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Potential forthcoming musings

This is my online "sketchbook" for the musings I hope to someday write. It's not really intended for public consumption, but I won't object if you find it and decide to read it.

Notes for the next end of month musing

  • Posted what I thought was one of my better musings, on meaningful work, and got almost no comments. (That was in December, I think.)
  • Had a two-week period in which I had trouble writing (or my muse was on vacation).
  • Since I was doing class prep, ended up writing a bit about class prep issues.

On particular dates

  • January 31, 2019: End-of-month musing.
  • Ground-hog's day, 2019: Ground hog's day. How long has it been since we've had one of those parties? Don't really serve ground hog.
  • March 29, 2019: outliving my father. (It's a facebook memory from that date in 2013.)
  • Mother's day, 2019. Kathy.
  • Father's day, 2019. Dad or Lloyd.
  • November 1, 2019: NaNoWriMo (On writing.)
  • November 11, 2019: Veterans Day (the Tom Russell song)

Categorized musings

This section represents my attempt to categorize the musings a bit. Musings may have multiple categories. After the title, you'll find the topics surrounded by parentheses.

_Tags/form or meta: anyway (as in "things I was writing anyway"), article (based on an article I've read), delayed, draft, long, rambly (I've used that in released musings, but not in the sektchbook), request, revisit, short, sketch

_Tags/style: rants, talks, memos, oer

_Tags/content: accessibility, autobiographical, Barbie, CSC 151, data science, delayed, digital humanities (or dighum), email, grinnell, joc, language, meta, obermann, overcommittment, packrat, Racket (or Scheme; I'm not consistent), technical (not the same as technology), technology (not the same as technical), writing

  1. Choosing work for CSC 207 2019S. :teaching:sketch: (csc207-2019S-work)

  2. Kington's article. :rant:Grinnell:draft: (shared-governance-2019-01-xx)

  3. The wonders of YouTube. :misc:short: Not sure how I stumbled upon a performance by Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein, but it's awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZX_XCYokQo Like the introductory remarks, which were thoughtful. Great to see both performers, too. Led me next to a hysterical statement by GOuld before a Beethoven piece, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPDBcdDGrnE.

  4. A space to study. :autobiographical:sketch: (sabbatical-workplace) Looking back from Obermann and ahead to my sabbatical. What worked well about the Obermann space and what will help me be more productive in my next sabbatical? (I have some notes sketched in the Google notebook.)

  5. Learning styles. :teaching: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/09/learning-styles-debate-its-instructors-vs-psychologists

  6. The first day of class. :teaching: https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-firstday

  7. Work colleges. :academia:miscellaneous:sketch: (work-colleges)

  8. Self-identifying as a curmudgeon. :autobiographical:short:sketch: A few years ago, I managed to get an official College name tag that includes the word "Curmudgeon" under my name. I'd been introducing myself as such [1], and it seemed reasonable to make that role concrete [2]. But it's now been a few years. And, while I still get much too grumpy about an amazingly large number of things on campus [3], I don't find that I identify that way any more. I wonder why not. Postscript: I do still say "old, fat, tired, and grumpy" when people ask how I am. [1] More precisely, I called myself "the campus curmudgeon". [2] Or brass. [3] As a whole, Grinnell does poorly at careful language use in administrative documents and moves much too slowly on important technical issues.

  9. Diversity statements. :academia: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Against-Diversity-Statements/245400. https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Defense-of-Diversity/245463.

  10. Unexpected ligatures: Conflicting. :misc:typography:sketch: (unexpected-ligatures-fl) The fl makes a great sign in my title font.

  11. The bargain (cd) bin. :autobiographical:sketch: (bargain-cd-bin)

  12. Recycling again. :misc: http://www.dmcityview.com/feature-1/2019/01/02/wasted-2/

  13. Murmuration. :misc: Someone shared a BBC video. So I looked things up. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/01/04/506400719/video-swooping-starlings-in-murmuration. It appears that ...

  14. Frida Kahlo Barbie. :barbie:sketch: (barbie-frida-kahlo)

  15. Barbie and horses. :barbie:

  16. Grinnellians: Henry Haven Windsor :grinnellians:

  17. Revising the FunDHum schedule. :csc151:draft: (fundhum-schedule-01)

  18. Glenn Leggett's first article in Teacher to Teacher. :writing:grinnell:rambly:

  19. Application to join Brianna Blaser's thing. :department:anyway:

  20. A proposal for that Mozilla ethics thing. :department:compsci:anyway: (Probably too late.)

  21. Cart corrals. :rants:short:draft:

  22. The new Jonathan Richman album. :music: https://jonathanrichman.bandcamp.com/album/sa While I was at it, I ordered a new Modern Lovers sticker for my laptop.

