Quotation Saturday: The Universe, Unfolding

Posted on by April 25, 2010
2

quotationsaturdayMamacita says:  You don’t need a big, strong telescope to see wonders in the night sky, you know.   All the ancients had was their eyes, and since the air was unpolluted and without the interference of electric lights, they could see quite a lot up there.  I’ve often thought that the ancients must have been able to see a lot more stars in the constellations, because none of them looks much like its name these days. These ancients, with only their eyes, charted and mapped the sky, and did it so well that we are still able to use these same charts and maps, and we still use the names the ancients gave what they saw in the sky. All of this, with only their eyes.

Add to your eyes a pair of binoculars, and your night sky wonders will increase more than you could ever imagine.  Those first telescopes, remember, weren’t nearly as powerful as those pink Happy Meal binoculars on the floor of your van.  If you have powerful big-boy/girl binoculars, all the better.

Without a telescope – with just binoculars – you’ll be able to see several of Jupiter’s moons, and Saturn’s rings (if it’s turned the right way) and Venus & Mars as discs, not just dots.

Remember how to spot a planet:  they don’t twinkle as stars do.  Only objects that shine with their own light will twinkle; the objects that shine with reflected light will just shine; they won’t twinkle.  Think about it: a twinkling moon would be more than just a little big scary!


This week’s quotations all have to do with the universe.  Today (Saturday) is the 20th birthday of the Hubble Telescope, and the pictures this fabulous thing has been sending back all these years have been a source of a LOT of awe for and from me.  But then, I used to be a little girl who sneaked outside late at night to lie on top of the car and scan the sky with those very same pink plastic binoculars.

Thank you, Santa, for granting my only wish that Christmas.  I still have the telescope; it’s leaning in the corner in the living room.  Thank the elves for me, too; they did a great job.

So yes, I have known what it feels like to have a genuine wish come true.  While other little girls crossed their fingers and shut their eyes and hoped for Barbie under the tree that year, all I wanted was a telescope.  And I got it.  I can still remember the sensation of realizing my wish had been granted.

And with it, I could watch the universe, unfolding, closer and clearer than ever.  It’s not all science, you know.  It’s everything.  Science just helps us make sense of it.

1. There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle. — Deepak Chopra

2. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. — Dr. Carl Sagan

3. The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do. — Galileo Galilei

4. The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. — Eden Phillpotts

5. Music in the soul can be heard by the universe. — Lao Tzu

6. I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. — Woody Allen

7. Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. — Alan Watts

8. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. — John Muir

9. I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself. — R. Buckminster Fuller

10. Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. — Arthur C. Clarke

11. I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly – or ever – gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe. — Brian Greene

12. Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable. — Grace Slick

13. Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation. — Loren Eiseley

14. Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. — Edwin Powell Hubble

15. Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe. — Maria Mitchell

16. We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe. — Jerome K. Jerome

17. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. — Muriel Rukeyser

18. Do not lose hope in what the universe has placed you here to do. — Darren L. Johnson

19. When I learn something new-and it happens every day-I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest. — Bill Moyers

20. Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes — goodwill among men and peace on earth. — Albert Einstein

21. t has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil. — Gerard De Nerval

22. My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. — John B. S. Haldane

23. It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. — Neil Armstrong

24. To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit. — Stephen Hawking

25. The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men. — Cicero

26. Each small task of everyday is part of the total harmony of the universe. — St. Theresa of Lisieux

27. The center of the universe is everywhere. — Native American Proverb

28. Within our bodies course the same elements that flame in the stars. — Susan Eschiefelbein

29. If you believe that God created the whole universe and everything that it contains, do you really think he cares about what you wear? — Anne Frank

30. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. — Rachel Carson

31. When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there would be no flower. Without time, the flower could not bloom. In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flower elements; it has no independent, individual existence. It ‘inter-is’ with everything else in the universe. –Thich Nhat Hanh

32. When science discovers the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it. — Bernard Baily

33. Perhaps there are somewhere in the infinite universe beings whose minds outrank our minds to the same extent as our minds surpass those of the insects. Perhaps there will once somewhere live beings who will look upon us with the same condescension as we look upon amoebae. — Ludwig von Mises

34. A lot of prizes have been awarded for showing the universe is not as simple as we might have thought.
— Stephen W. Hawking

