Sarcastically Yours

Years ago an administrator said to me "Sarcasm is not an appropriate form of humor when dealing with kids."  Now, he was talking about a different teacher, so I didn't say anything out loud but I thought to myself "Oh boy..."  I mean, I don't think I could make it through a single class without using sarcasm. I even give lectures on sarcasm sometimes!

Luckily most students seem to get it (at least by the end of the year!).  I was reminded about this valuable part of their education I provide by a recent gift from JS alongside an older (15 years ago?) gift from a former student ( I can remember her face and where she sat, but her initials escape me):

Dial it in; You control the dial

I was talking to my good buddy WW over the weekend.  In a far ranging conversation in which he shared the many interesting projects he has undertaken lately and some insights he has had about life, he turned to me and asked me what I've been up to.  After an awkward pause in which I mentally scrambled to come up with anything half as interesting as his endeavors, I finally lamely said "Lately I've had the realization that I oscillate between feelings of 'impending  doom' and a kind of internal 'unwarranted bliss'.  The interesting thing is that I think I can control the dial on that myself.  It seems like this is where so many self-help gurus, religions, meditative practices, etc. are trying to say in their own way and so I want to work on that myself to get better at controlling that internal dial."

His answer: "Yes, absolutely."

Ever since, I've had this image of an old analog meter with a single needle and dial that reads "Feelings of Impending Doom" on one side and "Unwarranted Internal Bliss" on the other.  I fed this sketch into an art AI and got this:

my rough sketch

AI generated art from the sketch above

Not exactly what my mind's eye sees, but I can just adjust my mental analog control knob and be happy about it...

From Blixa to Warren

From Her to Eternity is kind of a sacred song to me.  I associate it with a young Nick Cave - when he was a lot more rough around the edges - when Blixa was still a Bad Seed.  It was my introduction to Nick in the all-time-great Wenders film "Wings of Desire".

So, I finally got around to watching the entire Distant Sky concert footage and I was stunned when, 32 minutes into the concert, he breaks out The Line: "I want to tell you about a girl..." and into it he went... I was floored how energetic and intense his performance was after all these years.  But how were they going to replace/reproduce that iconic Blixa guitar howl/pluck/grind sound?  Why, with Warren Ellis abusing his amped up violin of course...  amazing.

From 1987 to 2017

From Berlin to Copenhagen

From Blixa to Warren

From Guitar to Violin

Blixa on the left (1987), Warren on the right (2017)

Nick is 30 on the left and 60 on the right.

Walk and Cry, Nick.  Walk and Cry.

Space Mission Reminds me of my kids

Today, JS was doing her quarter four presentation in astronomy on "The Future of Telescopes".  One of her featured telescopes is the SVOM being launched later this year.   The Space-based Variable Objects Monitor designed to investigate gamma ray bursts.

When she described it as a "Franco-Chinese"mission as the Chinese and French space agencies are working together on it, I called out from the back of the room "A Franco-Chinese mission: Just like my kids!" (Teachers make the worst students 'tis true).

Half the class laughed as they got the joke, the other half laughed because it just sounded weird.  The student I was sitting next to leaned over and said "are you French or something?".  Apparently I haven't been talking about myself enough this year!

Hot or Cold; Cooking or Cooked.

Today, an exhausted student (NM) told me in the middle of her test "Mr. Rideout - I'm cooked."

Now, last week, when she was tearing through a physics worksheet, she proudly proclaimed "I'm cooking!"

Makes me think about the oft contrasted generational uses of "hot" or "cool" which basically mean the same thing in slang, depending on your preferred decade.  

It's kinda fire to think about how hot it is to be cooking but how not cool it is when you're cooked, huh?Sick.

Amperes: Lazy from the start

The metric unit of current is an Ampere, commonly abbreviated as an Amp.

Why then do we call the device that measure this an "Ammeter"?  I can find no other reason than elision. But why actually make the official, written word drop it too.  After all, we keep the second 'e' in speedometer (call it a "speed-o-meter" I instruct my students, not a "spedohmeter", I have yet to make a dent in public pronunciation despite 22 years of effort).

After complaining to my class about this, a few students grumbled that they would prefer the voltmeter to be called a 'volmeter' to even up matters.

I wondered if a more regulated language like French falls into this sloppiness.  Unsurprisingly, the official French word is the whole thing:

Technology and Education

 Talking with a colleague (PG) at a faculty meeting the other day and we both kind of communally articulated the following observation about modern education and technology:

The efficiencies of technology that are so valuable in the workplace are exactly antithetical to education.  Learning is a necessarily inefficient process; attempts to make it more efficient actually interfere with learning. Students must experience cognitive dissonance, wrestle with new ideas, and messily create new schemas over repeated attempts at understanding.

As a school we are considering a ban on cell phones, but I think we go one step further and ban the use of laptops during the school day too.  All these tools and crutches that are so useful to adults are just distracting students.  I feel foolish even suggesting this as my entire pedagogy has become dependent on student access to laptops through the years, but that doesn't make me wrong for suggesting it...