| (no subject) |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|11:24 pm] |
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i'm enjoying watching the democrats get pissed and show u to fight in the health care civil war. they finally brought a gun to a gun fight! who knew the dems had any balls left? |
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| what should i do? |
[Oct. 18th, 2009|01:04 am] |
i totally appreciate all the help people offer here! it's nice to have other teachers to reflect with. all of the people at my school are so busy.
situation: high school math class. i suspected massive homework copying, so i put up the hw answers for a good long time, then stamped and collected the hw, after which i gave a quiz. the quiz was prerequisite knowledge needed to do the hw with and the extra credit problem that was exactly one of the hw problems they had supposedly done the night before.
so i've got about a dozen with perfect hw who couldn't do the extra credit problem. the question is, what should i do with the info? i can't legitimately accuse them of cheating and don't really want to; i want to leverage it into better effort and behavior. what's a good approach? |
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| things i may have said for real |
[Oct. 8th, 2009|12:53 am] |
in the current lesson in advanced math, the topic is rational functions, which include an element in which a factor is repeated in the numerator and denominator and is known as a hole, because it causes a hole in the graph of the function.
today when discussing the quiz with individual students, i may have said to a teenage girl, "tell me about your holes". ummm. yeah. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 7th, 2009|09:04 pm] |
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i am alive. but I worry about continuing in this manner. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|08:33 pm] |
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this time next week and i'll have been married for a day. |
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| is it just me? |
[Jun. 27th, 2009|02:06 am] |
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i find i don't care about micheal jackson's death. his music was enjoyable, but that lives on past him. everyone seems to have given him a pass on the pedophillia thing, which bugs me. but in the end, he was just another guy, destined to die one day like the rest of us. death is not good, but he wasn't one of my pop culture heros, so i find myself unmoved. |
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| can't sleep |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|02:05 am] |
so i lj. beats working.
i made my "oh shit, this is real" to do list in case they're not on the plane thursday. see, my mother and sister went on a trip to Europe 10 days ago and we haven't heard from them at all. it's making me a little nervous because it's unexpected behavior; my sister hasn't called to talk to her kids in all that time. I can't help but be fearful of potential bad things. i don't really believe they have come to harm, but such things do happen and we are not so special as to be shielded from them. so i've been planning a response, what to do. i wish i could remember my mom's email pwd so i could check her itinerary.
i fucking hate teaching summer school. it's almost a waste of time for some of those kids. low math skills and motivation, so somehow they do better with a more intense learning schedule? plus the fact that the summer skool principal scheduled 4 kids in 1st semester and second semester algebra at the same time. it's sequential knowledge; it's like trying to learn spanish 1 ans spanish 2 simultaneously. peole who don't understand what they are managing make fucking arbitrary decision that the professionals have to deal with. sigh.
on the plus side, this is frakkin' hilarious!
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|03:16 am] |
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i got upset tonight and now can't sleep. tomorrow is prolly fucked. |
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| whadda hell |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|10:34 pm] |
"The problem with Livejournal is that we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. Hence, I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you."
copped from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) veleda |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|01:44 am] |
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ummm..., kinda lost at the moment. shit's happening, but i dunno what to say. hi to everyone? |
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| random factoids |
[May. 25th, 2009|08:44 am] |
courtesy of oceansong
Rules:
You can ONLY answer Yes or No
You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks. -- and believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming - nothing is exactly as it seems.
Now, here's what you're supposed to do. . . Copy and paste this into your notes, delete my answers, type in your answers and tag as many of your friends as you'd like to.
Been arrested? ---NO
Kissed someone you didn't like? ---NO
Slept in until 5 PM? --- NO
Fallen asleep at work/school? ---YES
Held a snake? --- YES
Ran a red light? ---YES
Been suspended from school? --- NO
Experienced love at first sight? --- NO
Totaled your car in an accident? --- NO
Been fired from a job? --- YES
Fired somebody? --- YES
Sang karaoke? --- NO
Pointed a gun at someone? ---NO
Done something you told yourself you wouldn't? --- YES
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? --- NO
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? --- NO
Kissed in the rain? --- YES
Had a close brush with death ---NO
Played spin-the-bottle? ---YES
Sang in the shower? --- YES
Smoked a cigar? --- NO
Sat on a rooftop? --- YES
Taken pictures of yourself naked? ---YES
Smuggled something into another country? --- NO
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? --- NO
Broken a bone? ---NO
Skipped school? --- YES
Eaten a bug? --- NO
Sleepwalked? --- NO
Walked a moonlit beach? --- YES
Rode a motorcycle? --- YES
Dumped someone? --- YES
Forgotten your anniversary? --- YES
Lied to avoid a ticket? --- NO
Ridden on a helicopter? --- NO
Shaved your head? --- NO
Played a prank on someone? --- YES
Hit a home run? --- NO
Felt like killing someone? --- NO
Cross-dressed? --- NO
Been falling-down drunk? --- YES
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? --- YES
Eaten snake? --- NO
Marched/Protested? --- YES
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? --- NO
Puked on amusement ride? --- NO
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? --- NO
Been in a band? --- NO
Knitted? --- NO
Been on TV? --- YES
Shot a gun? --- YES
Skinny-dipped? --- YES
Gave someone stitches? --- NO
Eaten a whole habenero pepper? --- NO
Ridden a surfboard? --- NO
Drank straight from a liquor bottle? --- YES
Had surgery? --- NO
Streaked? --- NO
Taken by ambulance to hospital? --- NO
Tripped on mushrooms? --- NO
Passed out when not drinking? --- NO
Peed on a bush? --- YES
Donated Blood/Plasma? --- YES
Grabbed electric fence? --- NO
Eaten crocodile meat? --- NO
Eaten cheesecake? --- YES
Eaten your kids' Halloween candy? --- NO
Killed an animal when not hunting? --- YES
Peed your pants in public? --- YES
Snuck into a movie without paying? --- YES
Written graffiti? --- YES
Think about the future? --- YES
Been in handcuffs? --- NO
Believe in love? --- YES
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? ---YES |
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| meme time |
[May. 3rd, 2009|07:07 pm] |
Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
"flags atop masts waving and flapping to the strict rhythm rocking boat decks. he might have noticed that the time it took for a mast to complete its swing did not change, an observation that could've incubated in the subconscious, waiting for an important connection before hatching a scientific discovery."