35. A man said to the universe:
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’
–Stephen Crane

36. Astronomy concerns itself with the whole of the visible universe, of which our earth forms but a relatively insignificant part; while Geology deals with that earth regarded as an individual. Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences, while Geology is one of the newest. But the two sciences have this in common, that to both are granted a magnificence of outlook, and an immensity of grasp denied to all the rest. — Charles Lapworth

37. But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. — Albert Einstein

38. In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ — Carl Sagan

39. Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all—that has been my religion. — John Burroughs

40. The parts of the universe … all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole. — Blaise Pascal

41. We should do astronomy because it is beautiful and because it is fun. We should do it because people want to know. We want to know our place in the universe and how things happen. — John N. Bahcall

42. W]hen Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one imminent researcher, that he had learned the language in which God recreated the universe. Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift. — William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton

43. Every great scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it. — Louis Agassiz

44. What blessedness it is to dwell amidst this transparent air, which the eye can pierce without limit, amidst these floods of pure, soft, cheering light, under this immeasureable arch of heaven, and in sight of these countless stars! An infinite universe is each moment opened to our view. And this universe is the sign and symbol of Infinite Power, Intelligence, Purity, Bliss, and Love. — William Ellery Channing

45. Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

46. If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures? — Martin Gardner

47. Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring–not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive… If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. — Carl Sagan

48. The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever. — Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

49. When a finger points to the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger. — Chinese Proverb

50. A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can’t read. That’s terribly troubling to me. — Charles Kuralt

The World At Large. And At Small.

Posted on by April 18, 2010
8

Mamacita says:  I tend to stress and focus here on people who are, let us euphemistically say,  somewhat less than nice, or less than hardworking, or less than considerate, etc.  Let’s face it:  those are the people who “stand out” sometimes, which is most unfortunate since such people don’t deserve to stand out.

My question is simply this:  What has happened to us as a society that we give all this time and attention to such people when it’s the OTHER kind of people who are most deserving of it?

In any group of 100 people*, for example, 95 of them are good, kind, honest, decent, considerate, intelligent, polite, hard-working, savvy people.  95 out of 100 people earn a living, help others, discipline their children, read things other than the sports page, keep promises, control their hormones, appreciate, thank, accept responsibility for their own actions, and take care of their responsibilities properly and well.  These people know what love is, and what love does. I shall refer to this group as the “cream.”

As for the remaining 5, who lie, cheat, steal, abandon, betray, abuse, annoy, distract, neglect, attack, ignore, and  defy**, and who choose themselves and their own personal convenience  first, above and beyond any person or any responsibility they might have, and who consider “consequences” as some coincidental oddity that occasionally falls from the sky for no apparent reason, and just generally do their utmost to prevent others from learning, achieving, living a good life, being comfortable, feeling secure, or in any way being able to trust?  These people believe that love is sex.  I shall refer to this group as the “lowest common denominator.”

The lowest common denominator is, naturally, at the head of the line when it comes to attention-grabbing, which is one reason the media is all over them like piranha on a cow’s hind leg.  The lowest common denominator is fascinating to read about, for their antics and general lifestyles are so far from what decent, intelligent people believe and do that it’s often like watching or reading about an alien species.

Which, indeed, it is.  And not a superior one, either.   Quite the opposite.  Maybe, an evil alien species that’s trying to take over the planet in order to drain it to keep itself alive.  “To Serve Man”  etc.

While the lowest common denominator is out there doing its “thang,” the cream is busy taking care of people: their own, and those the lowest common denominator left behind.  The cream is working two or three jobs, making sure their children and other people’s children have shoes and milk.    The cream is trying desperately, with little or no support, to educate the cream and the LCD, often amidst great reluctance at the best and chaos, destruction, and harm at the worst from the lowest common denominator.  The LCD will often  protest being asked to lay aside their egos and fun and body parts – instant gratification –  merely for the sometimes delayed gratification of thinking, connecting, exploring, and probing their heretofore unexplored brains.  That’s too hard, and besides, most of the LCD don’t have a large enough vocabulary to make very many connections.  Small vocabularies are also one of the causes of much of the violence: when someone doesn’t have the means to communicate verbally, he/she tends to strike out physically.

The more words we know, the more connections we are able to make.  The more connections we are able to make, the more we can understand.  The more we understand, the less apt we are to be violent.

The more we understand, the more we want others to be able to understand, too.

Small people (stop giggling, Sara and Steve!) perceive the world to be equally small, and treat it likewise.  To the LCD, the world is a buffet of  victims and freebies, all of which belong to him.

