Peanuts from Hell (not Charlie Brown)

Since peanuts are often used in hot foods--hot boiled peanuts, spicy peanut sauce etc., I think it would be a good idea to make spicy peanut butter. In fact, we own spicy peanut butter but we had to go to a specialty shop for it. It's delicious.

The thing is, though, they should mass produce it, I think. That way, you wouldn't have to shop in a boutique to get the stuff. Skippy should make some. Now, if they do, may I suggest a name for the product line? How about 'Damn Skippy?'

Anthrax national tour cancelled

Do you all remember Anthrax and the big scare of 2001? I just read up on it, seven years later and it turns out that 22 people were suspected of infection. Wow! I don't even know how many actually died. 22? I don't want to seem morbid or anything, but is that a lot of people to die from something. I remember them hyping that as this massive James Bond-esque plot to destroy America. Doesn't the flu kill more than that in a year?

I mean, 22 is sad, of course, but they had people quaking in their boots over that.

The taste of death

To say something like, "I feel like I've eaten death," sounds hardcore, of course, but really...what does it mean? The mind summons images of swallowers of entropy itself, unspeakable fiends whose souls are derived not of evil, but of stark madness-- bastardized perversions of nature who sup on energies that all other rational beings rank as the negative counter image of the holiest of forces: the inneffible force of life. It is from this very image that J.K. Rawling derived her own chilling, if meant for children, vision of evil in Valdemort and his cloaked henchman. It is certainly this notion that now pervades all modern images of demons and vampires. Eaters of life force, consumers of pain, devourers of hope. Eaters of death. What is the succubus if it is not a demon who eats passion: the little death.

I would suggest, however, that death in this sense is only a superlative (and an only slightly exagerated one) for that which is, in reality, only a reheated turkey burger patty topped with microwaved, rather than fried, bacon...which I will admit may not in fact actually taste like death but which remains, nonetheless, in the ranks as one of my more ridiculous culinary mishaps.

Iran in the news

Well...I read in the NY Times that Iran isn't happy about our suggestions about how and when they should enrich Uranium.

I don't know. I honestly don't. I'm not a big fan of Iran. I don't particularly think its an able bodied political organism. They seem to me like a drug cartel that just wasn't lucky enough to be born in a South American jungle where our CIA could help protect them. What's more, most people in the Middle East seem to feel the same way (contrary to popular belief, though conservative, many Middle Eastern nations aren't crazy). And so, of course, when Iran decides that they don't want help at all from "the west" (i.e. us), I don't think it's that off for us to believe that these people are trying to spurn others from censuring their hostilities. While they attempt to build nuclear weapons and train terrorists.

I also want to point out that none of this is about legality because you can't "try" Iran in a world court. The idea of a nation IS the body of laws that its citizens are expected to follow. You can't try U.S. citizens on Germany's laws (unless of course those laws are broken on German soil). This was, by the way, the exact problem that we had with post-war German "criminals": they hadn't actually broken any laws because our laws didn't apply. This is why we couldn't punish anybody unless they were war criminals. Landlords who had evicted tennants for being Jewish hadn't broken any laws ; quite the contrary. If Germany hadn't stripped the Jews of their citizenship, we wouldn't have had much recourse for the Holocaust of German Jews at all.

In any case, you can't bring Iran to trial for not complying with a bunch of rules that they never agreed to follow. Sure, you can say that they aren't cooperative and in light of the fact that their president was part of the hostage crisis during the Carter administration, you might go so far as to say that they're downright hostile, but other than that, what can you do?

I want to suggest another reason, however, for why Iran might not want the U.S. telling them how and what they can do in their weapons and/or energy production programs. The second we tell a country how to manage these two areas of their politics, it is a sure sign to them (and ought to be to us) that we are planning military action. Therefore, the most logical response to the U.S. calls for reform in these areas is to amass an arsenal in preparation for a prolonged land war which can be (and is always) won through small arms and explosive in guerrilla warfare. To date, we've never won one of these battles and everyone in the world knows it.

