The Drive Home

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I live about 15 minutes from the city limits. That means that part of my drive includes highway, secondary highway, and country roads, paved and not.

One of the things I love about the drive home is that during the last 30 minutes or so of the drive there are only 2 intersections with traffic lights. For the last 10 miles or so there are none.

On a good night, I feel myself starting to unwind as soon as I leave the city lights.

On a good day, the turn off of the main highways signals the last and funnest part of the drive. I realized today that not many people get to do this. I am grateful that I get to.

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AVATAR could have had a MUCH better ending.

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Na'vi max small

(C) 2010 M.Parker

SPOILER ALERT:

If you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t already know how it goes (and can’t guess) then DON’T read this post. I won’t tell you exactly how it ends, but guessing will be child’s play after reading this.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved this movie. I’m listening to the soundtrack right now. It was visually stunning. Beautiful. Could easily develop a fantasy crush on one or two of the Na’vi men.

BUT……

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How important is it for teaching faculty to actually know how to teach (and to actually care about the success of their students)?

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Thanks Mark for once again posting something that makes me think (and that gives me an opportunity to tough on a favorite topic: the importance of teaching quality in higher ed).

Boredom vs. Failure Part 2: The New Demographic

From Mark’s post: “What’s striking about these four results is the huge difference for students with low knowledge.  Doing it right matters a lot for these students.  What’s also striking is how it doesn’t make much difference for the high knowledge students.  In fact, in the first experiment, the low-knowledge students even did better than the high knowledge students when given integrated text plus illustrations.”

I’ve always assumed that the good students don’t really need us – they will do fine no matter what. They possess good & varied adaption & learning skills so it doesn’t matter if the instructor is boring, selfish, stuck in the 19th century, or just plain stupid. The good students will learn what they need to. That’s why it’s not much of an accomplishment when a school only lets in the best and they all succeed (well, duh). Student success in those schools says very little about the teaching quality of the faculty.

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Is it wrong to buy publications from grad students and pass them off as your own?

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Apparently it is in China – if you get caught.

Chinese academia ghost-writing ‘widespread’

This BBC article claims that “More than $100m (£63m) changes hands in China every year for ghost-written academic papers, according to research by a Chinese university.”

As I see it, the only thing that really distinguishes this crime from the all too common practice of claiming authorship for everything one’s own grad students do is that the grad students weren’t yours.

There are plenty of academics who routinely add their names to everything their grad students publish. I personally know a science department where a good number of the faculty get most of their publications without ever having to write a word. Yet THAT practice rarely gets questioned. WHY? They didn’t do the work. They merely paid to support the grad student. If I follow that same logic, does that mean any publication I get while being paid by the university must bear the name of the person who approves my paycheque?

I realize there is huge pressure to publish, but the truth is, if people stopped bowing to that pressure and actually claimed credit ONLY for the work they actually did, then the problem would sort itself out as most of the so-called “high fliers” do very little of their own work or writing.

Academia needs to get back to real, honest work. Honestly is supposed to be our most cherished value. Most academics these days are as corrupt as the students they claim to despise – you know those who cheat their way through school.

If Academics actually practiced what they preached, we’d be far better off.

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How are You Helping the Planet?

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We are making a mess of our planet. Whether you are a “believer” in the so-called ‘settled science’ of Climate Change or one of those heretics that the Movement derisively refers to as a ‘denialist’, most people would agree, however grudgingly, that we need to change how we use the world if we want to survive as a species. (Note: The world itself will survive. The question is whether or not we will, and what species are we going to take with us to extinction.)

Hexxus

Hexxus

Among the Believers, there is often an assumption that this is a binary issue: one either subscribes to the preachings of the moneyed Climate Scientists (which apparently includes agreeing not to question the “science”), or one is under the influence of Big Oil  (lead, no doubt by Hexxus, made famous in Ferngully).

Some of us do not wish to be associated with either group, thank you very much.

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New Year’s Resolutions

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We make them every year – at least, many of us do. The whole notion has been so maligned that some of us have taken to keeping them private.

What’s wrong with making New Year’s resolutions? It’s as good a time as any, and a date that most of us can easily remember.

It’s a time to think back, take stock, and strive to do better. That’s what they’re about, aren’t they? If I really gave it some thought, I could come up with a very long list, but I think a shorter list is easier to focus on.

In that spirit, here are mine (NOT in order of importance – that’s a whole different can of worms):

  1. Lose 15 lb.
  2. Have more fun.
  3. Laugh more.
  4. Forgive faster.
  5. Judge less.
  6. Write more blog entries. (Actually, that could be write more just generally.)
  7. Finish writing the 5 books I’m working on.
  8. Pay more attention to the people who matter to me.
  9. Get rid of some of the clutter.
  10. Find meaningful work that also pays well.

