Monthly Archives: November 2009

Too much to do

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Grading out the wazoo. Took today off. Spent 15 minutes decluttering the house. Kitchen is picked up but didn’t make much of a dent elsewhere.

I’m stressing big time. I have about 20 hours of grading. We’re going to Celtic Christmas tomorrow. That will be fun. So I have Saturday. Then Sunday I will be driving E back to Austin.

I don’t have time to grade for 20 hours.

I guess that answers my question of do I want to teach seven classes next fall. The answer is no.

I’m behind on stuff I really need to get done.

X, Y, Z

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xylograph: a print made from a wood block, or a wood engraving
xerography: method of reproducing illustrations, text, etc., electrostatically, by attraction of ink powder to positively charged sheet of selenium metal.
xoanon primitive wooden statue overlaid with ivory and gold
xylopyrography engraving designs on wood with hot poker

xanthocroid: a fair haired, pale skinned person

xanthous: red or yellow haired
xylophilous fond of wood; living in or on wood

XML: extensible markup language

xenagogue guide; someone who conducts strangers

xenophilia love of foreigners

xystus covered walkway for exercises

For Y, I am thankful for:
You. Especially if you are my friends or family.
Yesterday. It was a blessing and I am grateful to be able to remember it (vaguely). All yesterdays are a blessing, because it means there is a today and a tomorrow.
(stolen from my friend Gail) “the color yellow, without it daisies and daffodils would not dance the same”
Yams
Yule time
Yogurt

Thanks-giving

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a= Angie and Amy, two of the best friends ever
b= Beverly
c= children
d= Dad, dog, Serenity Jane Avatar
e= E, my eldest
thanksgiving_cornucopiaf= family
g= God
h= home
i= Indian heritage and jewelry
j= Jesus, my sister J
k= Kim, K, where I live
l= love
m= M, my youngest, mothers, especially mine
n= nieces and nephew
o= ovens
p= Paula, parents
q=
r= R, my husband
s= Steph
t= today, tomorrow, trees
u= unity, understanding
v= veterans
w= water
x= xrays
y= youth
z= zealous friends

Working

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I am in a time of stress. So is R. That’s not good. We’re supposed to take turns being stressed and not both be stressed at the same time.

I have TONS of grading to do. I also have an abstract for a chapter to write. And a book to review. And an article for a magazine. Priorities…. should be the grading and the magazine. Perhaps I can talk to M tomorrow about the article. He’s read the books recently and we could talk together. This is not a scholarly article, but it will be published internationally, which is cool.

Grading: I need to finish something easy. So… I will record the homework grades for Business Writing and finish marking the research papers for Developmental English.

God, grant me peace and relief from stress. Help me to be a better wife, mother, daughter, and child of yours. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“Too Many People” is a Lie.

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Spiked has an article on the history of Malthusians. Great stuff. Of course, I’m an anti-malthusian, so I would say so. But there is history, census data from a thousand years, and some good quotes. Plus there are some good arguments, too.

And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met.

U, V, W: I give thanks for

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Thank you, God, for these things which begin with U:
Unicorn stories.
my uncles (Gene, Jimmy, Frank, Lon, Guy, and Hal)
my great-uncles (Cleo and Ward- There are two others but one went missing after WWII on the trip home and I never met the other one.)
Umbrellas, especially huge ones that keep me from getting soaked while also protecting my backpack full of teaching materials.
United States.
Underwoods.
Unity.
Understanding.

For V, I am grateful, in particular, for:
Veterans.
Vacations,
vaccines (esp. for small pox -which is gone- and polio- which effected so many),
vehicles- so we can go more places than we can walk
vacuum cleaners, especially when my husband is using it (SEXY!).
Valentines… I remember those white boxes from elementary school
my cousin Valerie
vegetables
vegetarians (like my sons)
vegetarian lettuce wraps at PFChangs

I am blessed with Ws in my life, such as:
Watermelon,
weeping willows,
wishing wells,
women,
wonder bras.
Whiskers on kittens…
Water
washing machines
being a wife
waterfalls
West Texas

Summer School

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I will be teaching second summer session for Business at my college. Good money. Wish class ended earlier, though, so I’d have more of a break between semesters.

But at least I am able to go on my summer conferences.

Grading

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I have SO MUCH grading to do. Next semester Freshman Composition is doing their research papers first. It’ll be a true hurdle, but it will be well worth the effort to get them out of the way before the end of the semester.

Bus Writ: 20 8-page papers
Soph Writ: 40 15-page papers
Fresh Comp: 30 5-page papers
Basic Writ: 10 4-page papers

Yes, I didn’t plan them this way, but when there were problems, the papers moved later in the semester.

New Technology

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German History doc on new technology.