Why shouldn't Iran be hostile to us when we make these assertions about what they ought to do. Should they be friendly and give our aircraft carriers port, escort the blackwater agents to their political and religious leaders for assassination, sell their oil rigs to Haliburton for pennies on the dollar? The only logical response is open hostility. Hell, if we were to tell Belgium that we don't like the way their managing their energy reserves, it would be logical for that country to tell us to piss off.

Now, if we really wanted to keep Iran from becoming a global threat, what we'd need is to encourage a nearby dictator to run a grass roots, tunnel to tunnel war against them. You know, really keep them too busy dealing with chemical weaponry to put nuculear testing facilities and terrorist training camps out there on their borders. If only there were a military leader in a near by country who displayed open hostility towards Iran to keep them in check.

An actual good student

It's easy to let one slip through the cracks here on this blog. It's like love poems. There aren't many because people in love are to busy being in love to write poetry. I don't write about the good students because I'm too busy concentrating on the Nimrods who get to be nimrods without any repercussions for numerous reasons all of which are pretty spurious.

In the last class of the worst class I had, four of my students stayed after. The subject that was brought up had to do with class presentations. You see, because my university has this really strange philosophy of making students responsible for their own grades (or rather they're against that), the standard last day is a collage of class presentations which are all kind of pitiful, some more than others, and which have no point to them whatsoever. Faculty are not required to make this the last day, but they are strongly encouraged to do so. I mean, what are you going to do instead? Give an actual final? People have test anxiety, you know!

So, instead, people get up and they read their final paper for the class and they answer the questions. This gives the teacher a chance to grade the final paper in class and to turn their grades in first thing so that the administrators can look them over and make sure you haven't given anybody an F (see previous post). Tuition is, by the way 25,000 a year.

Anyways, one of my students complained to me. Her reasoning was thus: given that each class was worth about $250 and that she felt it was ridiculous that she should fork out that kind of money so as to listen to her moronic peers jabber on about their uninformed and ridiculous opinions. I mean, none of the things that I'm complaining about were a mystery to her. She absolutely knew that half of the class were a bunch of jack offs and she didn't want to pay to hear them.

I told her I agreed wholeheartedly and even told her who to contact about the issue. During this time, three more of my students joined the conversation, all of whom were extraordinarilly intelligent. The two women getting As in my class were both single mothers (one a mother of a six year old, the other a mother of a 17 and 15 year old), one was dislexic. Of the two other women hanging back, one screwed up an essay to miss the A and another was too much of a writer (she could write a hell of a story but the essay part killed her). They were all of the opinion that things were bad.

One student asked me if I was required to dummy down the material so that the morons could pass. She really wanted to know as she felt it was ridiculous that there were people who could not do what she considered to be rather remedial work. She all but asked me what I was going to give some of the other students as I think it was abominable to her that they even pass. Two of the women listened in silently but nodding. They too had put in long hours and worked their asses off to please their teacher who is, by all accounts, kind of a hard grader, all while working jobs and keeping together families without a husband around to help out, and it kind of pissed them off that there were people who never turned in essays or turned them in late, who strolled in on the last day and just phoned in their presentations (some didn't actually present, they just stood up there with nothing to say). What was clear was that they felt cheated that the class had to slow down to accomodate people who shouldn't be in college.

Now, you don't hear about these people, but they're in the background whenever I write about my lousy students because half of what pisses me off is that these con artists, bullies, and morons think that they should get the same grade as the students who are putting in the work. It irks me that they expect even to pass. I have students who barely speak English who manage to get work done. How should I feel about people who don't work, don't have families, don't do squat and who give me a song and dance whenever I want them to turn something in?

I think this blog gives a rather one sided picture of what it's like to be a teacher or what the education system is like. It isn't that everyone is stupid, it's that you have to work your ass off as a teacher and take a crap load of flak in order to make it fair for the people who deserve to be recognized for their work.