Stay tuned…

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Another nail in the coffin….and another step away from being natural.

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Ranching, recreation collide in the great outdoors

By Nicholas Riccardi, LA TimesNovember 27, 2009

The mountain biker was excited about her big race in Colorado’s wilderness. And nothing irked the sheepherder like the sports crowd. It was a disaster waiting to happen…

Working Dogs

Working Dogs

Many people seem to believe that every natural place should be available for recreation, and that all other uses should defer to them.

People who try to raise animals ethically and naturally repeatedly come under fire, but I don’t see all of North America going vegan any time soon, so eventually, the ONLY way left to raise animals for meat will be through factory farms. That means all of our meat (and the billions and billions of other animals products that end up in almost everything we touch) will be ‘rendered’ by enormous corporations headquartered in urban centers who care primarily about the bottom line, and who have powerful lobbies that ensure that NO-ONE sees what they really do – only how cheap it is to buy a McNugget or a Big Mac, and how smoooooth their skin feels after using their creams.

Here’s another scenario:

  1. The sheep rancher’s dogs will be put to death for doing their job.
  2. The sheep rancher will go out of business because the local predators will eat too many of his sheep.
  3. The wolves, coyotes, and cougars who have been keeping their distance because of the livestock guarding dogs will now move into the territory.
  4. Some hapless tourist will get attacked and possibly killed by a cougar.
  5. Trigger happy (dare I say it? bloodthirsty) hunters will demand the ‘freedom’ to go in and get rid of those terrible savage animals, and the urbanites will let them.
  6. Top level predators will be wiped out from the area, but the tourists will have safe passage (for a time).
  7. Prey animals will multiply until they either become diseased or starve due to overpopulation.
  8. The entire district will get paved over to become a new residential neighbourhood, or become a  tightly controlled “ranchland” where cattle (owned by giant corporations) change the landscape forever. All remnants of what it used to be will be gone.

That’s better, isn’t it? Who cares about the prairie chicken anyways – ya can’t make McNuggets out of ’em. The only things that REALLY matter is that we continue to be able to get cheap food, we get to recreate where ever and however we please (freedom and all that, right?) and that the NRA rules.

How different the story might have been if only someone had done the neighbourly thing and inform the ranger of the event.  His dogs (and probably his sheep) would have been confined for the day. No-one would have been hirt, and there would have been no story.

Too bad we don’t get to hear more about the non-stories – those that DON’T result in a trip to the hospital…..

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…a short and miserable life…

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One of those "free-range" turkeys.
My husband and I had dinner with a friend last night whom we both like and respect a great deal. He’s a decent, smart man and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him. We talked about many things, among them our attitudes about the human use of animals. My friend is a vegan, and we’re not. I had no intention of trying to convince my friend to change his ways, and I am pretty sure he had no intention of changing mine. We are all the sorts of people who think deeply about things and do not make lifestyle decisions like what to eat or not eat without thinking about what that might mean.

In many ways our lives are very different – my friend lives in New York City and I live on a farm nestled in the eastern foothills of the Canadian Rockies. I didn’t ask, but I don’t think my friend has any pets or other animals who share his life. I have many animals, most of which I use in one way or another. I adore my animals and would find a life without them impoverished indeed. However, (and here’s the rub) sometimes, I eat one of my animals.

I struggle with the moral issues involved and so I continued to think about this after dropping our friend off at his hotel. My husband and I talked about it on the way home. I thought about it while falling asleep and again in the morning. I try very hard to be logical and reasonable in my arguments. I like to think of myself as an ethical person (I gave up a 23 year career over principles). I suspect I may not have succeeded in being entirely logical on this one. But neither did my friend.

This morning, I found this in the New York Times, so I thought I’d respond. I suspect my friend subscribes to some of the arguments made below, but I don’t know if he subscribes to all of them. In any case this is not directed at him specifically. Rather it is an attempt to pull the camera back to show more of the picture. It ‘s more complicated than people want to think. Unless you are prepared to live in the wilderness completely off the grid, being a vegan, even a strict ethical one, does not spare you from having animals killed on your behalf.  Fewer to be sure, but they still die for you.

New York Times Op-Ed Contributor
Animal, Vegetable, Miserable
By GARY STEINER
Published: November 22, 2009
The free-range turkey debate ignores whether it’s wrong to kill animals for human consumption at all.

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22steiner.html

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