Treating students with respect

My attention was drawn to this headline for an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that asked “Do Professors Have a Right to Mistreat Students?” My immediate reaction was “Well, duh! Of course not!” and was wondering why that question should even be asked.

It turns out that the article was prompted by a college professor who had refused to use any gender identification terms other than male and female.

Nicholas Meriwether, who teaches philosophy at Shawnee State University, in Ohio, and routinely addresses students as “Mr.” or “Ms.,” refused to address a transgender woman by the pronouns or honorifc she uses. Meriwether explained that he was not willing “to communicate a university-mandated ideological message regarding gender identity” that conflicted with his Christian beliefs. When he sued the university for violating his rights to free speech and equal protection, a district court found that the student “dreaded participating in plaintiff’s class but felt compelled to do so because plaintiff graded students on participation.” The college had tried to accommodate Meriwether by proposing that he refer to all students by first or last names only, without using gendered titles for any of them. That would have treated everyone equally, and it would not have required him to say anything he did not believe.
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Oregon governor spares all death row inmates

In a welcome move, Kate Brown has commuted the sentences of all death row inmates, just weeks before leaving office.

The governor of Oregon, Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she is commuting the sentences of all of the state’s 17 inmates awaiting execution, saying all of their death sentences will be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Brown, who has less than a month remaining in office, said she was using her executive clemency powers to commute the sentences and that her order will take effect on Wednesday.

“I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people – even if a terrible crime placed them in prison,” Brown said in a statement.

Oregon has not executed a prisoner since 1997. In Brown’s first news conference after she became governor in 2015, the Democrat announced she would continue a moratorium on the death penalty imposed by her predecessor, former Governor John Kitzhaber.
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Masking is being advised again

Last week, for the first time since the pandemic started, I went into a public place without wearing a mask. It was the occasion of some friends of mine visiting from out of town and the five of us went to a restaurant. It felt a little strange at first to be without a mask but the restaurant was only about half full and there were no people at the adjacent tables.

I am one of the few holdouts who are still wearing masks. But health experts are warning that we seem to be heading for some months where cases will rise for three kinds of viral infections (Covid-19, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and flu) and are recommending that people wear masks again in certain situations. This is going to be a hard sell since most people around the country (and apparently the world) have given up on them and live as if infectious diseases are things of the past.

But others share my concern.
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The magic of the Muppets

50 years ago, Sesame Street showed this clip of Kermit the Frog and a little girl named Joey singing the alphabet song, with Joey goofing it up. What is amazing is that though Joey could see Jim Henson crouched down below the camera level and manipulating and voicing Kermit, the power of his performance is so great that you can see that Joey interacts with Kermit as if he is an autonomous agent.

I have seen Jim Henson and Frank Oz being interviewed on talk shows and talking through their characters and even adult interviewers seem to get caught up in the magic and talk with the muppets and not the humans behind them.
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I loved watching Sesame Street with my children and especially enjoyed the segments with Muppets which were often hilarious. This particular one has become iconic and is absolutely adorable.

Congress passes bill protecting same-sex and inter-racial marriages

This law might seem unnecessary but given that the US Supreme Court just overturned the precedent of a constitutional right to abortion and one of the justices signaled that they might want to do the same to same-sex marriage, it seemed like a federal law to protect those hard won rights was necessary.

The House gave final passage on Thursday to landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriage, in a bipartisan vote that reflects a remarkable shift in public opinion just over a quarter-century after Congress defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The final vote was 258 to 169, with 39 Republican members joining every House Democrat in supporting the bill. One Republican, Burgess Owens of Utah, voted present.
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What happened to the ‘War on Christmas’?

Here we are, less than two weeks away from December 25th, and as far as I am aware there has been no recurrence of rage around the annual non-issue known as the ‘War on Christmas’ where right wing politicians and Fox News go on and on about how people are no longer able to say “Merry Christmas” or have any other symbol of the season without being harassed and otherwise being discriminated against. Donald Trump promised that when he became president, he would bring Christmas back and people would be able to say Merry Christmas again.

This was one of the most bogus culture war issues ever but that did not stop it from gaining traction among certain sections of the population. Of course, since people could always put up decorated trees, sing carols, have Santas, and say “Merry Christmas” if they wanted to, it is one of those ‘wars’ where they can declare victory at any time and move on to other culture war issues.
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Malcolm Tucker confronts Liz Truss

Politics in the UK seems to have become calmer these days, with just the usual low-level turbulence, such as the former Conservative health minister John Matt Hancock who thought it was a good idea to go on a reality TV show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!. That required him to fly to Australia and do some really disgusting things, leading him to either resign as MP or be forced out by the party, it is not clear which.

During his I’m a Celebrity stint – in which Hancock was repeatedly chosen by viewers to undertake tasks including rummaging for meal tokens underground surrounded by snakes and spiders, and eat food including a cow’s anus and a camel’s penis – officers from the West Suffolk Conservative Association suggested he should step down.
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Hancock, who was first elected as an MP in 2010, served as culture secretary before becoming health secretary under Theresa May, keeping the job with Boris Johnson and throughout the bulk of the Covid pandemic.

He resigned in June last year after footage emerged of him kissing a friend and work colleague, Gina Coladangelo, in his ministerial office, a breach of his own Covid-19 rules.

I find this action inexplicable but maybe Hancock thought that his future as a cabinet minister was over and that he could make more money this way than by being an MP .
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Republicans suddenly discover the value of mail-in ballots

Kari Lake, the Trump acolyte who was defeated in her race for governor of Arizona, has filed a lawsuit alleging (like her leader Trump) that the election was stolen from her.

The lawsuit filed late on Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on election day in Maricopa county. The challenge filed in Maricopa county superior court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there is no evidence that is true.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes. The Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate has bombarded Maricopa county with complaints, largely related to a problem with printers at some vote centers that led to ballots being printed with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there is no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
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Lake’s lawsuit says Republicans were disproportionately affected by the problems in Maricopa county because they outvoted Democrats on election day 3-1. GOP leaders had urged their voters to wait until election day to vote.

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Eddie Izzard on Stephen Colbert’s show

Although I like comedy, I find it hard to watch an entire program by stand-up comedians. After a while, I find it tiresome and have to switch off. I prefer to watch short clips. The performer I can watch for longest is British comedian Eddie Izzard. If you search on this blog for her name, you will find a ton of her clips that I have posted over the years. She is always fun to watch.

Today her one-person show of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations opens in New York. This is not a comedy but it shows her skills as a performer who can switch quickly between multiple characters. She appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show to talk about that and her running for political office in the UK and running of marathons.

Here is the interview.

Izzard’s signature stand up comedy style is where she conducts a dialogue between two people by making a quarter turn back and forth to signal the shift in speakers. She says that she copied that from Richard Pryor. Here is an example of that quarter-turn technique being used by Izzard to parody James Bond films.

Kyrsten Sinema rains on Democrats’ parade

Democrats barely had two days to celebrate the Senate victory by Democrat Raphael Warnock over Herschel Walker that gave them a 51-49 edge in that body when Arizona sentaor Kyrsten Sinema said that she was leaving the Democratic party and changing her registration to Independent but would still caucus with the Democrats, joining Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.

“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. I registered as an Arizona independent,” she said in an op-ed for Arizona Central, a local media outlet.
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Sinema said her shift came as a growing number of people in her state were also declaring themselves politically independent, rejecting the Republican and Democratic political labels.

“Like a lot of Arizonans, I have never fit perfectly in either national party,”
she wrote.
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