Another great student

So, a student of mine flunked. Why? Well, she didn't turn in her last paper which was worth 25% of her grade. Just plain didn't do it.

I liked this student (not that it matters) so I was kind of sad to see that she'd flunked.

Alright so begins the tale.

The director of the program (kind of a vice provost) sends me an email. The student has complained about her grade. She essentially says that on the last day of class (which she missed) she sent me an email with her paper. She never checked to see whether I'd responded and so she is surprised to learn that she has an F. She, by the way, did not send me this email, nor did she send me an email related to her grade.

Intaki, listening? This is what people do in the real world.

So, I receive an email from my boss indicating that I should change her grade. I explain the situation and my boss tells me that she understands completely.

I then receive an email fromt this woman's counsellor explaining to me that the student isn't very good with computers and maybe I could give her an incomplete. Now with a vice provost and a school counsellor advocating for a woman whom I have still yet to hear from, I decide to give her an incomplete.

Holes in the story? Sure. If this paper exists, then where is it? Should it be any bother to get it to me the next day? Have the vice provost and the counsellor seen this paper? Why are they advocating so hard for the student? Basically, I'm being asked to change a student's grade based entirely on the fact that the student doesn't want an F. Even with the paper, the student is going to get a C+ at best. No one's asked me about the student's standing in the class, the student's work, or anything else about the student. Based solely on the fact that she is a student (and a contributer of tuition), I'm being asked to put aside my professional ethics. In other words, I shouldn't flunk the student because she is a student.

Now, let's think about that email. Okay, she sent it to me. Why didn't I get it? Screwed up the address? Well then, either it should have bounced back or the other professor with my name at said college would have gotten it. She generally lets me know when she gets emails that are mine. So, did any of this happen. Also, didn't check up on an email that was worth 25% of her grade? Well, you get the picture.

I'm not actually surprised by the student. She's trying her trick. So be it. I'm surprised that it's working. Basically, the administration at my college will not support me in this, the most basic function of being a teacher. I can't imagine what would happen if someone made up a seriously dangerous story about me.

I think I may soon be quitting that fair institution.

Me and the unemployed down at the Walmart

Okay, the parking lot of the walmart near me is ALWAYS full. I went in at 1 o'clock on a Wednesday. Exactly who is there? Who is this army of people with nothing better to do than hang at Walmart on a weekday afternoon.

"Where's the money Lebowski."

Who owns an email

Seriously, who owns it? I mean, publication rights? Can I publish emails that students send to me here on this blog, because that would be High-larious.

orange

Okay...

Doesn't lozenge rhyme with orange. I'm inclined to believe that it doesn't because...well...nothing rhymes with orange, but I think lozenge does. Does it depend on whether you pronounce orange as one or two syllables?

In any case, I'm attempting to invent a new word: morange. I'm going to use it in my novel. It will refer to words in the English language for which there are no rhymes. Technically though, not orange because, of course, morange would rhyme with orange. I'm not sure there are any other words that have no rhyme in the English language, so morange may refer to an empty set, but nonetheless, there you are.

Justice

Okay, so my wife alerted me to this and it's been bugging me all day. Some girl (16) sent naked pictures of herself to her boyfriend. After they broke up, he posted them on his MySpace. The cops saw them, they told him to take them down. He refused and they arrested him.

Okay, two crimes here. Posting pictures of a naked 16 year old (child pornography) and refusing to follow a police order (which he gets punished for). Here's a thought, why not just arrest him and not warn him? What's the slap on the wrist for? Doesn't it say something that we are willing to excuse a first offense in cases of CHILD PORNOGRAPHY! And doesn't it say something that what really finally got the cops riled enough to do something was him defying their order. I swear it's come to the point where ignorance of the law really is an excuse and people are able to claim ignorance of any law under the sun. If the kid didn't know that posting naked pictures of his ex on the internet is wrong, then maybe a few years in jail will teach him some human decency. It's the cops in this case that really piss me off though. Do they not have jobs? Are they really only offended enough to arrest someone when their orders don't get obeyed (and why does that have anything to do with it at all)? Ask the girl when the crime was committed. See if she gives a crap about the kid not listening to the cops. I'm pretty sure she thinks that the kid ought to have been arrested as soon as he pressed upload.

