Sometimes There’s A Breakthrough

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The final paper. A self-assessment of one’s writing progress. Which admittedly, is a bit presumptuous.

A fave excerpt from one student’s paper.

“But this prewriting is different than what I thought it would be; my prewriting involves putting my professor into a (metaphorical) box, and I put that box into another box. Then, I put that box in the garage and forget about it. Only at this point do I return to my brainstorming and drafts. I have learned that if I do not do this I expend too much energy trying to inject the professor into my creation. Once I realized that my writing is for myself, not the professor, I found that writing is an engaging process of self discovery and growth. This is most evident in my penultimate paper on the concept of soulmates.”

Typically, academic writing is an impersonal jumping through hoops, with students preoccupied by grades. Students inevitably develop a teacher-centric orientation when writing in school, asking themselves, “To get the best grade possible, what and how am I expected to think and write?”

If I could only get all of my students to put me in a box, inside a box, in a garage. Yes, I would prob suffocate to death, but I would die happy.

The Greatest Threat To My Future

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The golf ball rollback. Here’s everything you need to know about it. Here’s what the writers at The Athletic did not deem necessary to include in their deep dive.

There was a time when I considered myself fairly long. I was living in the Mile High City and at 30 years-young, I was in my prime physically, and could get it out there. Not by today’s top amateur and professional standards, but for sure by weekend hacker standards.

I didn’t realize how much Denver’s thin air contributed to my distance until moving to North Carolina and playing Bryan Park’s grown ass man courses.

Then, I moved to the Specific Northwest where it’s almost always wet, cool, and well, wet. Nothing like plugging your driver. And then, somewhere along the way, I got old. So the combo of Pacific Northwest conditions coupled with my aging means I’ve gone from medium-long to medium-short. What exactly are we talking? 230 yards if I stripe it.

A year ago on the range, I filmed myself hitting driver with my iPhone. Two take-aways. Swing looked GOOD, silky smooth even, but like my meany college roommate said after I sent it to him, it looked like I filmed it in slow motion. Distance is all about clubhead speed and I’m more turtle than rabbit.

And now, in 2030, the golf suits are going to make it so my ball goes 3-5 yards less. Yes, I have six years to try to hit some bombs, but we also have to factor in the fact that I’ll be in my late 60s in 2030, meaning the swing will likely be even slower.

DO NOT suggest I use the red tees.

Some are most worried about the left taking over higher education. Some, China. Some climate change. Some whether democracy in the (dis)United States will hold. Meanwhile, no one seems to care that I’m staring in the face of 200 yard “bombs”, meaning 425 yard par 4s will require driver, 3-wood, flip wedge.

I’m not sure that’s a world I want to live in.

You Will Never Guess The Biggest Threat To Our Future

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Me.

According to emeritus professor John Ellis in the Wall Street Journal, who contends, “The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.”

He wrote this before yesterday’s Congressional testimony about hate speech that no doubt thrilled him.

All is not lost though. Ellis has a solution:

“. . . the only real solution is for more Americans to grasp the depth of the problem and change their behavior accordingly. Most parents and students seem to be on autopilot: Young Jack is 18, so it’s time for college. His family still assumes that students will be taught by professors who are smart, well-informed and with broad sympathies. No longer. Professors are now predominantly closed-minded, ignorant and stupid enough to believe that Marxism works despite overwhelming historical evidence that it doesn’t. If enough parents and students gave serious thought to the question whether this ridiculous version of a college education is still worth four years of a young person’s life and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, corrupt institutions of higher education would collapse, creating the space for better ones to arise.”

Never mind his assumption that parents of graduating high schoolers are thoughtless, did Ellis just call me closed-minded, ignorant and stupid? That is one hurtful trifecta.

I should probably come clean, but I’m not the one who used “Jack” as his stand in high school graduate, as white and middle-class a pseudonym as there is. I would’ve used Karl as a nod to Marxism, or maybe Friedrich, or better yet, a more inclusive gender-neutral name.

Ellis is old even relative to me, and retired from the classroom, so every day I skillfully weave references to class relations, social conflict, the means of production, and the need for a proletarian revolution into my writing and multicultural education courses, I extend my victory over him. Scoreboard Ellis.

And thereby, become an even greater threat to our future.

2023 Word Of The Year

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Rizz.

From the New York Times.

“It’s official. Oxford University Press, the world’s second-oldest academic press and the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has rizz.

Or at least, like the rest of us over a certain age, it’s trying to get some. ‘Rizz’ — Gen Z (or is it Gen Alpha?) slang for ‘style, charm or attractiveness,’ or ‘the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner’ — has been named as Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year, beating out contenders like situationship, prompt, de-influencing and (yes) Swiftie.

