Randomness

[Alelou]

Unless wasting disease (i.e. Mad Cow) is being discovered among Louisiana deer, this just seems stupid.

(If it is, even the hunters shouldn't be eating that stuff.)

[Distracted]

I'm thinking that the concern was tularemia, or possibly salmonella or staph food poisoning from improper handling, but it sounds to me like the hunters did everything right. I mean, they even got a commercial meat packer involved. Seems to me that the meat packer would be able to tell if the meat was spoiled.

[Alelou]

Gah. Gotta love bureaucrats. They're like the college lawyers who tell us it would violate FERPA (student privacy) law to put a photo roster of students in Blackboard even though we clearly do actually SEE those student in our classrooms, and nobody else can see the photo roster but us. So I can invite a librarian over to talk to my class, but God forbid I let him get on the online discussion board and answer students' questions without jumping through a bunch of hoops.

[Distracted]

Wait... So a guest lecturer can meet your students in person but isn't allowed access to your Moodle page? In what universe does that make sense? What do you do if you're sick and you need a sub?

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Obama's 'Jedi Mind Meld' Shatters His Nerd Credibility

And I found these on Twitter #ObamaSciFiGaffes:

You have and always will be... My father
Spock shot first
All these moons except Endor are yours
Greetings Time Lord Vader
Cry havoc and let slip the droids of war
These aren't the cuts you are looking for
Beam me up, Chewie!
He who controls the spice, controls the Force.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHT-SABERS!
Warp speed, Mr Solo!

[Alelou]

Wait... So a guest lecturer can meet your students in person but isn't allowed access to your Moodle page? In what universe does that make sense? What do you do if you're sick and you need a sub?

Everywhere I've taught uses Blackboard instead of Moodle, but yes -- I've substituted for other classes, and I see THOSE students. Maybe you're not allowed to be sick if you have a purely online class? I have no idea (and since they've just upped the class size from 20 to 33 for all the online classes, I have no intention of ever GETTING an idea). Not that an adjunct can really afford to get sick anyway.

But claiming we can't legally see the photo roster is even crazier, in that it's preventing us simply from seeing pictures our own students, the people we are teaching in every class, the people for whom we already have access to names, addresses, etc...

[Distracted]

It's a head scratcher, all right.

[Alelou]

So does Beasts of the Southern Wild count as science fiction? Interesting movie. The little girl really is great in it.

[Distracted]

I haven't seen it. I don't even remember it playing down here.

[Alelou]

It's on DVD now, so I got it from Netflix. It was a small-budget film and I don't know if it ever played outside of art theaters.

Definitely worth watching (especially for someone from Louisiana -- it's set in The Bathtub). I'm thinking it's really magic realism rather than science fiction, though.

[Alelou]

Snow forecasting has been really off this winter. All the schools are closed locally because we've got at least six inches of snow out there and it's still coming down -- they were predicting 2-4 and refused to even put up a winter weather advisory until after it started piling up last night. This happened with one of the early storms, too. Meanwhile, the storms the weather service said would be storms of the century barely registered, at least here.

[Weeble]

Agreed,

Except ours has been as usual over-predicted. Our 2-4 on Tuesday didn't even leave a dusting. Around here it seems any excuse to close schools works. Not to get on the uphill both ways rant, but it sure seems like schools close based on forecasts, not on actual weather.

[Alelou]

If we didn't have so many lawyers, I doubt they would. I think they follow a herd mentality around here -- nobody wants to be the one district that got it wrong.

But our district is very large and covers so much high terrain with horrible roads, I know that sometimes even though there's nothing down here on the ground, just 10 minutes up the mountain it's a snowy nightmare.

I found this out when I went to check out some property the other day (I'm supposed to be downsizing, but the ultra cheap farmhouse on 20 acres was too interesting not to go take a peek). We were down to bare ground at our house, but literally just ten minutes up that hill from here everything was covered in at least three inches.

Personally I'd love more dependable snow cover, but my husband would hate it. And twenty acres is not downsizing, even if it is dirt cheap. And up there I'd probably have to cope with bear and moose as well as deer. (But what an adventure it would be!)

[Weeble]

20 acres sounds great, bear and moose yummy! call peta you know 'people eating tasty animals'

[Weeble]

Hey Dis/Alelou it can be done!!

Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... stpop_read