Must be present to win

A cry for help

One of my students—let's call him “Dick”—sent me a distressed e-mail. He was not doing well in class and was hoping for some wise words of guidance from his teacher. His semi-coherent message ran thus:

hey Dr.Z dick here,
hey i wanted to run over a little bit of questions, 1.please tell me if there is anything you can pinpoint from my work that i can work on to develope the grasp of this sections.i do not want to fail and sometimes i feel i can grasp it then sometimes i fail it.i do not want to fail this class i meet with tutors every week twice and home tutors and i can do decent but cannot prove my worth on every other test.im using the dropin ctr efficiently...any help you can recommend i do not want to lose my financial aid as it is viable to my continued succession.i can retake the course next semester as a retry but do not want to receive a W as it may discontinue my aid as well..
dick,

I often reply immediately to such messages, both to reassure the student and to prevent them from getting lost in the in-box maelstrom. Students benefit most from timely feedback. This time, though, I sat on my hands and just stared. And stared. And walked away from the computer.

Dick was in class the next day. I asked him to see me at the end of the period. He dutifully approached me as his classmates filed out of the room.

“I got your message, Dick, but I have to say I'm puzzled. Isn't it obvious what you need to do?”

“Huh? I'm trying everything I can, Dr. Z!”

“Even attending class? You routinely miss one class session per week and you often skip two. I'm less impressed about the frequency with which you meet with tutors if you don't attend actual class sessions.”

“Well, uh, sometimes I can't make it.”

“So it seems. But if you can't attend class, you can't reasonably expect to pass it. And where is the work you're doing with your tutors? I didn't see any homework from you for the last two chapters. So far, in fact, you've missed about thirty percent of the homework and quizzes. You'd barely be passing if you got perfect scores on the remaining seventy percent, but you're nowhere close to that.”

Dick had nothing to say, but he was nice enough to look embarrassed.

“Dick, I was astonished by your message, especially since it should be perfectly obvious that you desperately need to come to class and pay attention to the lessons. You can't skip out on a third of our sessions and survive. Few students could get away with that. I need to see you in class, on time, every day for the rest of the semester. That's my advice.”

He nodded his head. He even showed up the next day. Two days in a row. That's good! I wait to see if he makes it to three, which has occurred before—but rarely.

One thing sticks in my mind, though. Dick was clearly surprised—startled, even—at my advice. The notion of actually coming to class regularly had never occurred to him.

Self-validation

Oops! ... I did it again

It was an accident.

I gave my students a take-home quiz, due at the beginning of our next class period. This doesn't happen too often, but it's a nice opportunity for them to score maximum points by working together and carefully comparing notes before submitting their results. With a few exceptions (the handful of students who prefer to keep their work as secret as possible), my students spring at the chance to cooperate and rack up the points.

This time was no exception. However, one student e-mailed me with a concern. “Abe” had transportation issues and was afraid he might be late to class or even miss it entirely. As a precaution, he had scanned his solution to the quiz and attached the image to his message. I wrote back to put him at ease, confirming my receipt of his work, and wishing him good luck in making it to class the next day.

As it turned out, Abe was in class that next morning and handed in the original version of his quiz. I slipped it into my binder along with all of the others. Like the absent-minded professor I am, I quite forgot that I had printed out his scan and already had that in my quiz folder. During my grading session that afternoon, I inadvertently graded Abe's quiz twice, marking up both the original and the scan.

I noticed my oversight while sorting the quizzes into alphabetical order for purposes of entering the scores in my gradebook. I placed the two versions of Abe's quiz side by side and discovered that they were still identical: My red-ink marks on the two quizzes were identically placed, the corrections were a perfect match, and both quizzes bore the exact same score.

Naturally I was pleased. Consistent grading is one of the most important factors in treating students equitably. Here I had evidence that my correction process was rigorously—even rigidly—consistent. I have achieved the gold standard in the potentially capricious and subject process of grading!

Either that, or I'm a robot.

Did not do the math

An example of undercutting

If a large fraternal organization invites you to be the speaker at its annual fundraiser, you should definitely accept. If that same organization asks you to contribute a signed copy of your novel for the silent auction, you should provide it. If they reserve a table in the lobby for a local bookseller to hawk your book, your delight should exceed all bounds!

