The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
So I’m cruising down the highway and here comes a truck emblazoned with a landscaper’s business name, motto, and phone number. The company motto:
You’re hired, pal!
1 Comment left at iWeb site
LOL!
Isn’t it sad?
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 – 06:21 PM
A query from one of my honored students:
I am wondering why the rough draft for the proposals are being graded on grammar content. I was always under the impression rough drafts do not worry about grammar content and areforgathering your thoughts together for the final draft.
Nowhere in the course materials does the slightest suggestion appear that any of the six writing assignments are “rough drafts.” Could there be a reason that I wrote and posted not one, not two, not three, but four reviews of basic grammar and style matters, and that I gave not one, not two, but three exams on that material? Might there be some reason that I posted rubrics explaining how papers would be graded on basic grammar and style, among several standards? Could there be a reason that I posted an example of copy graded in that way and told students to look at it so they would know what was expected? And might I have had some motive for putting this passage into the syllabus?
For writing assignments, writers start with 100 points; points are subtracted for various crimes and misdemeanors. For example, each Basics Review error, redundancy, or verbosity costs 2 points; logical lapses and organizational flaws, 4 points; citation errors, 6 points; and so forth. See the document titled “Essay Scoring List,” posted in Course Documents on our BlackBoard site, for a full description of deductible errors.
Or this, in the assignments handout?
Writing projects start at 100 points and challenge writers to maintain the highest possible score by creating papers that are well written, logically argued, and free of basic grammar, punctuation, and style errors. Points are deducted for specific kinds of errors, described in the Essay Scoring List, posted in “Course Information.”
Naaaahhhh. I must’ve done that just to hear my brains rattle.
“. . . the rough draft are being graded . . .”
“grammar content”
“. . . drafts do not worry about . . .”
What? Me, worry?
Stand by, all you entrepreneurs! This young fellow will soon graduate and show up at your door asking for a job. Awe-inspiring, isn’t it?
Comments from iWeb site:
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Dear student: Why are you turning in rough drafts?
Micah sometimes runs into that when he assigns a paper and then an expanded version of the same paper. He does it so they will have a better chance of learning from their mistakes…but yeah.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 – 09:15 AM
Many schemes to extend the life of cut flowers are out there. One of the most popular is to add Sprite or a similar clear soft drink to the water.
A technique that’s free: put ice in the water.
Using a sharp nipper or knife, trim rose stems on an angle. Place the trimmed flowers in a jar or vase with cold water and ice.
Each day, nip a little off the stem ends—always at an angle—and refresh the vase with more cold water.
Since I can’t save at the gas pump ($51 yesterday for a Costco fill-up that recently cost $38!), maybe I can retrieve a few bucks from the swimming pool pump.
The Feds say you can save as much as 60% on your pool’s electric bill simply by cutting back the number of hours you run the pump. Well, I’ll believe that when I see the statement (and don’t see sheets of algae growing on the walls)…but I’m willing to give it a try. It sez here:
Pool pumps often run much longer than necessary. Circulating your pool’s water keeps the chemicals mixed and removes debris. However, as long the water circulates while chemicals are added, they should remain mixed. It’s not necessary to recirculate the water everyday to remove debris, and most debris can be removed using a skimmer or vacuum. Furthermore, longer circulation doesn’t necessarily reduce the growth of algae. Instead, using chemicals in the water and scrubbing the walls are the best methods.
Reduce your filtration time to 6 hours per day. If the water doesn’t appear clean, increase the time in half-hour increments until it does. In the Florida study, most people who reduced pumping to less than 3 hours per day were still happy with the water’s quality. On average, this saved them 60% of their electricity bill for pumping.
Hmm. I’ve always gone by the advice that six hours a day is the least you can run a pool pump without getting green water, and you need to run it longer in 100-degree heat, when the pool water turns bathtub-warm. It’s hard to believe that you could get away with three hours in Florida—though maybe so, in the winter.
I do cut back the hours to six in the wintertime, to no ill effect. Right now it’s set to run about seven hours. Let’s try shifting it back down to six for a week; then try five. It may mean you’d have to keep the chlorine level too high to swim safely, which is no trade-off. But if the system will stay stable with normal chemical levels and fewer pumping hours, bully!
Good luck with that. My dad co-owned a house with a pool before he got married and he told us it was just too expensive to consider.
Saturday, April 26, 2008 – 12:26 PM
Thanks to my rabid neighbor, costs of running the pool have been well within reason. Because he destroyed the entire system, my homeowner’s insurance paid to replaster the pool and install a new filter and pool cleaner, saving me about $10,000. It will be many years before any of that work has to be redone.