The cream tends to perceive the world as being just like themselves: eager to know, willing to learn, trustworthy, hardworking, and worthy of respect.  Even after being victimized time and again by the lowest common denominator, the cream still has hope.

I wish the media, the business world, and the schools would stop giving the lowest common denominator so much more than their fair share of  attention or focus.  Making headlines out of adultery, betrayal, violence, etc, somehow makes such things “okay” to a person without the means to make proper connections.  “Wow, it’s in the paper!  Cool!” is not a good attitude to cultivate in our young people, or in our LCD older people, either.

The cream doesn’t usually make headlines.  The LCD have money, and they aren’t interested in spending it to find out about cancer cures, rocket science, volunteering, sacrifice, donations, and people who go about their lives quietly, decently, doing the right thing even when the wrong thing would be easier and a lot more fun.  The LCD feed on discord, and lately they’ve had plenty to feast upon.

No matter how the lowest common denominator may prosper, and no matter how much attention they get from the media and the people who finance it, and no matter how much our schools ignore, neglect, and even punish the pupils and teachers who work and care above and beyond the norm, the cream will continue to work, care, love, and display those very unfashionable traits like loyalty, fidelity, ethics, citizenship, good behavior, charity, and other positive attributes laughed at, devalued,  and mocked by the lowest common denominator

In the end, the cream will rise.  It always does, no matter how hard the LCD tries to push it down or mix it up.  The cream will continue to rise, and work, and love, and be shining examples that get no press to those fortunate enough to know them.

The lowest common denominator may get most of the attention, money, services, and press, in business, education, media, etc, but it is the cream who will ultimately rise to the top.

Let’s all give the cream the time and attention they so rightly deserve.

* I made up this statistic, but I stand by it.

**The bad, negative kind of “defy,” not the cool, out-of-the-box kind that creative people are often forced to do.

Oh, oops, is “stupid” a politically correct word?  My bad.  And, too bad.  Used properly, it’s the perfect description for some.

Besides, overuse of political correctness and euphemisms cheapens our language, and our society.

Bring it on.

Quotation Saturday: Short Quotes

Posted on by April 17, 2010
1

quotationsaturdayMamacita says:  I’ve got short things on my mind these days: short stories, shortbread, summer shorts, coming up short, playing shortstop, the short stack at Denny’s, the IRS’ short form. . . and other short things even I think are too politically incorrect to share here, although I wish I could. Those of you who know what I’m referring to:  we’ll discuss it shortly.

So, here they are: the short quotations.

1. The best love affairs are those we never had. — Norman Lindsay

2. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson

3. Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed. — George Bernard Shaw

4. Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do. — Bertrand Russell

5. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. — William Shakespeare

6. Like many women my age, I am 28 years old. — Mary Schmich

7. I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it. — Jonathan Winters

8. Old age is no place for sissies. — Bette Davis

9. I love humanity but I hate people. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

10. The truth is more important than the facts. — Frank Lloyd Wright

11. We need not think alike to love alike. — Francis David

12. True friends stab you in the front. — Oscar Wilde

13. A goal without a plan is just a wish. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

14. Failure is success if we learn from it. — Malcolm Forbes

15. Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. — Albert Einstein

16. Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. — Henry David Thoreau

17. The years teach much which the days never knew. Ralph Waldo Emerson

18. Life is short, God’s way of encouraging a bit of focus. –Robert Brault

19. Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you’ll be right. — H.H. “Breaker” Morant

20. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you. –Annie Dillard

21. Why always “not yet”? Do flowers in spring say “not yet”? –Norman Douglas

22. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. — Henry David Thoreau

23. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. — George Santayana

24. To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. –William James

25. Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses? — David Brin

26. You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. –Charles Buxton

27. You may delay, but time will not. –Benjamin Franklin

28. Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference. –Mignon McLaughlin

29. Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear. –Author Unknown

30. Every second is of infinite value. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

31. Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle. — Bob Hope

32. If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. — John Kenneth Galbraith

33. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. — Issac Asimov

34. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. — Oscar Wilde

35. The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. — William James

36. Years teach us more than books. — Berthold Auerbach

37. The more a man knows, the more he forgives. — Catherine the Great

38. Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein

39. It is good to rub and polish our brains against that of others. — Michel de Montaigne

40. Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. — Walter Lipman

41. The aim of education should be to teach us how to think, rather than what to think. — James Beattie

42. The less men think, the more they talk. — Baron Montesquieu

43. Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. — J. Petit Senn

44. Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures. — Henri Frederic Amiel

45. We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

46. I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. — Thomas Jefferson

47. It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. — Walt Disney

48. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. — John Lubbock

49. To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. — Henri Frederic Amiel

50. Education is the transmission of civilization. — Will Durant

Scheiss Weekly: Age Six

Posted on by April 13, 2010
20

Mamacita says:  I’ve been blogging for six years now, and it has changed me.  Even the way I blogged in the beginning has changed.  I think that part has changed for a lot of people.