  23. Punctuation with conjunctions. :language:sketch: Why do I always get it wrong? I leave out the comma with two independent clauses and put it with a dependent clause. Of is that "I leave out the comma with two independent clauses, and I put it in with a dependent clause"? In any case, I always get it backwards. I wonder why.

  24. Something about the evaluation reading. :writing:csc151:sketch: Unstuck, but slow. (Probably expected it in this case.) Combining two readings. New approach. Previously combined parser and evaluator. That was probably a bad idea, so I'm mostly rewriting from scratch. Still frustrated by Scribble. How do I customize the LaTeX easily? (How do I get output in .tex but not .html? Hack: .css hides it.). Why did I choose to use it? How much did I write in one eight-hour day? From about 1.5 pages, 108 lines, 551 words, to about 10 pages, 590 lines, 3651 words. A very hard reading to write.

  25. Understanding the HSSC. :rants:rant retractions:short: At some point last year, I complained about the size and cost of the HSSC. But I'm coming ot understand its implicit value. At a time in which many schools are de-emphasizing the humanities, Grinnell is explicitly doubling down on the humanities "We value these areas enough to build a ginormous complex devoted to them."

  26. The Pyramid. :autobiographical:technical:request:short: When I started College in 1982 I had two primary computing options: terminal to our TOPS-20 system and a terminal to our Amdahl, which I used to refer to as "the world's largest IBM clone". There were probably PC's around, too, but .... Pyramid issues: Gosling Emacs. Pascal compiler. Joan's class.

  27. Phishing scams. misc:technology:short (sextortion)

  28. Recording faculty legislation. :grinnell:academia: The faculty regularly votes on things at faculty meetings. I gave some sasmples in my history of end-of-course evaluations. Some votes get recorded as changes to the faculty handbook. Those votes are usually explicit votes to update the handbook. What about the other policy votes? I guess I had assumed that the Dean's office kept a running list. But it turns out that that's not the case. As far as I can tell, the faculty meeting minutes and faculty memories are our main way of keeping track of such decision. That may have worked when we had a Dean who came from the faculty (and, typically, had served leadership roles on the faculty). But Deans hired from the outside lack both historical and contextual knowledge. It's probably time to put infrastructure in place to record decisions and make them easy to find. Hmmm ... that could be a project for a future section of FunDHum.

  29. Mourn what you lost or celebrate what you had. :autobiographical:sketches: (mourn-or-celebrate)

  30. Ranking candidates. :academia:sketch: (candidate-criteria) We've been told by the Dean's office that only do we have to have a fixed set of criteria for evaluating candidates, we also need to "rank" those criteria. I think the idea of ranking criteria is absurd. What happened to the idea of "holistic review", which we seem to be expected to do in so many other situations? How do we compare someone who is strong on the top criterion but weak on the next two to someone who is weak on the top criterion but strong on the next two?

  31. Refusing to recommend. :recommendations:academia:sketch: (recommendation-bds)

  32. Outrage amplification. :misc:language:short:sketch: As I was writing a musing about a faculty member's refusal to recommend someone because they were applying for an internship in Israel, I decided to come up with an acronym to describe what happens on the InterWeb. It seemed that a variant of LASER (Light Amplification) that focused on Outrage Amplification seemed like the right way to go. I started with Outrage Amplification by Internet Expansion of Umbrage (OAIEU). Then I started to ask myself whether I should try to get the vowels in the right order (AEIOU). But I failed. So I went back to thinking about something closer to LASER. Let's see ... if I want the third letter to be "S", that could be "Stupid". I do want to include "Internet", so I'll use an I rather than E. What about the "R"? It could be reification (the way the InterWeb makes things "real") or "reflection". Yeah, that's better. So Outrage Amplification by Stupid Internet Reflection, or OASIR. And no, that was not intentional [1]. [1] OASIR is also Grinnell's Office of Analytic Support and Institutiona Research.

