of course there are some people who get 105 or 110, (or 95 or 90, but we won't talk about them), but for the most part, most of us have more of some things and less of others. You rarely will meet someone with looks, brains, and sparkling personality.
OK, trying to get back on track here. I think that many of the people I deal with in and around the school suffer from ADDOD, of Attention Deficit Disorder Obsession Disorder. What I mean by that is that a certain person may have been diagnosed with ADD and therefore needs some sort of accommodation to get their schoolwork done.
Because I always follow the rules, I always do that for students. But for the most part I think it's hooey. I daresay that most of us could find a competent psychologist who can truthfully diagnose us with some level of ADD, because none of us have perfect attention. Shoot, I wouldn't even want that. I have enough trouble acting human- the last thing I need is a greater ability to shut out the world and focus on something singular. Focus is a human construct that is not necessarily genetically programmed into us. It's to the human consciousness what newspapers are to the distribution of information. It's a phase. It may be a phase that never completely goes away, but it's not an inherent condition that has always and will always be with us.
Yes, of course you need to focus well enough to complete tasks, but what do you mean by enough and what do you mean by complete? I'm not a big fan of putting labels on people or assigning them to groups to be treated in a certain way. All of us have some level of ADD and all of us learn how to cope. The best thing we can do for our kids is to teach them to do this based on our experience and empathy. Medication can help sometimes too, but unless you want to be on meds the rest of your life, you'll need to learn to do without.
Now back to whatever I was doing before.
Issues with issues
As a teacher, I get to hear a lot about every student's individual characteristics. In some cases, I hear about their issues. I know that there are students with issues, but at least in our school the whole thing is in danger of being devalues.
I'll set aside kids saying things like "I had a couple of issues with the homework." I usually reply incredulously to those statements, but the kids don't seem to understand the absurdity of what they're saying. I just want to say "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means," though Mandy Patinkin does it so much better.
I'll set aside kids saying things like "I had a couple of issues with the homework." I usually reply incredulously to those statements, but the kids don't seem to understand the absurdity of what they're saying. I just want to say "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means," though Mandy Patinkin does it so much better.
Epiphany
I've notice that when I don't write anything this blog never gets updated. Gotta do something about that.
Sunday, November 03, 2013
A grand time
It was Grandparents' day at school on Friday. I'd have to say that for the couple of hours that they were around that they completely dominated the goings on.
I had the pleasure of the company of around 10 of these people in my class on Friday. It's an interesting scene. More grandparents than students. Honestly, I was just relieved that for one more year, I was not (or at least I don't think I was) older than the grandparents.
Given the audience, I thought it best to present what you might called a metalessson, where I spent almost as much time talking about what we doing and why we were doing as we spent actually doing anything. This was fine with the kids, as they got to show off what they know and how easily they mastered new things. And it gave the grandparents a chance to get involved in the proceedings.
One of the grandparents was a mathematician, which I, of course, am not. There's nothing wrong with mathematicians, of course, but put one in a middle school math class is putting a cat among the pigeons. They simply can't help but show off. Some of the students came to the board to work problems and he went up with his granddaughter and helped her. He also felt the urge to amplify things from time to time. I hadn't really noticed, but it became evident that this was beginning to grate on the other grandparents. Had I been paying attention, I would have tried to spur this on, of course, because what could be more fun than a little grandspat action? See 'em mix it up a bit? But all we got were some longwinded explanations of things followed by clipped rejoinders saying the same thing in a short, clear phrase.
All in all, a grandparent visit looks like fun. I look forward to having the opportunity to disrupt my grandkids' class some day.
I had the pleasure of the company of around 10 of these people in my class on Friday. It's an interesting scene. More grandparents than students. Honestly, I was just relieved that for one more year, I was not (or at least I don't think I was) older than the grandparents.
Given the audience, I thought it best to present what you might called a metalessson, where I spent almost as much time talking about what we doing and why we were doing as we spent actually doing anything. This was fine with the kids, as they got to show off what they know and how easily they mastered new things. And it gave the grandparents a chance to get involved in the proceedings.
One of the grandparents was a mathematician, which I, of course, am not. There's nothing wrong with mathematicians, of course, but put one in a middle school math class is putting a cat among the pigeons. They simply can't help but show off. Some of the students came to the board to work problems and he went up with his granddaughter and helped her. He also felt the urge to amplify things from time to time. I hadn't really noticed, but it became evident that this was beginning to grate on the other grandparents. Had I been paying attention, I would have tried to spur this on, of course, because what could be more fun than a little grandspat action? See 'em mix it up a bit? But all we got were some longwinded explanations of things followed by clipped rejoinders saying the same thing in a short, clear phrase.
All in all, a grandparent visit looks like fun. I look forward to having the opportunity to disrupt my grandkids' class some day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)