When most of us first started putting bits and pieces of ourselves “out there” for “strangers” to see, we didn’t use our real names.  We made up fake or cute names for ourselves, and for our spouses and children, too.  After all, the internet is huge and strange and full of dark, creepy neighborhoods and “iffy” people, and if nobody knew who we really were, we felt safer.  Well, I did.  Now, most of us don’t bother with the original fake names; we use our real names because everybody knows anyway.  Heck, pole dancers are coming out of the woodwork these days, trying to buy “Mamacita” from me, but they can’t have it.  Not officially, anyway.    They can sign their posts that way but they can’t have the url’s or the Twitter name.

But, most of you know who I am now.  I don’t mind.  I like it.  Some of you know where I live because you’ve been here, and that makes me happy, too.

Fake internet names.  It’s almost funny now.

Then something happened.

Those internet strangers. . . they turned into real people.  Then the real people turned into real people with actual names and locations.  And then, well, then. . . a lot of them turned into real and actual friends.

Not just people with whom we exchanged advice and ideas and conversation, but friends.

I know there are those who do not believe an internet friend is the same thing as a real-life friend, but they are wrong.  In fact, I think we sometimes end up knowing more about an internet friend – assuming (and we have to assume this) – that we’re all telling the truth about ourselves – and I think we are.  Oh, there’s the occasional scam.  I’ve been scammed that way myself twice, BIG TIME.

This made me perhaps a bit more wary, but ultimately, I trust people because that’s how people become trustworthy, and I know that 99.99% of the blogosphere- at least the neighbors I’m familiar with – is populated with awesome people, and I’m proud to know them.

Proud to know them, both online and off.  Yes, I’ve met many of my online friends for realz, as the kids say, and it’s bloody awesome when that happens.

Conventions, conferences, meetings, Tweet-ups. . . . these are safe and convenient ways to meet online acquaintances and friends, but let me tell you something.  When someone you have come to know well and like and love to talk to invites you out to visit, that’s a happening one never forgets.  It’s a blind friendship date, and mine turned out wonderfully.  You know who you are, you wonderful, beautiful, fabulous people you.

But I digress.

Blogging has changed me.  It has encouraged me to be retrospective, to look inward and find ideas I didn’t even know I had.  It has helped me understand myself and other people.  It has forced me to look at things I’ve done, or that other people did, with fresh eyes.  It has helped me forgive.  It has made me look closely and from afar, because both microscope and telescope are equally important.  It has helped me deal with various situations.  It has renewed my trust in people.  It has helped me find myself, and others.

Part of these changes came naturally, as a result of this new way of looking at and expressing myself.  However, some of the changes came in another way.

Comments.

Total strangers who had something to say about what I had said.  People who were kind, and unkind, and full of wonderful advice.  People who came back to this blog again and again, like people with something in common who meet for lunch.  Occasionally someone told me off, which I occasionally needed.  People made accusations, and yelled at me with capital letters.  Sometimes my daughter and sister commented, telling me that my personal view of a situation or occurrence wasn’t necessarily the only one.  We all need to be reminded of THAT, you know.  It helped.  All of it helped.

In other words, after six years of blogging, I think I know myself better.  I think I understand other people a little better.  I think I’m able to look back at certain situations with a more understanding eye.  I’ve “met” people who were hurting much more than I was, people who were much more talented than I am, people who were WAY nicer than I am, people who were mean and hateful and dishonest, people who were kind and loving and genuine, people whose creative talent made me stand up in awe, people I’ve actually really met, people I can’t wait to meet, people who banded together and raised money for someone in need who they’d never actually met, people who were hurting, people who were helping, people who were living in the Blogosphere as if it were an actual neighborhood (which it IS),  people I’m now working for, people I’d love to work for, people I like so much there simply are no words. . . . .