  33. Liberal arts at Ursinus. :misc:academia:liberal arts: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/15/college-doubles-down-its-residential-liberal-arts-mission-new-core-curriculum

  34. Beautiful Racket. :joc:scheme:

  35. Early grad requirements. :grinnell:rants:draft: (early-grad-language)

  36. Going beyond text in the digital humanities :csc151:teaching:dighum: When I posted my draft introduction to the new "digital humanities" CSC 151, some of the first responses I got were that the plans seemed a bit text-centric. As I get started, I should think about those isseus. This is a tool building class more than a tool use class. Easier to get students quickly up to speed on algorithms in the context of text than the context of, say, visualizations or animations. Those take much more time to develop and, frequently, require or reveal less sophisticated algorithmic thinking. Also issues of accessibility. Text is generally accessible to a broader range. Most computers can read text aloud. (Their ability to read program code aloud varies.) Intracting with text does not require a sophisticated interface or even a particular interface. At the same time, I should be helping students think more broadly about the digital humanities.

  37. Jekyll or Scribble or ...? :dighum:sketch:teaching: (jekyll-scribble-or.md)

  38. Revising the MediaScheme 151. :teaching:csc151:mediascheme:sketch: (revising-mediascheme-151)

  39. My bookshelf at the Obermann center. :autobiographical:obermann:rambly:sketch:dighum: (obermann-bookshelves)

  40. From Markdown.pl to pandoc. :meta:joc:sketch: (markdown-pandoc.md) Switching the way in which I generate these musings.

  41. The Academic Job Search. :academia:articles: http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Academic_Jobs_Wiki https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Way-We-Hire-Now/244467

  42. Playing with Google maps in Racket. :dighum:racket:

  43. Creating a syllabus. :dighum:academia:articles: https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-syllabus

  44. The joy of code: Finding files. :joc:sketch: Recently, I've found a need to look for files somewhere in a subdirectory using regular expressions. I'm not sure why, but I found that find did not work as I was expecting, probably because it uses bash regular expressions rather than the regular expressions common in most other languages. (E.g., a* means "zero or more copies of 'a'" in most regexp languages, but "a followed by any number of other characters" in bash regexp. Rather than figuring out the right way to express the patterns to bash, I decideed to write my own utility.

  45. The joy of code: Building syllabi tables. :joc:dighum:teaching: Recently, I found myself needed to explore the ordering of topics in the schedule of a class. Blah blah blah.

  46. The joy of code: Inserting commands into markdown. :joc:sketch: I use Markdown for way too much of my work. The other day, as I was inserting the output of some shell command into my markdown file (I think it was a command to build an HTML table that represents a class schedule from an easier-to-manipulate text file), I realized that it would make much more sense to insert that output programmatically, rather than manually. That way, if I change the way the command works, I don't have to manually re-run the command. Here's the core of my solution, in Perl: $contents =~ s/^!!(.*)$/process($1)/me; Basically, I replace any line that starts with two bangs (!!) with the result of the command that appears after the two bangs. process is just a subroutine that evaluates the command and combines the output. I love writing code. You can find the complete program at https://github.com/rebelsky/samr-utils/blob/master/mdexec Does Pandoc have a way to do that? Potentially. But it was more fun to write my own solution.

  47. The value of "things". :authobiographical:sketch:packrat: (The start of a new series on being a packrat.) Michelle and I argue about stuff. A lot. Anyone who knows me knows that I accumulate. I accumulate for a variety of reasons. But one reason that I accumulate is that I assign meaning to things. That Willa Cather book? I bought it for my mother. And, even though mom eventually learned enough about Cather's anti-semitism that she could no longer stomach reading Cather, I still think about the shelf of Willa Cather books on the landing at home and about the joy of finding a new one for her. That Willa Cather book that mom never even owned, but wasn't in her collection? Same thing. The object ties me to my mother [1]. That old issue of Scientific American that I'll probably never read. It's one of the huge collection that Salva Luria gave to me. I needed to get rid of them when mom left her house, I kept one issue [2] to remember the gift. But the number of things I accumulate, particularly things that I accumulate for other reasons, means that the special things also get lost. And so I'm always reluctant to throw something away, because a special thing may be there, even if I'm not sure what the special thing is. Michelle says "Take a picture". But a picture is not the same as the item. [1] Amazingly, even thinking about that issue makes me cry. [2] Well, probably a half dozen issues.

  48. Addication to accumulation. :autobiographical:sketches: (accumulation.md)

  49. Organization :autobiographical:organization: (organization.md) No one who sees my office and laba may believe this, but I really like organization. Why aren't they neat? Addication to accumulation and inability to get rid of things.