"the motion paradox" 'the 2500-year-old puzzle behind all the mysteries of time and space' - joseph mazur |
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| reflections in the middle of the night |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|03:08 am] |
I'm alone this weekend. I'm generally not that nice myself when I'm alone.
I don't have a good understanding of why I'm stubborn to the point of hurting myself. I have this speech software (Dragon 10)and it works adequately, not well by any means, but I don't use it that much. I tell myself that it's because it doesn't seem to give back memory that it takes and the computer gets weird and slow while it's functioning or that the more it hears my voice, the worse it works so I've learned not to save changes, or that it mistypes about 3% of the things I say I don't catch them, I look like a moron. but that's probably just rationalizing. It comes down to that still angry about getting injured and don't want to have to change my behavior. this is not the most adult behavior I've ever had.
I'm wasting water right now by running the shower just so I can hear the water rain down. when i get spazzy, it's one of the few things that helps me chill. I have a whole playlist of rainstorms and people in the shower (nonsexual) on YouTube. On the other hand, we've been recycling so much that we forgot to take the garbage out last week but it didn't matter because the can was less than half-full. it's a net neutral.
Went crazy on the used book buying now I have a pile of books to read literally a foot and a half high. pick of the litter: "the motion paradox: 2500-year-old puzzle behind all the mysteries of time and space". it's about Zeno's paradox which is something I'm very interested in. I have a strong belief that all apparent paradoxes are really inadequately describing a system or set of circumstances or elements of a set. However, I must say the book is making a good argument that there are different points of view on this matter. The author is tying ancient philosophy with modern physics to make a convincing argument. even so, is it arrogance to think some of the great thinkers in history had their heads up their butts on this one?
Mexican swine flu appears to be the next potential apocalypse. I spent part of the day reading Yahoo! News and calculating death rates. If it is to be a pandemic matching the 1918 Spanish flu with similar death rates, California should see about 1,500,000 dead, the county in which I live maybe 15,000 dead, and the school district where I work would lose 65 staff and students. On the other hand, medicine is much more advanced from back in the day.
The scariest part of it was reading that a museum curator in Mexico City who just a few days ago was giving our president a tour of his museum has died, even though we are assured it is not from this flu. that freaked me out! we can't lose our boy so quickly. Right now, the world really is turning on one man. He has so much credibility on the world stage simply by by being reasonable and even tempered. and not Being George Bush.
We are living in interesting times. the flurry of dirt coming out about the Bushies is no less gratifying for being so predictable. They are gone and now people feel free to speak. Not just free to speak, but free to finally engage in the moral debate that should have been happening all along. It's amazing hearing the things the Republicans find themselves forced to say in order to maintain some sort of justification for the last eight years. They don't understand that political dialogue has changed in the old tricks are not working right now. For a brief time, everyone's paying full attention so the usual lies and dissembling and obfuscation is not working and they have nothing else. Or to put it another way, they're still bringing a knife to a gunfight.
I'm hearing noises from beyond the closed bathroom door. I should be the only one home. This is how the movie starts, right?
I'm a not much of a mathematician compared to the greats, but I like to feel like I'm worthy of the name. I spend a lot of time thinking about math, deconstructing it for my students. I created a chart of the interrelations of various trig identities in the shape of a hexagon that I haven't been able to find anywhere else, so maybe I created something new. Arrogance is a seductive thing.
I did my senior thesis on prime numbers and one of the things coolest parts was reading an article about how the distribution of prime numbers is related to the Riemann hypothesis which is connected to the way subatomic particles are organized. Stumbling upon this article made me feel that I was indeed part of the club.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/prime_numbers_get_hitched/ |
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| that was quick |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|10:30 pm] |
so the state of the union is...uncertain? the whiney tea bag protesters are now openly talking of session and getting govenors and state legislatures to go along. as a dude on rachel maddow's show said, "conservatives have been out of power for less than 3 months and they're talking session. talk about sore losers." |
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