apostrophes and semicolons

I'm going to add this to my syllabus next term: "If you don't know how to use 'em, don't."

(Guess what I'm doing this afternoon.)

Some of my students punctuate the way Bob Ross painted. "Let's put a friendly little semicolon in that sentence." "Maybe there's a happy little apostrophe that lives here!"

They get commas right almost half the time. Periods, even more. Dashes are a problem for many, as they don't understand that hyphens and dashes are not the same thing. But a 1-en hyphen for a 1-m dash doesn't bother me, not much at all.

Misused apostrophes and semicolons, however, bug me.

OK, I feel better now. Back to the paper's.

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Day 4: What was I thinking?

Well I have only been training for half a week and already my knees are killing me! Is this going to get any better, or will it only get worse?

I began training week by buying new running shoes. The ones I have now are not only old and ripped and dirty, but they have been through a lot - trekking in New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines as well as miles of spinning and a tiny bit of running. Unfortunately, I forgot that new shoes are not as comfortable as the old, smashed, worn in old shoes. So last night as I ran my feet felt like little sausages trapped in their casing.

The second thing I have done (in an attempt to maintain my sanity) is to enlist the help of my friend S, who lives in Seattle. We are going to do "long distance" training together (ie. moral support and someone to nag me if I fall behind) I might have an advantage over him though, as he is running in the snow (oh and did I forget to mention he is a way better runner than me anyway?)

The training calendar says to run at an "easy conversational" pace. Ha! Whatever that means, I am sure I have not mastered that yet. To me that means panting and sweating and red-faced running segueing into walking.

Training progress so far....

WEEK ONE: 4 days complete. 3 to go.

Miles run: 5
Miles walked: 4
Hours in spin class: 2
Degrees in New Orleans today: 28
How old I feel based on knee pain: 78
Dollars spent on tiger balm: 5.67
Tiger Balm applied: half a canister (approx value: 2.83)

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Born on Christmas Day

The semester's almost over, and thoughts turn to the day that marks the birth of the man who brought truth and enlightenment to the world. I refer, of course, to Isaac Newton, born on December 25, 1642.

According to an old superstition, "The child born on Christmas Day will have a special fortune" (perhaps to make up for getting cheated on birthday presents). This was certainly true of Newton. His father, a prosperous but illiterate farmer, died three months before Newton's birth, and Isaac was raised by a largely uncaring grandmother and various members of his step-father's family. Nothing in his childhood indicated the greatness that lay ahead.

Isaac Newton has been called the greatest scientist in history. He didn't discover gravity--others had noticed it long before him--but he was the first to understand and explain it in mathematical terms. His three laws of motion remain the basis for classical mechanics. He invented calculus, the bane of high school and college students. His work on light became one of the two pillars of modern quantum physics.

Alexander Pope wrote of Newton's accomplishments: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, 'Let Newton be!' and there was light."

Isaac Newton wasn't the only Christmas Day baby. Clara Barton (born December 25, 1821) earned the nickname "Angel of the Battlefield" for her selfless nursing of the wounded during the Civil War. Later, she organized and led the American Red Cross.

Conrad Hilton (1887) was Paris Hilton's great grandfather. I believe he also had something to do with hotels.

Believe it or not, Robert L. Ripley was born on Christmas Day of 1893.

I wonder if Joseph McCarthy, born on December 25, 1908, was somehow traumatized by red bows, red lights, red poinsettias, etc.?

The list of famous people born on Christmas Day includes bandleader Cab Calloway (1907); Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (1918); The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling (1924); singers Jimmy Buffett (1946) and Barbara Mandrell (1948); and actors Sissy Spacek (1949) and Humphrey Bogart (1899).

One person who was probably not born on December 25: Jesus. Many scholars place that event in the Spring. So instead of "God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, Remember, Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas day," perhaps we should sing "… was born sometime in May." (Try it.)