  50. Advising complexities :rants:grinnell:academia: We have a new advising handbook. I really appreciate the effort that went into what should be a "one stop shop" for academic advisers (or advisors). And there are lots of great things. Nonetheless, as I read the handbook, I get reminded about frustrations as an advisor and as a computer scientist. ... If the folks who are in charge can't get it right, how do they expect the rest of us to? Communication on campus. DRY. (Oh, yeah, that's why I'm frustated as a coputer scientist.)

  51. Down yet another rabbithole. :misc:art:draft: (rabbithole-fulgate-wilcox)

  52. "faculty" - singular or plural verb forms? :writing:sketch:short: http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/. When I write things like "faculty have chosen", Grammarly always tells me to use "faculty has chosen". But that feels wrong to me. So I change my text to "faculty members have chosen", which makes both of us happy. But do I really have to change? Let's see what the InterWeb tells me.

  53. Bridging/interdisciplinary courses. :academia:overcommitment: Which ones would I like to teach? Something on digital humanities with Erik or Sarah. Someting on digital art with Jeremy, Andrew, and/or Justin. History of computers with Mike Guenther. Technology policy as part of policy studies. Piracy _`:-). But more than any of those, I'd like to teach Tutorial again.

  54. Flying from Grinnell. :short:sketch:grinnell: (flying-from-grinnell)

  55. A procedure is worth 1000 pictures. :csc151:art:teaching: Useful to think about as I consider the project for the new CSC 151. Do I still need to write this one? Yeah, it will still be fun.

  56. Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. :autobiographical:short: My favorite candy. (Which I don't eat any more.) Love the somewhat stale peanut taste, the consistency, etc. Also brings back memories. My grandmother used to keep a dish of them in her front hallway.

  57. Tracing citations. :sketch:joc:short: (binary-search-citations)

  58. Synchronizing my systems. :joc:sketch: (joc-synchronizing-stuff)

  59. Making breakfast. :authobiographical:short:sketch: Write about making french toast and thinking back to mom. Perhaps also the other breakfast foods in our house:`_ Omelettes and my dad's omelette pan and baked eggs. Maybe grandma's baked apples. I should make those! These days, bagels are part of the family repoirtoire.

  60. Organizing my music. :autobiographical:draft: (organizing-my-mp3s)

  61. Odd Bodkins. :reviews:autobiographical:strips: If I made it a Tutorial topic, perhaps we could go visit the archives. http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/berkeley/bancroft/p2013_022_cubanc_aspace.pdf

  62. I'm an introvert. :autobiographical:short: When I was first accepted as an Obermann Digital Bridges fellow at UIowa, I was hopeful that I would have someone to commute with. But the other Grinnell fellow lives in or near Iowa City. So I'm driving on my own. And I'm realizing that that's a good thing. I'm an introvert. I appreciate time to myself. Sometimes I forget how much I appreciate that time.

  63. Font choices. :teaching:technology:accessibility: Grinnell's insistence on using a display font for running text, as well as some comments of the effects of Futura on students with reading issues, has gotten me thinking more about ways to use fonts for messaging. I was considering using a dyslexic-friendly font, such as OpenDyslexic. Then I found a study. https://blog.dyslexia.com/good-fonts-for-dyslexia-an-experimental-study/

  64. "Wicked Neat" https://owlcation.com/humanities/Wicked-Slang-Origin :language:short:

  65. Knowing courses vs. Knowing the Invisible :academia:rambly:short: https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Crowdsourced-Tool-Helps/244036

  66. Cowboys, revisited. :misc:revisit:short:

  67. Becoming an icon (no, the other kind). :misc:short:

  68. Becoming a celebrity (before or after Scarlet and Give Back day). :grinnell:short:delayed: I'm still not sure why I was designated a celebrity.

  69. I love Grinnell. :grinnell:short:sketch:delayed: (Reflections from meeting with Ologie. I love our students. I love my thoughtful colleagues. I love the College's ability to support many of our students. Whenever I get frustrated with the institution, I have to remember those things.)

  70. Writing daily. :writing:short: (writing-daily)

  71. Becoming an icon. :misc:short:sketch: While I was playing around with various issues related to the College Web site, I decided to think about icons. There's a Web editor. http://www.xiconeditor.com/.

  72. The Montreal Trip. :grinnell:short:sketch: Rachel ILM. Vivek a new job. Kumail Famous. Erin Slate. Isabela. Not sure. Sarah. Just moved on from Cloudera. Damn. Who else was there? Did Ellie go? She's a famous physics educator with a new last name.