Meanwhile, I do the routine maintenance myself–it’s really easy. Costs of pool chemicals are modest, especially if you buy in bulk, and a comparison of power bills between this house and my last house, which was the same size but didn’t have a pool, suggests the cost of running the pump is about $15 a month. I’ve never paid more than $150 for a pool technician’s visit; most of the time a service call is $80.
None of this (so far) has been unaffordable. And I enjoy the pool so much, the costs to date have been worth it.
Sunday, April 27, 2008 – 08:08 AM
Today I’ve GOT to read student papers, having put it off way too long. Friday I finished the last raft at midnight, as new papers were pouring in. Yesterday I had the temerity to invite friends over, which required me to clean the shack as well as fixing an actual meal. And I made doing the proposed new client’s editing test a priority. This left a half-hour to read papers, sandwiched between the time all the work was done and the time my guests showed up…not long enough to read even one magnum opus.
Next week’s set of papers is the last of the semester. Thank God. Let’s hope it’s the last of my career. Reading incoherent, barely literate copy generated by university juniors and seniors is actually painful.
Here are some examples from the fourth iteration of the same assignment, a proposal that a local company establish an on-site child-care center:
Children learn best when they are actively involved in group activities and also encourages socialization to prepare them for elementary school and set them on a path of life-long learning.
Research has established that women, on average, do miss more work days than men and unscheduled absenteeism has nothing to do with illness as it has to do with family issues or personal needs.
Having sufficient child care will be helpful when the company has high volume periods and employees will be able to work overtime. This problem is evident with employees having to take personal time from their work to either pick up their children, or find sufficient care. Most child care facilities charge late fees for picking up their children late, and employees would have to leave early from their work to pick up their child at a certain time. This problem is caused by not having sufficient space to build a facility. Most corporations that are already built are surrounded by other buildings, and there is no space to build another place of business. No provision of child care for employees has been a known problem and has played a role in not meeting deadlines for projects.
A member of the same group recently posted a paper titled “Sumary.”
In about three weeks, the Great Desert University will confer the bachelor’s degree on authors of this C-minus material. Why are they passing? For the same reason my young plagiarists are passing: check it out. Add to that situation the fact that a very fine colleague short-listed for a position at a California university failed to get the job because of defamatory remarks posted on Rate My Professors, and you get the picture, eh? When hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions are made on the basis of popularity contests, one does what one can to keep the customers happy.
Interestingly, one of last night’s guests is a sociologist. She doesn’t even teach writing, yet she also used the word “painful” to describe the work of reading our marginally educated students’ efforts. It is painfully sad to see how badly America—or at least Arizona—has done by the last generation or two of its young people. Really, there’s no excuse for it.
Well, I’m glad I’m not waiting tables, soliciting people over the phone, cleaning house, or digging ditches. And I’m thankful I don’t have to risk my life fighting fires, even though a friend makes a very good living at that. But if I had to advise a young person about a future career, I’d tell her to stay away from university teaching unless she has a heart of steel. The problems in our educational system are so vast, there’s nothing a single person can do about them. If altruism is your life’s goal, there has to be someplace where you can make a difference.
How terribly depressing.
While part of me wants to call you on not standing alone in the drift, I can’t and won’t because I can see that the power of the current would knock you down before the first objection left your lips.
I wonder, though, what change could be implemented with an organized effort of educators who are like-minded.I’m not saying that you should throw caution to the wind and lead the charge yourself, but I’d like to see someone do it.
Preferably before Son starts school.Anyone want to take the reins sometime in the next sixteen months?Thanks.
Sunday, April 27, 2008 – 03:49 PM
IMHO, parents today have three choices:
Buy or rent in a decent school district and ride herd, every minute of every day, on the kids’ progress and on what goes on in their classrooms; also add plenty of extra educational enrichment at home in the form of books, magazines, field trips, and travel; or
Put your kids in private school and ride herd, every minute of every day, on the kids’ progress and on what goes on in their classrooms; also add plenty of extra educational enrichment at home in the form of books, magazines, field trips, and travel; or
Home-school your kids and ride herd, every minute of every day, on the kids’ progress; also add plenty of extra educational enrichment at home in the form of books, magazines, field trips, and travel.
At this point, it looks like educating your kids is largely up to you. Possibly it’s ever been thus.
