Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
There’s this passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, [...]

By Thoreau
I was talking to some bleeding hearts this evening, venting my frustrations about having so many woefully-unprepared students in my classes.  I argued that if you cannot write a coherent sentence, you should not be in college.  If you cannot do simple algebra you should not be studying engineering in college.  Yes, I’m aware [...]

By Thoreau
There are people on both teams who would like to go on about the (actual or perceived) religious beliefs held by the other team’s candidate.  There’s probably more on one team than the other, but you’ll find them on both teams.  It has been pointed out to me, however, that both teams have a [...]

By Thoreau
I don’t usually try to find the cheapest thing possible.  I generally start shopping around and check a few popular vendors (in meatspace or cyberspace, depending on the situation) that are operating in (reasonably) competitive circumstances, and check a few info sources.  I know that when I check these obvious things I’m probably overlooking [...]

By Thoreau
A federal judge has blocked enforcement of the detention provisions of the NDAA.  What’s most chilling is that the  judge was willing to rule that the plaintiffs (writers and activists who had  not been detained under the NDAA) had no standing and dismiss the case, but only if the Justice Department would concede that [...]

By Thoreau
OK, enough griping about my salary and my sub-standard students.  Now the good side, and also a response to the torch-and-pitchfork brigade of a few months ago.
So far my involvement in a local professional society has resulted in 3 students making contacts and receiving job offers from local companies.  One of the students is [...]

By Thoreau
I’m going to quote a lab report verbatim:
REDACTED BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN SOMEBODY WILL GET NITPICKY IN THEIR INTERPRETATION OF FERPA
You don’t have to know any physics to see the problems with these sentences.  This student doesn’t get spelling, parts of speech, punctuation, and other basic things.  Also, I should note that this [...]

By Thoreau
A new study finds that:
We find that teaching a wider variety of courses and devoting more time to teaching results in a significant wage penalty, even when research productivity is carefully controlled.
I might add that, if you were to look at salaries among the past several hires in my department, higher research productivity also [...]

By Thoreau
Emergency Mathematical Hologram advances the evil, uncivilized, unenlightened view that colleges, even those that “only” provide the first 2 years of a 4-year college program, should not have to teach students how to add fractions.  I propose immediate deportation to Siberia for this heathen.
What warms my heart is that this evil, unenlightened, politically incorrect [...]

By Thoreau
I’ve encountered some people who were unimpressed by Obama finally announcing his support for gay marriage.  Me, I think it says something positive about how far we’ve gone that giving a speech in favor of gay marriage is considered an unimpressive, tepid, and not-courageous thing for a general election candidate to do in an [...]