  73. Summer funding absurdities. :rant:academia:short:sketch: (summer-funding-absurdities)

  74. Porting callisto. :callisto:short: An introduction to this topic.

  75. Preserving digital evidence. :callisto:complicated:draft: (preserving-digital-evidence)

  76. Abusing software. :misc:callisto:technology:draft: (abusing-callisto)

  77. Branching. :rants:code:teaching:callisto: (branching-2018-07-nn)

  78. Really bad C code. :rants:short:code: https://wozniak.ca/blog/2018/06/25/Massacring-C-Pointers/index.html

  79. About EOCEs. :rants:draft:long:teaching:rewrites: (Based on http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/about-eoc.html) (Now at grinnell-eoce.)

  80. Portable cellos. :short:sketch:music: (portable-cellos.md)

  81. Upgrading my class for the new Java. :joc:csed:sketch:long:teaching: (csc207-new-java)

  82. The CS Commons. :grinnell:short: (cs-commons)

  83. Are almonds tree nuts? :misc:short: In writing about my allergy to tree nuts, I noted that I'm not allergic to almonds. I thought it would be useful to add a bit more background on that issue. Vince Eckhart. Michelle and I have different memories of what happened next. Here's what the Smithsonian says:`_ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tree-nut-allergies-may-be-massively-overdiagnosed-180962927/

  84. The joy of code camps. :code-camps:teaching:long: Agreed to do it because it seemed like a good thing. And it's something our community really wants. There's also a joy in knowing that we're encouraging some kids who might not otherwise think about higher education to start thining about it. (And some kids who might not otherwise think about CS to start thinking about it.) But boy, does it sap my energy. And it's not really in my wheelhouse. What does it do for the undergraduates?

  85. Buying books. :autobiographical:sketch:short: I enjoy buying books. I also enjoy reading books. But sometimes it seems like I spend more time buying the books than reading them. I need to find a way to turn that habit around. Maybe when things are quieter I'll find more time to read. Will things ever be quieter?

  86. More fun with HTML and xexp :rant:Racket:code-camps:draft:

  87. Notes from Students/Moral modeling. :teaching:short:sketch: Before I started musing, I would occasionally post short notes to Facebook. (Yes, I realize that's what people use Facebook for.) Facebook is fond of reminding me of those onld notes. (Yes, I realize that's something Facebook does for everyone.) Here's a note from 23 June 2013 that sruck home.

One of those things that makes the job worth it: I got a note from a graduating senior that says "Thank you for being such an inspiring mentor during the past 3 years that I have known you. Your classes - aside from teaching the actual subject - incorporated many important life lessons from me - that it is important to say goodbye, that every student brings something unique to the whole class, and that caring about others matters more than grades. I think these lessons were so powerful because you actually live by these principles." Of course, the first two lessons come from the last day of class speech that I stole from mom. But it's nice to see that I model behavior for the students. (I can then add a bunch of followups.)

  1. Redirects. :misc:short:rants: The other day, I was reading my daily email message from Book Bub. For those who don't know, Book Bub recommends books that are currently on sale on Amazon. Book Bub also has some advertisements for books. I clicked on one of the advertisements [It doesn't really matter what the advertisement was for] and was surprised to see the number of redirects. I think this is all of them. The link led to outbound.bookbub.com. That redirected to n.bookbub.com/l/nk/. That, in turn, redirected to amzn.to. From there to bit.ly. And, finally, that redirected to amazon.com. Boy, that's a lot of redirects. Wait! Why wasn't there a urldefense link at the start of the chain? Isn't Proofpoint supposed to rewrite every URL to go to a urldefense site first. Have we turned off urldefense? Let's see ... Oh, it appears that urldefense is not used for really long links. Wow, that makes me feel secure.

  2. The list ADT. :teaching:oer:joc:sketch: (list-adt)

  3. Dynamic programming :teaching:oer:joc:sketch: (dynamic-programming.md)

  4. Loop invariants. :teaching:oer:joc:sketch: Not something I learned as a student. A useful analysis techniue, but also a useful design technique. Experience of different faculty teaching from Gries. Watching other folks teach loop invariants, and reading a variety instructions materials, it's clear that folks think of loop invariants somewhat differently. Since I get to corrupt students with my view, I thought I'd also share it with you. (Lots of places in the curriculum.

