To the young people wandering around Casa Free-Ride singing Christmas songs (not just the refrains but all of the verses):
None of the canonical reindeer is named Connor. And Santa does not have a reindeer named Nixon.
Love,
Dr. Free-Ride
P.S. The last batch of cookies will be out of the oven in one minute. But you need to let them cool before you sample them — just like the other batches.
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
The elder Free-Ride offspring breaks into song.
Possibly related to the last post. The lyrics are original.
(For this, you need to imagine the younger Free-Ride offspring humming in the background as the elder sings.)
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
We’re sorry that we killed ya.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
At least we didn’t grill ya.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Our only Christmas casualty.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Be thankful we don’t “nil” ya.
A fleeting idea about health care reform.
The better half and I were trying to decide this morning whether there was a way to follow the progress of “health care reform” in the U.S. Senate without getting really mad or really sad. (Conclusion: It seems logically possible that such a way exists, but we haven’t found it yet.)
The one player that seems likely to get much of what it wants in all this seems to be the insurance industry. Given that the folks working out who gets what are politicians, this does not surprise me.
So it occurred to me that maybe we shouldn’t be trusting politicians to achieve health care reform.
Instead maybe we need to mobilize a generation of new college graduates to get jobs with the health insurance industry and take ’em down from the inside.
Surely our young people are up to the challenge!
Speaking of fairness.
An open letter to the handful of students during today’s exam asking whether I could “explain” the fourth short-answer test item to them:
Dear students,
The question you are pointing to is unambiguously phrased.
The wording of the item is quite clear in asking you to explain what that particular author is arguing about that particular scientific explanation. Indeed, the question you are asking me in anxious whispers indicates that you understand what this test item is asking for, and that what you are asking from me is a hint about the right answer.
That’s not how it works on the final exam.
Fair exam administration to multiple sections.
If my congested head is upright today, I must be administering final exams.
This puts me in mind of a question that has not come up this semester (and, with luck, will not), but that has come up on occasion in the past.
I frequently teach multiple sections of the same course in a given semester. On the one hand, this simplifies things, because it means that I have fewer exams to write. (A single final exam works for both section of Philosophy of Science.) But, since our final exams are scheduled based on the regular meeting days and times for the courses, there are then necessarily multiple sittings of an exam for courses I teach in multiple sections.
In practice, what this means is that the first group of students taking the exam can end up being your beta testers.
Getting neti with it.
One of the sprogs gave me a cold. There is nothing like being knocked on your butt by a cold to take all of the fun out of a weekend spent not-grading research projects.
Also, it seems to have filled my head with phlegm that then got … phlegmatic. Not quite congealed, but on its way in that direction. Desperate for relief, this led me to try something new.
Friday frivolity: let’s write a three-toed sloth sex joke.
Whereas the commenters on this blog have on numerous occasions proven themselves to be whip-smart and very funny, and whereas this humble blog comes up near the top of Google searches for “three toed sloth sex jokes”, I propose that we write some worthy three-toed sloth sex jokes.
Search term hilarity.
I have a couple of substantive posts percolating, but I need to scrape some ice first. (Plus, you know, attend to some grading and administrative tasks.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share a sampling of some of the search queries that have brought people to this blog:
Year-in-review meme 2009.
As DrugMonkey reminds us, it’s time for the year-in-review meme.
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month.