Christmas was moved to December 25 to allow retailers a chance to expand their after-Thanksgiving sales. No, really what happened was this: Early church leaders paid less attention to Jesus' birth than they did his death (Easter), and so at first no one really worried much about when to celebrate Christmas. But in the middle of the fourth century, Pope Julius I declared that Jesus' birth should be celebrated on December 25. He chose that date because there was already a major holiday at that time: Saturnalia, a lengthy pagan festival tied to the Winter solstice. By placing Christmas at that point on the calendar, Julius hoped to preempt Saturnalia and gain instant support for his new holiday.

And that's how Isaac Newton became a Christmas baby.

Expelled

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Remembering Pearl Harbor--and FDR

One of my favorite blogs, and the first that I ever read regularly, is Orac's Respectful Insolence. Orac is a surgical oncologist who writes "on medicine, quackery, science, pseudoscience, history, and pseudohistory (and anything else that interests him)." Today Orac has a short piece on Pearl Harbor in which he reminds us to remember those who served in World War II.

The day after the attack on Pearl Habor, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered one of his most memorable lines: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of American was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

In the first draft of that war message to Congress, Roosevelt wrote "a day which will live in world history." He knew that wasn't right, and he changed it to "a day which will live in infamy," a much more dramatic phrase. (We will forgive him the ungrammatical "which," which he used frequently; it should be "a day that will live in infamy.")

That was far from FDR's best speech, though. He delivered a better one the next evening during one his fireside chats. Roosevelt was an early political master of the radio, using the new medium (it was a dozen years old when he was first elected president in 1932) to wonderful effect. His fireside chats weren't the presidential addresses people were used to. Rather than making a formal speech, the kind given to a captive audience in a crowded auditorium, Roosevelt spoke informally, personally, like he was right there having a friendly chat in the parlor.

Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, said the president thought of his audience during these chats. “His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor with them,” she said. “People felt this, and it bound them to him in affection.”

And so on the evening of December 9, 1941, Roosevelt went on the radio to talk to the American people about the Japanese attack and our entry into World War II. "The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality," he began. He listed some of those "immoral" acts, in both Asia and Europe, and then, in the same direct but firm voice that had brought Americans through the Depression, he said: "We are now in this war. We are all in it--all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history."

Roosevelt realized the enormity of the task confronting the American people as we entered the war. "On the road ahead there lies hard work," he said, "grueling work, day and night, every hour and every minute. I was about to add that ahead there lies sacrifice for all of us. But it is not correct to use that word. The United States does not consider it a sacrifice to do all one can, to give one's best to our nation, when the nation is fighting for its existence and its future life."

Tom Brokaw called those Americans "the Greatest Generation." It does them no disservice to suggest that it was the nation's greatest challenge that created its greatest generation--and, many would argue, one of our greatest presidents.

The above was originally published, in slightly different form, in the Cartersville Daily Tribune News.

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the good ship Cauliflower

The 96th Carnival of Education is up at History Is Elementary, with over three dozen of the blogosphere's best postings on education from the past week--including one on the Cauliflower that will make you smile and one from yours truly.

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Approximate Training Schedule

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Half Marathon Training Schedule

The Mardi Gras Marathon is on February 25th 2007, and I have decided to participate by making an attempt to run the half marathon (13.1 miles) that day. I started my training this week and it goes for 12 weeks..... I really do not enjoy running very much but I do enjoy a challenge, so we will see where this one takes me. I figure if I get burned out after week 5 or 6 (the most I have ever run before is 6 miles), I can opt out of the half and go for the 10 K (there are full marathon, half marathon and 10 K options) and I will still get the free t-shirt.

To see my (un?)successful progress and to hear my whining, you can click on the link on the left or go to: http://www.cankyriarun.blogspot.com

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Please, Mister Custer

Tomorrow is the birthday of George Armstrong Custer, born on December 5, 1839.

Custer's notable career in the U.S. Army during the Civil War--he made brigadier general at the age of 23--was largely forgotten after an unfortunate leadership decision in May 1876.

The Battle of Little Bighorn was-- ummm, memorialized in a novelty song by Larry Verne that inexplicably reached number one in 1960. A nervous soldier whines, "Please, Mister Custer, I don't want to go." Lyrics here. You can hear the song here, courtesy of the archives of WFMU, the world's best radio station. (Click on "listen to this show"; the song starts at 33:00.)