  5. How do I approach that problem? :teaching:sketch: In our recent debrief of exit interviews, one particular comment from a graduating senior generated a lot of discussion. Approximately, "While most students develop a strategy for the problem solving process in CSC 151, there are students who do not and would benefit from a more explicit process." My feeling is that I illustrate a process every time we do large-group recitation-based problem solving. But I accept that that's implicit, rather than explicit. I also accept a colleague's comment that few students take careful notes on the broader problem issue.

  6. Why complain? :rants:short:sketch: (why-complain)

  7. Color problems :misc:art:short:sketch: (color-problems)

  8. Arts and computing. :teaching:sketch: (arts-and-computing)

  9. vi :technical:misc: https://thenewstack.io/a-look-at-vim-a-text-editor-for-the-ages/

  10. Down a (programming) language rabbithole. :misc:sketch: (pharo.md)

  11. Take-home exams. (Why I give them, etc.) :teaching:

  12. Friday the 13th. :misc:pogo:short: Three in 2026! (I've done it once already, so I need to think of other things to write about it.) I make it a habit of saying things like "Be careful; Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month". That habit comes from too much time reading Walt Kelly's Pogo. One of the Kelly's main characters, Churchy La Famme [n], regularly reflects on the danger of Friday the 13th, no matter what day of the week it falls on. I've already written very a short musing on the topic, so I'm not sure that another one is necessary, except to tell the back story. I was clearly distractable when recording this potential topic. I see that I determined that Friday the Thirteenth would occur on three separate Fridays in 2026. [n] I wonder how that name would be received these days if the strip were new.

  13. Double majors, revisited. :grinnell:draft: (double-majors-2018-05-xx)

  14. Woody Guthrie Jesus Christ and Jesse James :misc:draft: (getting-it-backwards)

  15. Eboards. :teaching:sketch: (sketches/eboards.md)

  16. Assessment. :teaching:draft:rant: (assesment-revisited.md) Two musings for the price of one? Experience assessing courses. Mistrusting assessment. Split 'em. assessment-revisited.md "What's sad is that I really do believe in "closing the loop":`_ Reflect on what you've seen in your classes. Think about what that means you should change. Make the change. Consider the impact. Repeat." But you don't need formalized assessment practices for that loop. You just need to pay attention, introspect, and discuss. (Needs rewriting. Should probably focus on just the mistrust issue.)

  17. Losing weight. :autobiographical:draft: (losing-weight)

  18. Peoples' names. :rant:draft: (misnaming.md)

  19. A Grinnell Growth Mindset :grinnell:draft: (grinnell-growth-mindset)

  20. Supporting admissions. :grinnell:sketch: (supporting-admissions)

  21. Playing with mail.app rules :joc:mac:email:short: Started setting up a number of rules Then asked myself: "How do I easily move them to another laptop?" The answer is that they are in ~/Library/Mail/V4/MailData/SyncedRules.plist. That means I can also do things like take my filter of too-many advertisements and rearrange them so that they are in alphabetical order. At least I think it does.

  22. Cary Nelson's piece on "The Economic Challenges of Anthologies" in On Anthologies. :sketch:academia:short: Really fascinating. I picked it up after reading an article about the challenges of creating an anthology of Gene Kelly inteviews. ... And look! There's an article by my now-SFS colleague, Alan Schrift, immediately after Nelson's piece. Nelson's comment on an Elizabeth Bishop poem. Then I realize that's the same Elizabeth Bishop whose "One Art" we turned to again and again in Lighting the Page. New edition mentioned at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/. Says that the suggested list price is $79.95. But when I look at the Oxford site, Volume 1 is $72.95 and Volume 2 is also $72.95. That's a lot higher than the claimed list price. I guess the economic realities of the new edition were also troubling.

  23. One Art. :miscellaenous:writing:short:sketch: (see previous notes, too) And then Sam returns to his normal search for where it was originally published. Finds article on drafts and better article on drafts. Finally found the original publication. The New Yorker, 26 April 1976, p. 40. Why was that so hard to find? Not what I thought. I thought the partner had died. They hadn't.

  24. The classroom goes public. :academia:teaching:reaction: https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Happens-in-the-Classroom/243974

  25. Code style :joc:teaching:sketch: (code-style)

  26. More introduction. :meta:sketch:rambly: (intro-musing-topics-v0)

  27. Requiring a cultural competency course. :grinnell:sketch: What would it do to an open curriculum? Is it necessary? It may be. Do we really want to graduate a student who has not thought carefully about these issues? (Of course, do we really want to graduate a student who cannot read graphs, charts, and data in a newspaper? At what point does "Do we really want to graduate this student become an exercise in adding requirements?) What would it be like to teach that course? (Some portion of the students would clearly object to being there.) I did have a debate about this with the legendary Karla Erickson. I'm not sure what side I took.