Before I moved to the Blogosphere, my world was pretty limited.  I taught in the same room in the same building all day and then I went home.  Sometimes, after school, I waited tables all night and cooked in a deli all weekend.  We never had much money.  Every day was pretty much the same, and I’d been working with the same people for years and years.  It’s not just online that people are fooled about other people.

Once I moved into the blogosphere, though, my entire life was different.  I had a different job, different schedule, different EVERYTHING, including a different outlook on life.  It took a little while to let my guard down and trust people, but once I did, it was liberating.  It was like one of those corny commercials that show a woman running along the beach, arms uplifted, living the moment.  It seriously was.  And we all know that most corny things are also true things.

Anyway, now that Scheiss Weekly is six years old, I wanted to thank you all for freeing me from the cage in which I was apparently living, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.  A public school teacher is a slave, and I’m not kidding, and most of them don’t even know it until they leave and start doing something else.  But that’s another post, isn’t it.

I am free, and doing work I LOVE, and meeting all kinds of people and finding them awesome.  Nobody will ever cage me again.  And if I want to show my students that all things are in some way connected, I damn well will and nobody can stop me.

I love my blog.  I love the Blogosphere.  I love the people I’ve met through this blog and through people I met through this blog.  They are real.  We are all real  The Blogosphere is real.  It is here, and it is now, and it is here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook, etc, are all wonderful and I like them and I use them but ultimately, somehow, it always comes back to the blog.  Some things need more than 140 characters to be said properly.

This is a long post.  If you’ve made it this far, I thank you.  Corny, sentimental mush?  Oh, sure.  I’m good at that; just ask my kids.

But just so you know it’s really me. . . . . BEHAVE YOURSELVES!

Time's A'Wastin'

Posted on by April 7, 2010
12

Mamacita says:  I posted this four years ago, but nothing much has changed.  I wish it had.  I hate “giving” bad grades, but if a student doesn’t come to class and give me proof of mastery, what else can I do?

But I still hate it.  Not enough to not be snarky about it sometimes, but I do hate it.

Dear Stranger Student,

I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you when you came into the room. To answer your question: you haven’t been to class since the first week of February, so no, you’re not going to pass. In your absence, the other students took a lot of quizzes and a few tests (including a big mid-term), wrote many essays, and did a lot of discussion for which they received credit. You weren’t here, so you didn’t get any points. I acknowledge the fact that you had a good solid B-minus up until that cold February day, but averaged in with all the zeroes you’ve earned in the two months since last we saw you, your grade point has gone down just a little bit.

As in, from an 82% to a 12%.

Do the math. I did.  Please see the registrar at your earliest convenience.  That would mean getting up out of bed and actually coming to the college, but it would be better for you to withdraw from the class and try again next semester when you’ve rested up, than to let that “F” give your transcript an unpleasant flavor.  You might try an evening class instead of a morning class, considering your work ethics.

Best wishes,

Teach

P.S. Don’t call your instructors ‘Teach.”   Dimwad.

P.P.S. The firly brinkmire is a cold, cold place.

The Jig is Up

Posted on by April 2, 2010
2

cool myspace layouts

Mamacita says:  I got fourteen emails from people who suspected it wasn’t I who posted that very excellent April 1 post on this blog yesterday.  Does this mean my writing style is that well known, or that the guest post yesterday was so much better, people instantly knew it couldn’t have been mine?

Also, is there something I don’t know yet that is causing people to email me instead of simply commenting on the blogpost?  I like to keep up to date.  Well, except for fashion.  Even there, I’d LIKE to keep up to date, but the sorry combination of budget and total lack of fashion sense are more than a bit of a handicap.  Yes, I have a fashion disability.  Shouldn’t that translate into guv’ment money and the head of the line somewhere?

Yesterday’s April Fool Project was the brainstorm of (who else) Mr. Teacher, and here is the rundown of the hoax:

Mr. Teacher  posted “Reasonable” Math Problems at I Want to Teach Forever.

Mr. D posted Use a Dartboard to Review Geometry and Probability at Mrs. Bluebird’s Classroom.

Mrs. Bluebird posted Molly the Manager at Successful Teaching.

Loonyhiker posted Looks aren’t Everything here at Scheiss Weekly.

I posted “Adult” means “Dirty” at Look at My Happy Rainbow!

Halpey posted Q is for Quickie Mart Clerk? on Learn Me Good.

Hope you enjoyed this fun little activity! If you did, please leave a comment or two!