Expelled

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another annoying "Top 100" list

The Atlantic Online is out with a list of the 100 "most influential figures in American history."

Pretty much the usual suspects in the top five: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR, and Hamilton. But the farther down the list you go, the more questionable (or at least debatable) the choices become.

Sam Walton (Mr. Wal-Mart) is number 72. Have 71 people shaped modern American life more than Walton?

Frank Lloyd Wright, at number 76, isn't far behind Walton. Visionary architect? Sure. But I can go hours at a time without feeling Wright's influence. I probably travel in the wrong circles.

And Betty Friedan is number 77, one spot less influential than Wright. She should be higher, I think.

It's easy to pick holes in lists such as this. But they can serve an important function. It's the end of the semester. We still have so much to cover in our classes. We're losing interest as quickly as are the students. So what to do? Take this list into class and discuss.

Thanks to History and Education: Past and Present for the tip.

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Beauty in the Classroom

In a recent post, Andrew Leigh wrote about Rate My Prof and the general issue of student evaluations. In the comments, he referred to an article by Daniel Hamermesh and Amy Parker in Economics of Education Review. (Hamermesh is a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin; Parker was one of his undergraduate students.)

In "Beauty in the Classroom: Instructors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity" (love that alliteration!), Hamermesh and Parker had students rate photographs of professors on their physical attractiveness. They then correlated that measure with the responses of other students on end-of-the-term evaluations of the course and the instructor (very unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory, satisfactory, very good, or excellent).

The result of their study, once you get past the standard deviations, psychometric measures of concordance, and the like, is simple: the better looking the instructor, the higher the scores on student evaluations. The differences were significant: from the bottom to the top of the "beauty" scale, student evaluations increased one whole point out of five. And since few students give their instructors the lowest mark, the difference between least and most beautiful would appear even greater.

The authors noted that the implications of this go beyond just numbers on student evaluations. Since colleges and universities consider such input from students when making decisions on raises and promotions, there could be a correlation between how well professors are paid and how good they look.

"It was God who made me so beautiful," supermodel Linda Evangelista once said. "If I weren't, then I'd be a teacher." Maybe Ms Evangelista shouldn't have been so hasty. According to this study, if she had gone into higher education, she would be almost assured of high numbers on her teaching evaluations, and this in turn would help her receive regular raises and promotions. On second thought, maybe not. "I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day," she once remarked, and even those of us with the best student evaluation numbers have yet to crack the five-digit-per-day mark.

Student evaluations can be a touchy point in higher education. I taught for a few years at a state university in the Midwest. Where other schools use student evaluations as just a part of the review process, this school used student evaluations exclusively. In other words, whatever number came out when they ran the student evaluations (filled in with number 2 pencils, of course) through the machine, that was our teaching score for that year.

This process gave results that suggested a wonderful precision in the review process (3.783! 2.311!), but some of the faculty complained that if they demanded a lot of work or gave the low grades that they felt students sometimes deserved, their evaluations would be lower because of their higher standards. (Actually, empirical evidence on this is mixed.) These faculty therefore proposed that the student evaluations be weighted according to grade distribution, reading and writing requirements for the course, and so forth. In other words, faculty who assigned more books in their courses and gave lower grades would not be penalized for lower student evaluations.

Several of us pointed out that we would have a riot on our hands if students discovered that our raises and promotions were based in part on how many papers we assigned and how many students we flunked.

Until recently, the school where I currently teach required numerical student evaluations for all courses. A couple of colleagues, since retired, showed that results could be manipulated. For example, the questionnaire we used asked students to rate their professors on the following statement: "I believe the teacher cares about students," or words to that effect. Several years ago, these colleagues made a point of telling their classes three times each semester "I care about how you do in the course." Their evaluation scores on those questions increased significantly, even though they did nothing else different in the course. (We still uses student evaluations, but the forms no longer ask for numerical ratings.)

I don't know what to think about all this, but it's one reason I haven't posted a photo of myself above. I'm afraid folks will see it and think, "Oh, I bet students just HATE him."

The above was originally published, in slightly different form, in the Cartersville Daily Tribune News.

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