At times, I think my Announcements for my classes take on the tone of a blog post. My online students do not have the luxury of the 5-10 minutes I spend each class period harping on attitude, perseverance, discipline, and poor defense and shot-blocking in mid-major NCAA basketball conferences. I have to make up for…
One of my favorite weather resource web sites is Unisys Weather (weather.unisys.com). I’ll explain why. First, below is a current weather map for North America. If you examine the color bar at the bottom, you’ll notice a color gradient from black (-100dBZ) to light blue (250dBZ). The color is based on the energy returned to…
No Easy Day. Mark Davis, w/Kevin Maurer. Dutton Press. $25 Three traits about NED one might want to know about the book. First, most proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to three organizations: allinallthetime.org, navysealfoundation.org, and tipofthespearfoundation.org. If nothing else is gained from the reading of NED, three worthy organizations have…
“How To Be Black” by Baratunde Thurston. Harper Paperback. 2012. Kindle Edition. $3 I first ran across Baratunde on Twitter (@baratunde). I use Twitter for personal & professional development. When I declared Facebook bankruptcy years ago, I decided I could not abandon social media altogether. I decided to use Twitter to learn, and to follow…
I’ve taken flack for proselytizing too much on my syllabi. Over the decade-and-a-half or so of being in the classroom, I have taken to being more vocal about the problems I see in students attitudes toward their commitment towards their education. I want things to be congruent. If someone says “my grade is very important…
The notion “reading is studying” needs to be removed from everyone’s brain. Reading alone is not “studying.” Reading is part of the Process of Learning and Study. When a student tells me “I read the chapter” I say, “that’s a good start. Now go back and re-read it 2 more times, and this time, pay…
Warning: my diatribe below consists of mostly rant, with excerpts of real-world writing samples from previous students. I will also indict most of Kindergarten through High School Education. I say most as the factors with the least blame, in my opinion, are the teachers themselves. However, my attitude towards K-12 teachers is changing, too. I…
“Coyote Waits.” Tony Hillerman. Publisher: Harper Torch Fiction. 1990. Paperback. $8 In Navajo mythology the Milky Way was created by the trickster god, Coyote. Coyote also created the world and the Holy People. The Holy People were assigned the task of helping populate the universe with stars. The Holy People were too slow for Coyote’s…
If you haven’t read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” you should. Even if you are a woman, thoughts shared by Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning” will still apply. If you have never heard of Viktor Frankl, it’s OK. I hadn’t heard of him, either. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian Jew, a Ph.D neuroscientist,…
I’m amending my post based on results from the 2012 Presidential Election. Comments by GOP pundits speak directly to my comments below. Both Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer exemplify the anti-rational memes I identify and discuss below. Krauthammer, in fact, argues the GOP platform needs no changes; the GOP simply couldn’t motivate the proper personalities…
Constant Geography 
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