However...

If they put a starting bid on your book of $25 when it's being sold for $21 in the lobby, don't be surprised if your book is left behind on the auction table. Oops!

Corporations are people

Well, kind of

Nothing is more important to the continuing success (or failure!) of an organization than its hiring process. Bring in the wrong people and you're doomed. Bring in the right people and you have a fighting chance. Hence I never pass up an opportunity to serve on one of my college's hiring committees. Despite the onerous task of wading through dozens of thick application packets, it's worth it in order to participate in the selection of my future colleagues, supervisors, and support staff. It's also educational.

As you might imagine, some applications make more interesting reading than others. Each candidate's personal statement of interest strives to distinguish the candidate from other, supposedly less qualified, applicants. The candidate has to tread the fine line that separates persuasive self-promotion from repellent bragging. One must also take into account one's audience and do the necessary homework to research the target institution. I have quite lost track of the number of letters addressed to Large Community College that say, “My lifelong dream is to work at an educational institution as excellent as Medium Community College.”

I presume that was a search-and-replace failure while preparing different packets for LCC and MCC. Proofread your submissions, people!

Of course, there are more subtle errors than merely getting the college's name wrong. One particularly fascinating example springs to mind as a perfect illustration of a candidate that did too little homework in preparing his application for a faculty position. Here's a paraphrase of the key paragraph:

In an era of shared governance in community colleges, I have vital hands-on experience that prepares me to be especially effective and productive as a professor at your institution. While serving as department chair at Country City College, I was tasked with the job of providing instructor-perspective input to the Dean of Education in creating faculty assignments. Although the actual responsibility of making faculty teaching assignments rests with the Dean of Education, it was frequently necessary, in order to meet semester deadlines, for me to present the Dean with detailed faculty-assignment proposals as a fait accompli. I thus, in effect, did a significant portion of the Dean's job during the four years I was his faculty advisor and therefore possess actual administrative experience at the management level that should enhance and inform my contributions as a new faculty member at Large Community College.

As the members of the LCC hiring committee sat around a long conference table and passed around the application packets for comment, several of us took special notice of the unique qualifications of the candidate from Country City College. Imagine—we could hire someone who had actually done a big part of his ineffective supervisor's job!

We were not prepared to make any decisions at that point because the hiring committee was awaiting the arrival of its chair, who had to wrap up a prior meeting before joining us for candidate screening. When he arrived, the application from the CCC professor was on top of the stack at his end of the conference table. He spotted it and immediately picked it up.

“Well, here's a name I recognize! He was a faculty rep on my advisory team when I was Dean of Education at Country City College!”

Sean Hannity is right!

Extreme right—but in this case also correct

As a rule, I do not listen to Sean Hannity's predictable right-wing blather. He's a Seanny One-Note who harps on Obama's supposed misdeeds and can be readily summarized by “liberals bad, sufficiently crazy conservative nutbags good.” Today, however, he delivered a priceless nugget while self-importantly explaining the universe to his dutifully credulous listeners. Not having subscribed to his podcast (I'm not completely crazy), I may not have captured his words with perfect verbatim fidelity, but this is very, very close:

Perhaps in the future some young people will look back and remember this period of history. I name it for you now: the Era of Radical Extremism.

Couldn't have put it better myself, Sean!

As you might have guessed, he was pontificating on the excesses of the thin-skinned Muslim rioters (and the extremists who used them as cover to attack our embassy in Libya), but the Era of Radical Extremism perfectly characterizes the Tea-Party-drenched cult that is today's Republican Party. Eisenhower would be read out of today's GOP for his boldness in denouncing the military-industrial complex. Goldwater would be repudiated for embracing gay rights. Ronald Reagan would be in danger of getting blacklisted for his signature on a series of tax-increase measures (both in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.), but that would be too inconvenient, so today's Republicans prefer to worship a carefully edited icon of Reagan, the awkward bits of his history consigned to the memory hole.

Thanks for the nice label, Sean. I hope you wear it proudly!

Too cool for school

No royal road to algebra

Although its hours have been trimmed by the current state budget crisis, my college's Tutoring Center continues to serve as a lifeline for many of our students. Each semester, therefore, I make a point of ensuring that my math students are aware of the facility's existence. I don't just tell them, I show them. Thus it was once again that, during the second week of the semester, I gathered up the entire class and took them on a “field trip.”

