I’m working on the department website, which is doing a lovely job of helping train me up for other things.

I find that the approach I prefer is to talk to the office: “okay, how is it done now? How do you want it to work?”

And then to talk to the tech: “okay, this is what we want it to do.”

And it seems inefficient—why don’t they just talk to each other? But I feel as though I have the sort of structural mind that has a understanding of what we can demand of technology, and how things might be streamlined, while also having a sense of what the office needs, and what people will need from it.

Plus, the old system produced some seriously inefficient crap. Let’s try it my way for a while.

Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told Yahoo! News that the photo choice was simply the “most interesting image available”:

“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

No, that’s not a gender-neutral standard. You work in news and don’t understand how hard it is for images of people to be gender-neutral?

Incidentally, looking forward to the dissertations on Palin’s use of Facebook.

“Fit” is not a new idea, but I rather like this new-to-me analogy for it:

In a fancy restaurant, the difference between any old waitress and the best may be worth a thousand dollars a night in happy customers who’ll not only tip well, but recommend the place, and return often.

On the other hand, the kind of perceptive human who can do all those things consistently, who happens to work at a 7-11 — well, there’s a limit to how much value such a food server can add there. If you’re very attentive and customer-service oriented in that setting, how many extra slurpees can you really sell? I’m thinking it would be tough to realize the same kind of value, owing to the setting.

So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Written by a platoon commander in 1916, as described and reprinted in the conclusion of Niall Ferguson’s book The Pity of War (p. 438). The third and fourth lines of this poem are the things I remember best from studying for my comprehensive exams.

Happy Veteran’s Day, and thanks.

Happy Armistice Day and Remembrance Day.

Grief and mourning for Fort Hood.

• you get to walk home past all the students in the bars.
• you see two raccoons.
• you briefly forget you have cats on arriving home.

The best dancer in the halau just brought her eleven-day old son to practice. I’m pretty sure she only missed last week’s class, meaning she was in class three days before delivering.

But she’s not in my class. She’s in the advanced troupe, and only comes to my class as an apprentice teacher. Her other children are 8, 7, 5, and 3, and she does hula two nights a week, with occasional performances. Wow.

A woman who is in my class—her husband just died two days ago. She was in class, helping organize for the concert in two weeks, offering to let dancers from the halau an hour away stay at her house. I mean, she says she needs to keep busy, but my goodness!

Also, my arms are seriously sore. Here, try this. Hold your hands up to your chest, with your elbows straight out, below your shoulders and about level with your breasts. Now, you can do whatever you want with your hands, but don’t let your elbows drop any lower than that.

For about the next ten minutes.

On and off for two hours.

–Facebook status update, 10pm last night.

Here’s the sad part. These accomplishments consisted of:

• an excellent and productive meeting with students to get feedback on issue x
• getting permission to put on a workshop related to issue x
• getting permission to set up a program related to issue x
• getting permission to organize a course related to issue x

So, nothing was actually produced or done, yet it felt like a good day’s work.

The terrible part is—getting permissions was a big accomplishment. For months, I’ve been trying to get my chair to agree to the workshop, and having the go-ahead to get things done is a huge first step.

I guess that’s how admin works.

Nationality in running counts. It’s why many identify Kenya as the land of the long distance champions.

Really? I thought it was Ethiopia. You meant “biology”, Mr. Rovell, not “nationality”.

But, seriously, this is a ridiculous article, full of sloppy thinking, non-existent research, and terrible sportsmanship.

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998
…
The positive sign was that some American-born runners did extremely well in yesterday’s men’s race.

If any of them stand on the top step of the podium in Central Park one day, that’s when I’ll break out my red, white and blue.

This is an easy target because it’s so simple to make the case for Keflezighi as an American in both law and culture, since he moved here when he was 12. And that’s how most of the commenters make it. Some clearly knowledgeable people put quite a lot of weight on Keflezighi’s training in the American running system. Rovell also shot himself in the foot by harking back to the 1982 champion—Rovell doesn’t mention his name, but it’s Alberto Salazar, who isn’t at all black but was born in Cuba (oops! so it’s racist, not just xenophobic and jingoistic). Lots more take-downs around the web.

Okay, other angles. It’s not so clear whether everyone would reject Rovell’s argument for someone who came to the US after developing a running career. Some certainly would—those people liken Keflezighi to the non-citizens in our armed forces.