“Uncle Gustav owns a lamp that you can put on the table lengthways and nothing catches fire.” One day my brother came home from the city with these words, and to me they announced for the first time the advent of electric lighting. We had grown up with kerosene lamps; in the middle of the long hallway between the living rooms on the one side and the bedrooms and kitchen on the other was a narrow table upon which lamps were lined up like grenadiers. At the head was father’s study lamp with the green lamp-shade. When it got dark he would light it himself, after smoothing out the wick so that it would not smoke. Attached to the wall were lamps without lamp-shades, behind which round brass discs reflected the light. They were reserved for the corridor, the staircase, and the kitchen. Apart from that, there were insert lamps for the chandeliers, the largest one for the lamp above the dining table, where we sat even after supper, as father read to us, while we drew or carved, or pasted stamps in slip-folds into the album. Those were cozy hours, and though the lighting was not very effective, it emitted a dim but agreeable warmth. I cannot even imagine the novels our father read to us without the kerosene lamp – Gustav Freytag’s Ahnen, Viktor von Scheffel’s Ekkehard, and Fritz Reuter’s Ut mine Stromtid.

The kerosene, which always left its unpleasant smell in the hallway, was now banished. First there were chandeliers and wall lamps with gas flames that often hissed alarmingly so that you never knew whether the house was going to explode the next minute. But then we, too, got electric light. It was unpleasantly bright; because it was so expensive, after all, one did not think of dimming the bulbs or hiding them behind lamp-shades. One element of comfort ceased to exist. And yet: we had the new lighting now and went with the trend. Father, though, kept his study lamp; for we had stove heating that cooled down at night so that the heat radiating from the kerosene lamp felt good.

At about the same time the first telephones arrived in Weimar. Such a telephone did not sit on the table but was attached to the wall and was turned on with a crank. As I accompanied father to the Gothaische Bank one day, where he deposited some savings each month that would later pay for his sons’ university studies, the bank clerk showed me the new invention and lifted me onto a chair in order to make a phone call. But I did not know whom to call or what to say. So he put me through to the hotel “Zum Elefanten,” instructing me to simply ask whether Director Müller from Berlin had already arrived and surely the porter would give me an answer, allowing me to hear his voice from the distance. I was overwhelmed with astonishment and delight at this incredible occurrence. As we left the bank, I snuck from my father straight to the “Elefant” at the market square. It took me at least four or five minutes to cover the distance, and yet the porter’s voice had reached my ear the instant he had spoken at the hotel. Our father then bought us a toy that had recently come into fashion, a children’s telephone. It consisted of a cardboard frame covered with parchment and a long string between the discs. My brother and I each had our own special tree in the garden, from which we could easily talk to one another. But now one of us held the new instrument to his ear, the other to his mouth, and we tried to communicate by means of the string. This was certainly much more difficult than simple conversation beforehand, but it was technical and up-to-date.

Global Warming Cont’d

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Bishop Hill blog has a run down of potentially or should-be damaging emails.

I am only quoting those which offend me as an academic particularly. It all offends me.

Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers – Saiers was subsequently ousted]
…
Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)

Global Climate Change

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We have been reading on this in my freshman class. As usual, most of the class is “Yes, global warming is a problem that humans have caused.”

Do you think some of those leaked emails would change their minds?

The leaked data is real. I don’t think the guy understood what he was admitting.

Hockey Stick Graph references.

In an embarrassing blow to the movement to combat global warming, hackers have posted hundreds of e-mails from a world-renowned British institute that show researchers colluding to exaggerate warming and undermine skeptics.

It’s an “embarrassing blow?” It’s not outright lies and fabrications? You can see that reality hasn’t hit the Boston Herald yet.

Global warming is NOT a problem if these guys were colluding, exaggerating, and lying.

What about Gore?

in 2007, a British High Court judge ruled that Gore’s film contained nine significant errors and should no longer be screened in schools unless accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views.

The film’s “apocalyptic vision” was not an impartial analysis of climate change, High Court Judge Michael Burton said, adding that the film is “substantially founded up scientific research and fact” but that the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.”

Buoyed by the ruling, two Irish journalists — Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney — released a documentary in which they gather evidence outlining the damage of global warming hysteria. In “Not Evil Just Wrong,” they challenge the claims made in Gore’s film and conclude that the film is not worth screening in schools because it is shown there as “an article of science, not faith.”

And this was happening before the hackers:

German scientists from the Liebnitz Institute for Marine Studies and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology led the way, admitting that “global warming is taking a break,” referring to the increasingly widespread acknowledgment that for the last decade temperatures have remained stable and that over the last 40 years the level of overall warming is considerably lower than previously claimed.

in Global Warming Fraud Exposed.

The hacker emails were mentioned in the NYTimes, but overall they are being ignored by the MSM in the US.

However, the Brits continue to discuss it.

The Telegraph says:

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

And, as an academic, I am appalled at the ways they discuss to limit peer review and take down a legitimate journal.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

Right On.

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The Anchoress on climate change.

I will be ashamed if my readers did not already know (as we have discussed for years) that the Global Warming Hoax was/is, as we have always know it to be, a hoax. An effort to defraud nations and assist in the tireless (and creative) leftist international movement

Or, that seems to be the general trend of the news.

One suspects this hacking had much to do with the sudden collapse of the world-wide global warming boondoggle and economic manipulation and “global management” movements that have been so wildly trumpeted by international scallywags of all stripes and ambitions.