  28. Tagging the musings. :meta:short:sketch: See notes above.

  29. Why I complain about software. :rants:software: I complain a lot about bad software. And I think a lot of software is bad. Here I reflect more deeply about these issues.

  30. On representing dates and times. :rants:short: Why I hate things like "12:00 p.m." or "6/12/64".

  31. Why Grinnell staff with Ph.D's should be allowed to teach. :rants:old: I thought we allowed our Ph.D.-level staff to teach the occasional course. Then I learned that it's only in very specific situations. These are my attempts to think through the matter. [Or maybe they've fixed this.]

  32. Using mail signatures as templates. :short:tips:joc:

  33. Strange student requests. :rants:teaching:short:sketch: About once per week, a student either comes to office hours or sends me a question of the form "I have a great idea for an app/startup. Can you give me advice/hook me up with a developer/etc." But, well, these aren't my area of expertise. Do faculty in other disciplines get these kinds of requests? "I have an idea for a great Russian novel." "I'm going to synthesize a new chemical compound." Now that I think about it, it is possible that it's potentially a relatively common thing, at least in some disciplines. "I care about this social issue; help me design a study. I wrote a short story; please read it. I have an art project I want to do, can I use your resources."

  34. Topic modeling. :dighum:teaching: http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-and-digital-humanities-by-david-m-blei/ is a good introduction.

  35. Scratch 3.0. :scratch:teaching:technology: https://beta.scratch.mit.edu/

  36. Nonsequiters anonymous. :short:sketch: (nonsequiters-anonymous)

  37. personal-professional harmony. :long:revisit:academia: Rewrite/revise sections from work-life balance.

  38. Forgetting what we read. :miscellaneous:articles: https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/551603/

  39. Spaces after sentences. :writing:articles:short: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/

  40. Beanworld. :reviews:comics:

  41. Orphan Black. :reviews:rambly:tv: When a friend was visiting recently, they convinced the Rebelsky family to start streaming Orphan Black on TV. For those of you not familiar with the show .... In spite of my friends' claims to the contrary, it's a fairly dark show; we generally find that we have to watch something funny afterwards (e.g., The Big Bang Theory or The Good Place). At one point, I was thinking it would make a good topic for my next Tutorial; the show raises themes of intellectual property, genetics, feminism, and more. But, well, I still think I'd prefer to do something relating to comic strips [possibilities include Pogo and Walt Kelly, Dan O'Neill and Odd Bodkins, the American comic strip, comic strips and the Web (aka Webcomics)], hypertext, or board games.

  42. Preliminary planning for the new mediascheme version of CSC 151. :csc151:Scheme:Racket:arts computing: (preliminary-planning-new-mediascheme-csc151.md)

  43. Howard Frank Mosher. :reviews:

  44. Drawers (on the Web site) (or have I now written enough about them). :rants:short:web:

  45. CLC 17 - Contemporary Literary Criticism :fun books:music:short:

  46. The 1924 College catalog :fun books:short: Why did

  47. Whatever book my Grandmother is holding in that picture. :autobiographical:fun books:short:

  48. The legendary yearbook (Grinnell). :grinnell:photography:

  49. Jonathan Richman. :reviews:music: One of my favorite musicians.

  50. Jon Svetkey and the Loomers. :reviews:music: More of my favorite musicians.

  51. Yacht Race. :reviews;board games: One of my favorite board games.

  52. Astral Weeks. :reviews:music: One of my all-time favorite albums.

  53. Van Morrison (or at least Astral Weeks). :reviews:music: Another of my favorite musicians.

  54. Physimusicomedy. :autobiograpical:film:short: My favorite essay topic for my collegiate film classes. (Also, perhaps the best essay I wrote for Gerald Mast. I wonder if I'll every find that essay again.)

  55. Sam Hurt's Eyebeam. :reviews:strips: One of my favorite comic strips.

  56. Ethics in the CS curriculum. :department:CS:ethics:sketch: One of the many things I appreciate about Grinnell's CS department is that all of the faculty find it essential that we help our students consider the ethical implications of the work that we do. Strangely enough, even though we all prioritize this issue, we do not require a partiuclar ethics course. Rather, we try to incorporate it throughout the CS curriculum.