It puzzled my students when I announced it, of course. I told them to leave their books and papers behind in the classroom, which I would lock behind them. We would take a few minutes to stroll down the sidewalk to the Tutoring Center, which was only a couple of buildings over. Short field trip. Once I mentioned where we were going, some students nodded their heads in comprehension, grasping my purpose. Other students, however, had a different reaction.

One came up to me, backpack in hand, clearly ready to make a break for it.

“Is this required?” he inquired.

“We're all going to the Tutoring Center,” I said, in oblique response.

“Yeah, but do we have to? Is it an assignment?” He was nothing if not persistent.

“We're all going to the Tutoring Center and we'll be back in a few minutes to start on the next topic,” I said, demonstrating a charming obtuseness.

I don't think my student was charmed. He got to the point.

“Does this affect our grade? Are we getting participation points?” he asked.

I looked right at him, allowing my surprise to show.

“‘Participation points’? In a college class?”

He fell silent but unrepentant. He wanted points if he was going to go to the Tutoring Center with his classmates. It was finally obvious I wasn't giving any. He trailed along behind the rest of the group and I expected him to lag increasingly until he took a “wrong turn” and vanished toward the parking lot.  I was thus mildly surprised and pleased to see that instead he stuck it out and hung at the periphery of the group as I introduced them to the instructional assistant who managed the math tutors in the Center and walked everyone over to the area where drop-in tutoring occurred. Now that my students had been physically present in the facility and had met the key personnel, I figured it was much more likely that they would feel comfortable about returning to it when they needed help.

We returned to our classroom and launched into the lesson for the second half of the class period. The point-grubbing student sat quietly in the back, apparently ruing his decision not to skip out. At least I assume so, since in the next few days he developed a habit of nonattendance or early departure. When our first exam came along, he achieved the class's low score, missing a D by several points. (In fact, his score in the thirties might reasonably be characterized as an F-minus-minus.) He had never come to my office hours and he had never darkened the door of the Tutoring Center again.

I guess he really needed those participation points.

Dad goes to the dogs

Who let them out this time?

Like a mischievous child with poor impulse control, my father just can't help it. When things are too quiet and too civil for too long, he has to poke someone in the ribs or otherwise pick a fight. Fortunately, he prefers a verbal brawl to a physical one, preferentially in the form of e-mail. Although he knows I don't welcome (and, in fact, disdain) his habit of forwarding crude right-wing messages, every so often he “forgets” and accidentally includes me among the forwardees. I am not amused.

In his most recent display of execrable taste, he sent out the following:

My Dogs

This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare.
At first the lady said,
"Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare."
So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddy's are.
They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care.
So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify.
My dogs get their first checks Friday.

Damn, this is a great country.

I managed to read the entire thing without bursting into good-natured laughter. Imagine that. I guess I can't take a light-hearted joke, can I? Dad knows that I will not keep silent in the face of such noxious trash and can be relied upon to use “Reply All” in response. Not wanting to disappoint him (even while understanding that I was feeding the troll), I fired this off:

Yes, it’s a great country, and perhaps in Obama’s second term it’ll become a still greater country in which overtly racist humor is even more disdained than it is today.

Despite years of combat, I am still unable to predict which bright and shiny thing in my ripostes will attract Dad's attention. Would he blow up at the thought of a second Obama term, a notion that haunts his nightmares? Would he take umbrage at the charge of racism? He chose the latter, and replied with wounded innocence:

sorry but I DID NOT SEE ANY THING RACIST ABOUT THE DOGS!!!

Tsk tsk. Not the dogs, old man. You.

Antics like these unpleasantly remind me of early harbingers in the days when my father was not so overtly a right-wing nutter. Even back then he couldn't always keep it tamped down. I recall some forty-plus years ago when I was sitting at the kitchen table, painstakingly filling out a college application. In those days many schools required that you attach a wallet-size photo to the finished packet. Dad peeked over my shoulder as I carefully glued the photo in the indicated spot.

“What's that for?” he asked. “Do they want to make sure you're not a nigger?”

Several seconds went by as the rubber cement set and I silently rubbed off the excess from the margins of the photo.

