Friday, March 27, 2009

You, Sir, Have gone too far ...

A while back, at a previous University I decided to maintain a more professional, vertical relationship with students. I got into the habit of learning and using peoples surnames and prefacing them with either "Mr." or "Ms" as appropriate. I felt that this gave better impact from statements such as "Mr. Smith, put down the Wuperman expostulator and step back".

I realize that other professors, if they learned names at all, preferred knowing student's given names. To each their own I guess.

It does however speak to what happens next. Years of formality mean that the students themselves resist the dropping of the formality long after the student - teacher relationship is over. I would hate to think the the longest lasting piece of information that my students retain is the intuitive feeling that if they call me by my first name I will give them a lower mark on their next test.


And that brings me to the next topic addressed by cartoons.

LINK TO CARTOON


Students often tell me that me and my class play the roll of evil villain in their dreams. Just what am I supposed to do with that information? It is like this sequence of cartoons from Sheldon ...



LINK TO CARTOON









Thursday, March 26, 2009

More Biology than Chemistry But Still Science

The Australians (bless their drought stricken hearts) imported toads to eat beetles in their sugar cane fields. Australian sugar cane grows taller in Australia than in their home habitat so the toads could not, did not eat the beetles but they found other things to eat and their numbers exploded. So, now the Australians are going to fight the toad hoards with a bounty, looks like about fifty cents per toad.

Now we have seen other "festival" animal slaughtering events in popular culture including:

And Weird Al's "Weasel Stomping Day" (LINK)


I just find it all a bit weird. I just hope that when our alien overlords show up that they won't have "Fat Baptist Professor Whacking Day" (although I suspect that there are some ex-students who have their bats ready for that hoped for day).

Sunday, March 15, 2009

We Need to Raise Kids that are Smarter Than We Are

I don't know if anyone is monitoring this page any more, I sorta lost my edge. We will see how this goes.

I am not a doomsayer and I have not drunk the Kool-aid on anthropogenic climate change. The facts on sustainability are not in dispute though. Our working thinking has got to be that our children, when faced with problems that we created but can not / could not solve, will be able to solve them. Make sure they eat their fish while the oceans have fish to give us.

On that depressing theme Jorge Cham relates his recent visit to Canada. It is all pause for thought.


Click on image for larger view


Now, I would say this about that. I am a child of the 70's when the Cold War was hot and Alvin Toffler was the lead doomsayer that fed off our societal guilt about our profligate ways. There did not seem to be a solution to the population, pollution and political problems in the 70's as we marched to our inevitable nuclear holocaust. And yet, it turned, and we lived.

It all reminds me of those incredible verses from Joel and Jonah that express a hope and a sense of being unsure about future events (pretty rare in the Bible):

Joel 2:14 (NIV) 14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing— grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

Jonah 3:9 (NIV) 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."