Sunday, April 27, 2008 – 04:32 PM
One element in the Month of (not-so)Extreme Frugality involves the experiment of navigating the house after dark by candlelight.
This requires me to dig up some candles and to figure out how to use them to best effect.
I have a number of pillar candles. Some are scented. Personally, I dislike the odor of scented candles. However: the late Walt the Greyhound had, as most greyhounds do, a bit of a flatulence problem. The methane could get pretty thick in the house, especially when the air-conditioning was going and I couldn’t open doors and windows. One way I coped with that was by burning off the gas with flares-that is, candles. Perfumed candles stank less than Walt, and so I would pick up pillars on sale at places like Cost Plus and Pier One for use in the living room and bedroom.
The problem is, pillars don’t put out much light. In terms of candle-power, they’re not much better than a plug-in night light. They’ll do to keep you from stubbing your toe on the coffee table, but you can’t read by them.
Tapers, however, do work quite well for the purpose. In the candle drawer, I have eight tapers, plus the two stubs in the outdoor candle-holders that have resided on the back porch all winter. These aren’t gunna last a month. How to buy candles without spending more than the CFLs would run up on the electric bill?
There’s an Ikea down the freeway from the university, halfway to Tucson. They have candles, very cheap. I’ll drive over there some time in the next couple of weeks and buy a box or two. A round trip to Tempe costs $7; add another dollar or so for driving almost to Chandler. In yard sales, candles can be had for pennies, but that also requires you to spend gas driving around town. I could make them with beeswax, an easy project that produces candles free of ingredients from the chemistry lab.
Burning Gas to Burn Wax?
In green terms, I’m now beginning to have doubts about this candle scheme. While it may or may not be frugal for an individual—depending on how high the Salt River Project racks up our electric rates and how cheaply you can get your hands on candles—burning wax and string release carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. If everybody is burning candles every night, will this not consume more energy and release more greenhouse gasses than generating electricity at a central plant, where smokestack washers or hydroelectric power control the per-capita release of gasses?
What’s the carbon footprint of a candle? It takes heat to melt wax and power to run assembly lines and make dyes and perfumes, plus the raw materials have to be hauled to factories and the finished products delivered to market-probably from overseas. Even so-called “beeswax” sold in craft stores probably is not: how do you think they get those colors in beeswax sheets? It doesn’t come out of the hive colored pale blue. The stuff must simply be factory-made wax melted, colored, and poured into molds to produce hexagonally patterned sheets.
Now let us consider the dollar costs for the individual. Beeswax to make your own candles is pretty expensive, even when ordered on the Web. One outfit sells wick at 10 cents a yard or $50 for a spool, and sheet beeswax at $1.75 a sheet, or $35 for 20 sheets. One sheet makes two candles, so DIY beeswax candles would cost you about a buck apiece ($1.75/2 + 5 cents = 97 cents, not counting gas to drive to the craft store or shipping for an online order).
I estimate my use of electricity to run lights at not more than $20 a month. The power bill was $80 last month, when all that drew power was the pool pump, the refrigerator, the lights, the toaster, an occasional use of the oven, once-a-week use of the bread mixer and the washer and dryer. The pool pump costs about $20 to $40 a month to run. The refrigerator allegedly runs around $13 a month. I can’t find figures for the clothes washer that don’t figure in the cost of heating water; I use cold water and I rarely wash more than two loads a week. The cost must be around five or ten bucks a month, max. Assuming the pump costs $40 a month (on the high side, I believe) and the electric cost of the laundry is $10, the cost of lights and small appliances would be $17 a month. Let’s say the oven, toaster, and breadmaker cost about $10 a month; that would leave $7 for the lights.
If a typical beeswax candle cost a dollar, you’d burn through seven bucks with seven candles, far from enough to last a month. Twelve economy tapers cost $11.50, plus $6.50 shipping, or a $1.53 apiece. Here, too, if you use tapers for lighting and not just for atmosphere, you’ll burn though those fairly fast. Even if the pool cost $30 a month and the lights are running $17, the cost of candles to light your house for 31 evenings could easily add up to around $30, significantly more than the cost of electricity.
So, unless you go to bed at dusk, chances are you’d spend significantly more on candles than you would on CFLs, which are said to cost $12 for 10,000 hours, including the cost of the bulb. That’s around a penny an hour. While it’s true that CFLs contain mercury and require fuel to make and transport, just what kind of chemicals are in a candle?
It looks to me like an individual would do a lot better to simply turn off the lights in all rooms that are unoccupied and use a single CFL bulb to navigate each room that is occupied.