‘Rizz,’ a shortened form of ‘charisma,’ emerged out of internet and gaming culture, according to Oxford, and was popularized in 2022 by the YouTube and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, who posted ‘rizz tips’ videos online. It went viral in June, after the actor Tom Holland, in an interview with Buzzfeed, said: ‘I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz.'”

The GalPal says I have “rizz to spare”. Maybe I should share some with THolland.

St. Olaf College For The Win

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Must have been a kick-ass search committee because the new President is a red-headed cyclist. Rundell-Singer taught biology on the other side of the Cannon River for three decades. This hire is a major win for Jeanette Byrnes and a devastating blow to Alison Byrnes. Deep down, Rundell-Singer knew, the best uni in Northfield was up the hill.

Can George Santos Support Himself?

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The George Santos reporting has been excruciatingly superficial. The continuous platforming of a congenital liar; the should he or shouldn’t he be expelled; the can the R’s afford to possibly lose the seat; the Botox, Hermès, Sephora and OnlyFans.

Among many others, here are two questions no one seems to be asking:

How did he get 145,824 New Yorkers to vote for him in 2022? That’s 20,420 more than his opponent. Why did everyone find out about his mental condition after the election? Also, the 2022 New York Third Congressional election results were not an anomaly. Why are we still, despite access to unprecedented information about people, so incredibly susceptible to conmen and women? Maybe the avalanche of information works to their advantage? Clearly, we’re increasingly susceptible to congenital liars in politics, business/finance, religious life, fill in the blank.

The second thing you won’t hear a reporter ask is can GS support himself? Does he have any specialized work experience, knowledge, or skills that an employer would value enough to pay him a livable wage? Even setting aside his mental health issues and nightmare character,I highly doubt it. In that respect, he’s emblematic of many young men and women who are finding it exceedingly difficult to approximate their parents’ economic security and lifestyles.

By far, the easiest thing to do is to make fun of Mary Magdalene. Much harder is figuring out how to avoid being taken by GS-like charlatans over and over. Also much harder is helping the GS’s of the world live independent lives. Unless GS figures out how to exploit our celebrity culture in the spirit of his political mentor, the Former Guy, I expect him to end up in and out of prison, with the public paying his room and board.

And that’s the news from the edge of the Salish.

Postscript. Shit.

‘Sleep til Eleven, You’ll Be In Heaven’

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Alternative title, “Where young people go to retire.”

One day last week, I spent 45 minutes sitting on a street corner in Portland. During my urban meditation, I marveled at three 20-something retirees, who weren’t in school or at work, as they waited forever for the light to change so they could cross the busy street where their gritty thrift store destination lied.

The first was a tall, rail thin young woman with a shaved head. Facial piercings galore, tats, cool sunglasses, and ten inch black platform shoes. Topped off with a cancer stick. A one-off if there ever was one.

Psych! Her shorter, less thin friend also had numerous facial piercings and tats, ten inch black platform shoes and a cigarette.

The third amigo, smoking like a chimney and the token male, had multitudinous facial piercings and tats, and can you guess, black ten inch platform shoes.

If spotted alone, you’d give any of them props for keeping the spirit of Portlandia alive. Aesthetic norms be damned and all.

But together?! Their funky ensembles devolved into uniforms that diluted whatever statement they were hoping to make about the more conventional ways most of us appear most of the time.

Teach By Example

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“About 120 people aboard a Monterey Bay Whale Watch boat Thanksgiving morning witnessed a rare sighting of a pod of killer whales hunting sea lions in the bay. A few minutes into the encounter, one whale punted a sea lion almost 20 feet into the air, a common hunting tactic used by killer whales to slow down and exhaust its prey. . . .

Although many people on the boat were excited to lay eyes on the killer whales, some raised concern about the well-being of the sea lions, according to a photographer on the boat who called the scene “bittersweet” but a necessary part of nature.

‘Of course you feel bad for the sea lion, but you have to remember it’s nature and without sea lions, the pod wouldn’t survive without the food,’ photographer Morgan Quimby said.

Talty, who has seen a sea lion punt “multiple times” in her six years of working at Monterey Bay Whale Watch, said witnessing such a moment is quite rare.

‘You have to be at the right place at the right time,’ Talty said. ‘You could even get the hunt when they’ve already punted the sea lion, because oftentimes that’s done in the beginning of the hunt when they’re first trying to get the sea lion exhausted, separate it if it’s in a group.’

Based on the behavior of the four whales, Talty said it was a training session for the new calf in the pod that was learning how to hunt with its mother, grandmother and aunt.

‘Once they successfully killed a sea lion, the members of the pod took turns displaying attack maneuvers and behaviors to further instruct their newest pod member on how to hunt,’ Monterey Bay Whale Watch said Friday.”

As is often the case this time of year, the dad, grandfather, and uncle were watching football.

Pictures here.