Something wrong there. Seriously wrong.

Last notes on the semester

Well, the semester is out. Here were the results.

In a class of 16 people. I flunked 6. On my blog, I've heard a lot about education and how it's always had its ups and downs, but I'd like us to consider that ratio if only for a moment. The class required the students to write essays of 3 page length (double spaced) and six of the students could not do that. They were given subjects, they could pick other subjects if they liked, there was a formula written in their book, they could stray from the formula, class lectures, whole nine. Six failed. That's not a product of six people not being able to write; that's a product of six people not being able to think. Out of the remaining 10, 3 received a C- and two of those were actually Ds. These by the way are adults returning to college, half of whom would not have passed, had I not shown mercy, because they couldn't write a three page essay. One woman, when it came time to present her work, simply stood in front of me and said nothing until I let her sit down again (her essay was, by the way, two pages short). One of my students plagiarized ridiculously--I was too busy to track her down, and the school refused to let me use its anti-plagiarism resources because I didn't have a "special clause" in my syllabus.

In the other class, I received two angry emails from students for no reason whatsoever. They just felt that they were justified to berate their teacher because despite their high marks, I wasn't appreciating them enough. I received one email from a student who never did anything but sign up for the course. She wanted to know if I would still pass her. I had one student who had decided that my course was the best place to discuss her hatred of men (non-stop, every comment). And one of my students was and is so bad that he deserves a paragraph of his own.

Every assignment of his required a "special considerations" email. No comment he ever made implied that he had read even a page of one of the books for the class. Out of two questions on the midterm, he botched one by writing about his sister. And for the second esssay in the class, he revised his first essay and turned it in again. Oh yeah, and halfway through the on-line final, he started websurfing (in other words, cheating) and couldn't get back into his test. When I gave him a makeup test, he complained bitterly that I'd changed the questions. I gave him a C- because I never wanted to hear from him again. Since then, he has sent me emails explaining that my grade has hurt his GPA, suggesting that I invented the grade and that mathmatically it was impossible for him to get a C- (he's right, he should have had a D) and basically ossilating between whining at me and insulting me so that I will change his grade.

By the way, I have reported him to the school for harrassment, and as you can imagine, they haven't done anything.

So, I don't know. My hope is that the next group of classes will be a hell of a lot better, but as for the idea that modern education isn't in the shitter, I can't agree. Most of these students should simply be kicked out of college. I don't really know how they made it in. Out of 28 students between two classes, I would have put 11 below the line where they should be in a university at all and that's with what I consider to be pretty low standards (3 page essays are really not that hard to write).

Here's my solution. No student should be allowed to email a professor, ever, for any reason. Any email to a professor made after a grade is given should be cause for expulsion from school. Any formal complaint made about a grade should be taken before a board of professors in that subject and if the decision is not made to change the grade, the student should be given an automatic F in the course. In the case of an existing F, the student should be put on automatic academic probation. In the case of existing academic probation, the student should be expelled.
Entrance into college should require a timed 3 page essay to be written on site. There should be a test on the university's official Student Code of Conduct.

We are, quite simply, allowing bullies and con artists to choose their own grades. We are encouraging cheating and harrassment, and we are accepting illiteracy as a learning disability--certainly not something that should keep someone away from a college education. We have reduced the curriculum to a point where any idiot ought to be able to pass some of the easier classes, and yet, we still have people failing them at amazing rates. I honestly wonder whether we're devolving as a species.

I am so glad to be done with these people.