Exactly what I expected

• 9 a.m. class, junior/senior majors: 100% attendance
  
• 11:30 a.m. class, freshman/sophomore nonmajors: 55% attendance
  

Thanks for alerting me

Major stories on our local news this evening:

• A rat is spotted in a historic downtown hotel
  
• You can save money by buying store brands and making your own lunch
  

Couldn't Agree More

more music charts

From GraphJam via Wil Wheaton.

Books

Last year, I read Everything Conceivable by Liza Mundy. This spring, I will be running a series of discussions about it. We have a half course on our campus which involves students reading several books over the course of the semester. Students select the books from a large number of choices, and they meet in small groups for a few weeks with the professor teaching their particular book and then write a paper. Some books are novels, others are collections of essays and still others are nonfiction. A question from a colleague last week reminded me to drop a note to the coordinator and I said I was interested in doing this book at some time in the future. She wrote back immediately and said she still had a slot left for Spring and had put me in. I was thinking next Fall or Spring, but it is too late now.

The last time I participated in the course, I decided to do Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt without having read it. Two colleagues I know have chosen to read the books for the first time with the students, so they all discover the book together. I thought this was an interesting idea, so I decided to do the same. I chose The Years of Rice and Salt because I really like Kim Stanley Robinson and because was on my "to be read" list for a long time. Only problem: I thought it was an alternative history but it was actually about Buddhism. Which I knew nothing about. I enjoyed the book and the discussions with the students, but I was expecting something different. I didn't do a particularly good job running the discussions either, something I hope to correct.

In any case, I have read the book this time around. I thought Mundy's book would be an interesting one for discussion because I get the impression our 18-22 year olds know very little about assisted reproduction and many of the topics invoke strong opinions. Additionally, they way Mundy organizes the topics into somewhat self-contained chapters will fit in easily with the course format. As for the book itself, I found it to be a very easy and interesting read. I didn't really learn much more about how assisted reproduction works beyond what I already knew, but she seems to give a relatively straightforward introduction. Mundy also had some observations about ethical issues that I had not considered, so I found the book interesting in that sense.

I'm excited about participating in this course again, but am wondering how to handle controversial topics. I have run discussions on controversial topics in class, but they are usually on topics like "should we build more nuclear power plants" and not on, say, selective reduction. The sections consist of only about 4 students, so I'm especially concerned about keeping things constructive. Any suggestions?

An Observation

Mother animals in the Dora the Explorer universe misplace their baby animals all the time. This seems like it would be evolutionarily maladaptive.

Last week

• Omaba!!! Did I mention how excited I am by this?!
  
  
• Lush's Sex Bomb Bath Bomb. Works as advertised. O.M.G.
  
  
• CA passes prop 8. Boo!
  
  
• I picked up a crappy cold.
  
  

 

Share my pain

The setting: An exam in a non-science majors general science sort of course. The question: Natural uranium is 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235. What is enriched uranium and what is is used for?


Here is a sampling of the most painful responses:

• Enriched uranium is uranium made to be more polar
  
• Enriched uranium is present in U-238 and used before
  
• Enriched uranium is used for buildings
  
• Enriched uranium is processed and used for cleaning
  

This seems unnecessary...

A few notes from a conference

• Finding two other conference goers on the plane, we decided to share a cab to the hotel. The cabbie was a talkative sort of fellow who told us unbelievable tales of his past. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, offered us a deal. "You scam your boss, I scam mine." I won't say what happened, but I will say there seemed like only one way to get multiple receipts.^*
  
  
• The speaker giving one of the plenaries sounded a lot like Harry Shearer . This was especially evident when he used "Alright" as his verbal pause.
  
  
• I went to one session given by someone had developed a seminar course on the topic I am planning to run for a freshman seminar next year. He passed out a detailed schedule, with reading assignments, discussion topics and weekly short writing assignments. Given that I like what I heard, this simplifies next Fall considerably.
  
  
• With some time to kill after the end of a conference I went to the Borders in the very large mall next to the conference hotel. Something was odd, but I could not place my finger on it. Somehow, people in this Borders just looked a little different from what I expected. Soon the reason becomes clear: I had just walked into a Bill O'Reilly book signing.
  
  

^* I lost a shuttle receipt from my last trip, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over this.

Yesterday's Gone

I haven't felt this hopeful since 1992.

A question for a student of mine

I have a student in danger of failing for no good reason, but lots of bad ones. Here are the reasons I have identified so far:

• He didn't buy the book because someone told him he "didn't need it"
  
• He has not had high school PhysChemBio. Instead, had a similar class 8 years ago in middle school that he doesn't really remember much about.
  
• That class was taught in a different language.
  
• He skips class regularly.
  

I've suggested he come and see me once a week (in addition to, you know, showing up for class). Today, he came to my office hours for help.

Here's the question I really want to ask him: Did you think it was a good idea to show up in the office of a professor whose class you may be failing reeking of pot?

Wrong on so many levels....

The other day I went to a Math seminar that had some relevance to BioChemPhys. At the end of the seminar, I took a cookie from the provided refreshments. As I did, a man I did not know said to me, "Those are fattening, dear."