  57. "As We May Think" :articles:CS: A great paper to read and assign.

  58. MLK Day :grinnell:

  59. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. :music:rambly: How did the Cars get in? Did they influence anyone? I'm pretty sure that David Robinson (drummer for the Cars, not the basketball player nor the Grinnell CIO) thinks DMZ (one of his other bands). Why is that Muddy Waters is in as a Performer (the primary award), but Howlin' Wolf is in as an influence? What other women belong? (Dionne Warwick, Marianne Faithful - Broken English is a masterpiece, at least in my world.) And where are the bands of my late teenage years? Why no Husker Du, Minutemen, the Replacements, X? It's clear that the first two influenced lots of bands. Green Day are and Nirvana are in, and it's pretty clear that they wouldn't have existed if it hadn't been for the Huskers, the 'Mats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame_inductees And where are Richard Thompson and Fairport convention, one of Rock's most important guitarists and a key English folk-rock band? Pere Ubu should be there. It's Cleveland, after all. https://www.rockhall.com/inductees.

  60. The SPRITE rabbithole. misc:statistics:rambly:articles:`_ https://www.chronicle.com/article/I-Want-to-Burn-Things-to/244488?cid=wcontentgrid_article_bottom http://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-researcher-compared-two-identical.html https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/life-in-the-tinderbox-6b2e9760f3aa

  61. Giving up on Macs. :mac:apple:recycling:article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/11/explosive-problem-with-recycling-ipads-iphones-other-gadgets-they-literally-catch-fire/ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

  62. Fonts with HTML2PS :joc:typesetting:sketch: (fonts-with-html2ps)

  63. A family-friendly college :grinnell:academia:short:requests: Jennifer Weinman's request: "I think a good future musing (add it to your list...) would be something about kid-friendly faculty environments, or having kids pre-tenure. It's something I've talked about with many, but don't see publicly discussed in print all that often." I could start with the old Faculty House Faculty Fridays. It could be in the musing for prospective faculty.

Grinnellians

  1. Toby Baratta '17

  2. Sarah Barks

  3. Rachel Bly '93

  4. Graeme Boy '15

  5. David Campbell

  6. Jeremy Chen

  7. Sarah Dahlby Albright

  8. Nediyana Daskalova '15

  9. Jeff Dickey-Chaisins '81

  10. George Drake. (Include the two things he's done that irk me. Calculus is one. Nursing is the other.)

  11. Karla Erickson https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/26/research-midcareer-professors-makes-case-support-after-tenure

  12. David Feldman '71

  13. Pam Ferguson

  14. Susan Ferrari

  15. Dan and Patricia Jipp Finkelman (public figures?)

  16. Richard Fyffe

  17. Katya Gibel Mevorach

  18. Lexy Greenwell '15

  19. Leslie Gregg-Jolly

  20. Steve Gump

  21. Atul Gupta '??

  22. Cynthia Hansen

  23. John Hirschman

  24. Chris Hunter

  25. Judy Hunter

  26. Kate Ingersoll

  27. Jen Jacobsen

  28. Carolyn Jacobson

  29. Lakesia Johnson

  30. Darlo Kelting

  31. Raynard Kington

  32. Jonathan and Cassie Koomjian

  33. Mike Latham

  34. Glenn Leggett (and his pamphlets) (and whether I should make pamphlets)

  35. Mark Levandoski

  36. Laura Nelson Lof

  37. David Lopatto

  38. Joe Mileti

  39. Alex Mitchell '17

  40. Brian Mitchell

  41. Claire Moisan

  42. Wayne Moyer

  43. Kumail Nanjiani '01

  44. John Norman '82

  45. Eryn O'Neill

  46. Russell K. Osgood

  47. Terri Phipps.

  48. Henry Rietz '89

  49. Rachel Rose '01

  50. Susan Sanning

  51. Ralph Savarese

  52. Mark Schneider

  53. Rachel Schnepper

  54. Andrew Sherburne

  55. Deanna Shorb

  56. Paula Smith

  57. Angie Balm Story

  58. Tony Stubblebine '00

  59. Jim Swartz

  60. Justin Thomas

  61. Christine Tran

  62. Vivek Venugopal

  63. Angela Voos

  64. More thoughts on Henry MacKay Walker

  65. Autumn Wilke

  66. Eliza Willis

  67. Zoe Wolter '16

  68. Tilly Woodward

  69. Ian Young