Aren’t you glad, now, that the moron cowboy saw through it and was smart enough to keep us out of the unworkable and failed Kyoto treaty, despite worldwide pressure and ceaseless hysteria from the moron press?

Big Lizards on marital-phobic Dems.

“Yes, this structure can create a ‘marriage penalty’ for some couples. It also creates a ‘marriage bonus’ for others,” [Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman] said. “A married couple with one wage earner can earn up to $250,000 without facing this higher tax, whereas a single person in the same job with the same pay would be hit by it.”

But a married couple in which each earner makes $150,000 would be hit with the tax, whereas an unmarried couple living together with the same incomes would not.

Thanks Q, R, S, T

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Thanks, God, for the following (among many others) that begin with Q.
Quirks of my friends,
questions that show my students are learning,
queries from old friends,
quantum physics since it shows we don’t know everything,
quarters because they are shiny and let me buy sodas, quizzes because I am a navel gazer.
Quilts to curl up in
quickies…( had to throw that in!)

And that begin with R.
Ron.
Romance.
Reading.

and S
Sex. Shoes. Sleep. Showers.
All the Stephanies in my life. Sisters. Sandwiches. Soda pop. Sunrises. Sunsets. Sweet smells. Sunshine.
Something my husband said that made me remember where I had stashed the grades for those papers I had graded and lost grades for.

and, finally for today, anyway, T
Traffic. My mom called this morning to tell me it was backed up for hours because of a one-car fatality. It reminded me that I need to be grateful for staying out of wrecks and having relatively light traffic to get to work.
Toys for tots. Go, Marines!
Thanksgiving. To remind me of what I am grateful for.
Trees. Especially old live oaks and great big maples in the fall.
Treasure. Toy treasure for little kids. Treasured heirlooms for grown-ups. Treasure in Heaven.
Today.
Tomorrow.

Maybe It IS Me

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I was in a perfectly good mood, not great, but good.

Then I got home from going to the grocery store because my son has “no food” in the house. I can’t even fit all the groceries in the two pantries because they are so full of food. The freezer is full now. And at least half the food in the freezer is his.

What is up with that? What does he mean “there is no food”?

I think what it meant was he didn’t have any soda pop. I am less than thrilled.

Economic Effects of Religion

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From the Boston Globe comes an interesting article, “The Curious Economic Effects of Religion.”

Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.
…
Religion can, quite directly, affect what you earn – fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States tend to have lower savings rates and incomes than members of other religions, in part because they have larger families and give away more of their money.
…
Similarly, literacy seems clearly connected with economic development, and mass literacy is a Protestant invention, says Robert D. Woodberry, a sociologist at University of Texas at Austin [italics mine -ed]. He has mapped how missionaries spread literacy, technology, and civic institutions, and finds that those correlate strongly with economic growth. He argues in part that this helps explain why the once-poor but largely Protestant United States surpassed rich, Catholic Mexico after 1800.

Fascinating stuff.

Thanks Giving for M, N, O, and P.

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Things I am thankful for that begin with M.
Micah. My mom. Mothers in general. Julian of Norwich’s designation of Christ as mother. Macaroni and cheese. Mathematics majors (like Elijah). Mornings. Mashed potatoes made by grandmothers who are willing to peel ten pounds of taters every morning for their grandbabies. Mashed potatoes made by my grandma-in-law. Morning glories. Munchkins. Massive breakthroughs in pretty much anything. Macs. Memories.

Some things I am thankful for that begin with O.
Nieces and nephews.
Nuts. Nativity. Nativity scenes. Nachos. Necklaces. News, especially when it’s good. Narcotics for those who need them for pain control. Nations. Norse mythology, because it makes for rollicking good stories.

What I am thankful for that starts with O.
My first thought was opera glasses. My great grand left a pair that are made of mother of pearl and actual pearl. Very fancy.

Oranges,
olives (because Terra’s kids love them),
old things,
the color orange (which I painted my high school bedroom),
ocelots (because they are Paul G’s favorite animal),
the oval office (because it means we have a republic rather than a monarchy or dictatorship),
onions (because there’s a silly family story on those),
owls (so homeschoolers like the Daubs can dissect their poop),
ovens (so we can cook and artists like Don can make pottery)

Old stories. Today I found out that my Grama Alice, my grampa Guy’s mother, was on the orphan train and adopted by a rich widow/single woman. She had all she could ever want. So she ran off with a baseball player, who abandoned her regularly to play professional baseball (Edward Householder). When he left her, she wouldn’t go home. She had four huge baby boys to care for. At one point she worked in the dance halls in Fresno, which my mom says she just heard on the history channel, were the outlet of the Mafia in CA at the time. She eventually moved to Arizona and worked in the Grand Canyon at the ranch at the bottom, until it became a national park and they threw them out. Then she and my Grampa Tommy (her second husband) ran a hotel in Flagstaff.

P things that make me happy/grateful.
Parents. Pictures. Photographs. Popcorn. Pansies. Peanuts, especially with lots of salt. Pretzels, especially from Wetzels Pretzels. People in general. Presents, especially surprises wrapped in beautiful paper. Poems. Poignant love letters. Parasols.