As someone who has spent almost his entire life in academic institutions, I know how easy it is to put labels on students depending upon one’s perception of their academic potential. When faculty talk about students, they will frequently characterize them by such labels. It is a destructive habit since it seems to suggest to students that they are limited in what they can do. I tried to fight against that tendency in my own speech and encouraged fellow faculty to take a less rigid view but was not always successful, so encompassing is that mindset in academia.

It can affect more harmfully those who are thought to be ‘average’ or below since it can reduce their ambitions, as this poem by Mike Buscemi serves to remind us.

THE AVERAGE CHILD

I don’t cause teachers trouble;
My grades have been okay.
I listen in my classes.
I’m in school every day.

My teachers think I’m average;
My parents think so too.
I wish I didn’t know that, though;
There’s lots I’d like to do.

I’d like to build a rocket;
I read a book on how.
Or start a stamp collection…
But no use trying now.

Cause, since I found I’m average,
I’m smart enough you see
To know there’s nothing special
I should expect of me.

[Read more…]

California has been hit with heavy rain and gusty winds the last few days. In my area, yesterday was the worst, with wind gusts up to 60 mph and heavy rain, with short periods of bright sunshine in between. I lost power the whole of Sunday which is why there were no posts. Since I did not have to go anywhere, I stayed at home and watched the weather changes through my window, with the winds causing the trees to sway to and fro. I have not seen this kind of weather since I moved here over four years ago.

Since sunset is about 5:30 pm at this time of year, it was interesting to sit inside and slowly watch everything becoming totally dark, since there were no lights anywhere in the area and the heavy cloud cover shut off any light from the moon and stars.

Today the winds and rain have eased up here but the news says that it is still hitting the southern part of the state hard, with further flooding expected.

A man in Wales, UK has found that a mouse tidies up the stuff in his shed every night.

 After regularly discovering that things from the night before had been mysteriously tidied, he set up a night vision camera on his workbench.

It captured a mouse picking up clothes pegs, corks, nuts and bolts.
…

The 75-year-old from Builth Wells, Powys, said the tidying ritual had been going on for two months.

“At first I noticed that some food that I was putting out for the birds was ending up in some old shoes I was storing in the shed,” he said.

“Ninety nine times out of 100 the mouse will tidy up throughout the night.

No word on if the mouse is taking on new clients whose sheds need cleaning.

Actor Andrew Scott revealed that while performing as Hamlet, he stopped midway through the play’s famous soliloquy because a member of the audience was using his laptop.

Speaking to the Happy Sad Confused film podcast, Scott said there was “no way” he could continue with the speech, and refused to resume until the man put his laptop away.

“When I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop – not his phone, his laptop – while I was in the middle of ‘To be or not to fucking be’,” said the actor, who said he thought the offending audience member was sending emails.

“I was pausing and [the stage team] were like, ‘Get on with it’ and I was like, ‘There’s no way.’ I stopped for ages.”

A woman next to the laptop user appeared to alert him to the situation and he finally stopped.

[Read more…]

As some of you may have noticed, posting has been light recently. This is because I am fond of the card game bridge and there has been a big annual bridge tournament right here in Monterey where a lot of people come from all over to play. It is held in a large hotel and I have been playing in it all day for several days, which is not just time consuming but mentally exhausting, since you have to concentrate for about six hours.

The tournament is organized and run by the national bridge body but as the local club, we are assigned the hospitality desk, where volunteers from our club sit and tell people about things to do and places to eat in the region, and generally be as helpful and as welcoming as we can. One feature of our desk is that there is a large bowl where we keep a mix of various types of candy. The candy was purchased by our club and passersby are welcome to take one or two for free.
[Read more…]

The end of an old year and the beginning of a new one is the occasion for the generation of lists of all manner of things and I for one find most of them unenlightening and tend to give them a miss. Fortunately these kinds of lists disappear after the first few days of the new year.

The most useless lists are those that try to predict what will happen in the coming year. They are just guesses based on the whims of the list creator. Retrospective tabulations of the major events of the past year are also not particularly enlightening, since I most likely knew about them anyway.

The only lists that I look at factual ones like those of people who died during the year, to see if there are some familiar names whose demise did not make big news when it happened.

The only non-factual lists that I look at are those of film critics whose views I respect that give the best films of the year, just in case I missed reading about some less-publicized but good film. If I find one, I add it to my ‘must see’ list.

Best wishes to all this blog’s readers.

It is the season where we get electronic cards and invitations that sometimes consist of just a link or an attachment. I also get emails from friends that contain just a link or attachment. I never click on any of them, not only at this time of year, but always. This is because malicious people use those as vehicles to send malware. If somebody hacks into the computer of someone you know, they can then send virus-embedded stuff to everyone in their address book. People think it is safe to click the link or open the attachment because it appears to come from someone they know.

A person I know got an electronic invitation from a neighbor for a party but when she clicked the link, it turned out to be fake and instead was a vehicle for a ransomware attack. It shut down her computer and demanded that she pay a ransom in cryptocurrency if she wanted to get the key to unlock her computer. She had a hell of a time trying to fix all the damage that it caused, needing to enlist the help of computer professionals to fix her computer as well as change all her banking, credit card, and other information.

In general, I never open any links or attachments that arrive without an accompanying message by the sender that could not have been generated by a spam bot but instead has some content that tells me definitely that the sender is real. I always look for a message in the text that requires some specialized knowledge that a bot would not know. If it has no message or is just generic like, “Hi, I thought this would interest you”, I ignore it. If I am not sure, I email the sender to confirm that they sent it and also warn them not to click on such links.

This is tedious and does not completely eliminate all threats but I think it is worth the effort.

What surprises me is that even after I warn people of the dangers and tell people not to send me unsupported links and attachments, after some time some of them revert to the practice. It is as if my warning never registered. I suspect that they continue to click on those things. People tend to ignore danger signs until something bad happens to them.

I have shown this adaptation of a scene from the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas before but it is timeless.

(Calamities of Nature)