But Rovell’s even more of an idiot:

Americans haven’t had much success in the marathon. Many cite lack of motivation as the root of our troubles, as in our best athletes devote their lives to sports where they can make big money instead of collecting the relatively small paychecks that professional running offers.

Wait, what? Really? I mean, I’m not a sportswriter and Darren Rovell is, but since he’s already established himself as talking garbage here, I feel free to talk out of my ass too.

“Best athletes” is not a predictor for marathon success.

Yes, I bet football and basketball seduce some potential track and field stars. I’m trying to picture a single player in the NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL who would be any good at the marathon, which generally favors people with a relatively thin, light frame. Not any golfers. Maybe some tennis players or swimmers? Honestly, what big money sport could be siphoning athletes away from high-profile marathon running?

hat tip @academicdave. Edited 10 minutes after posting to clarify accusations of racism.

Dishcloth sampler #1. You can’t tell, but the bumpy part in the middle is a disastrous attempt at seed stitch that looks better here than in real life. There’s a yarnover thing I hadn’t figured out.

Dishcloth sampler #1 redux.

Dishcloth sampler #2. Much better. I designed the pattern stitches myself. My sister proclaimed me ready to move onto a hat. That was while we were in Hawaii. I started the hat, but have done nothing on it since I left my sister’s house. I’m pretending it’s because my cats will attack string, but really it’s because I’d rather play around on the internet to keep my hands busy. That’s okay, because I’m knitting a hat for her kid, but she isn’t even pregnant yet, and I designed the hat way too large. So if I finish it in about four years, it’s probably fine.

Not once did I think ‘Let me examine the gender, class and race implications of my brown self being here while these doctors and nurses look at me hold his lily white hand.’

A friend’s department was having some issues around the ethno-racial climate among the graduate students in the department. Undesirable things had been said. The reports specifically mentioned conversations held in the graduate student lounge while people hung out talking on the sofa.

At the faculty meeting, one professor proposed: so get rid of the sofa.

This is totally not about my career. Rather, it’s about my hair.

I cut it all off. So, I went from long (past my shoulders) dark curly hair to short (ear-length) curly hair, a length I have only seen on my head in baby pictures. And from wearing it off my forehead to having bangs.

Anyhow, it’s not just that I have to move the accumulation of hairsticks and hairclips into a box since I will not be wearing them for a while. And switch out wide headbands for thin ones.

It’s also that, with less hair, I seem to need less eyebrow. And more earring, and more necklace.

And also that, for the first time in my even remotely professional life, I have few options. Previously, I was able to wear my hair up in a bun to seem older, adding chopsticks to seem edgy, letting it down to go out at night, adding decorated clips for special occasions, putting it in a messy ponytail for the gym, and so forth.

Now, no matter what, I’ve just got a mop of ringlets. Insouciant, a colleague said.

In the end, I wrote a fake encyclopedia entry for “Old English language” and instructed them to correct all the mistakes and add any major omissions. The students moaned and carried on when I handed it out, but as I told them, the whole point of the class is for them to be able to read critically down the road. Nothing would make me happier than if, 10 years from now, they read some incorrect claim about the history of the language and said, “Wait a second, that’s not right.”

What are your thoughts on whether it’s appropriate for students to say the n-word in class, when quoting a important source that uses it?

I think I yelled at a student (ETA: not for that—after dealing with the n-word issue). I felt obliged to emphasize to all the students that there are many contexts in which the n-word would not be appropriate, even when quoting, because it has acquired a taboo status in American culture.

And then I went off on the student doing the presentation for being elitist, and for having major inconsistencies in the way the project is set up (ETA: and talked to him after for 5 minutes after that—that was the possible yelling). Incidentally, I wasn’t even the professor, just covering a class for a friend in the department.

(Student, luckily, likes to be challenged and has already forgiven me. But it’s a bit odd, to be expecting to be calmly, coolly teaching and suddenly find myself all passionate. Left me a bit frazzled.)

I went to the cafe and the cashier had just noticed the woman before me had left her ATM card. I had just seen the same woman crossing the street—she had two kids in a double stroller—so I ran after her and gave it back. She wasn’t moving very fast.

And, I was only at that cafe because my thesis student gave me a giftcard for it. It’s Pay it Forward, in action!