“Hey,” said Dad. “I asked you a question. Didn't you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you,” I replied with a brittle voice. “I was ignoring you.” (In my brain's playback mechanism I can hear myself archly saying, “I was doing you the courtesy of ignoring you,” but I'm pretty certain that's the fictionalized version that came to me later via l'esprit de l'escalier. Maybe I'll save it for a book.)

My remark was following by more silence. Then Dad gave a short laugh and strolled off. And a few months later he did not balk at coughing up the outrageous tuition at the private school to which I was admitted. I owe the old so-and-so the world.

But he presumes. Damn, but he presumes.

Big bad seven

HT to HT

This really crept up on me: the seventh anniversary of the launching of Halfway There. I started this blog shortly after completing my third and final stint in graduate school, needing to do something to keep my powerfully over-educated brain busy. Either that, or to sublimate my compulsion for keyboard pounding.

It's often been fun, although occasionally disappointing. How can certain segments of the world resist the rationality of my pellucid prose? Yet I strive to avoid the conclusion that people who disagree with me are either foolish or evil (although occasionally they seem to be both). Such a conclusion would be bad for amicable family relations, seeing as so many of my relatives insist on doing silly things like supporting the right-wing policies that suck the marrow from their bones. But I preach at them in vain just as they do at me (except, of course, that I use truth and they use falsehood).

In recent years the sublimation of my keyboard-pounding jones has taken the form of novel-writing, but one modestly successful publication is not likely to be the start of a burgeoning career in fiction. Perhaps after the movie rights are sold or the opera version has its premiere. We'll see. In the meantime, school is back in session and it's only a matter of time before a few more “weird student” stories are collected.

And maybe we'll make it to the 8th anniversary.

Reviews are in!

★★★★★ 

Do me a favor? People have been asking me if there's going to be a Kindle version of my novel. The answer is a firm maybe. It will happen only if the publisher gets the notion that there's a significant demand for an e-book edition. Would you please go to the Amazon page and click on “I'd like to read this book on Kindle”? Thanks!

A few unsolicited reviews have trickled in since last month's publication of Land of Milk and Money. The good news is that they're positive. Right now there are three five-star reviews on Amazon, although one of them appropriately notes that it was written by a friend of mine. (Thanks, buddy!) The other two, however, are by people I have never met and don't know. I have to thank them for taking the time and trouble to post such positive reviews of my book. Muito obrigado!

 Here's what Karen Davis of Maryland had to say:

A "read straight through" delight, July 31, 2012

Disclaimer: I read the author's blog, but I don't know him. Still, his writing there is delightful, so I was prepared to enjoy the book. I just wasn't prepared to enjoy it quite so much. I started it on my commute to work this morning, and finished it this evening, doing little else but read. The story hooked me, the characters are vivid and convincing, and the narrative structure pulled me right in. At first I paid a lot of attention to the dates provided, but fairly soon I felt grounded enough in the family's life to be able to place when things were happening — what seems a bit haphazard at first is anything but. The huge family, bound together by the dairy farm, unravels in an inevitable and real way after the death of the matriarch, who knew that "land, houses, and cows" — and money — would come between them. Her attempt to prevent that serves as the spark, and we get to know them all before we learn how it all ends. (Or maybe not "all".) This book is a joy to read.

Jeffrey W. Hatley then weighed in with the following:

A Wonderful Book, August 6, 2012

Short summary: This is the best work of fiction I have read in a very long time, and you should absolutely read it.

Long Summary:

The first thing I should mention is that this is not the type of book I would ordinarily read. If I were browsing the book store, I probably would not have been gripped by the book's synopsis on the back cover. I bought this book because I'm a long-time fan of the authors blog, so I was familiar with his skilled writing.

This book greatly exceeded my high expectations.

Written in an episodic fashion, Land of Milk and Money uses short, non-chronological anecdotes to tell the story of several generations of the Francisco family and their dairy farm, as well as the legal battle that ensued when the family matriarch passed away. While this may sound like a slightly confusing way to write a story, it is not; the author uses it masterfully, creating three-dimensional characters and relating several decades-worth of incidents, resulting in a book which is a model of clarity. The author does helpfully include a Cast of Characters in the back of the book, but one quickly learns all of the major players and ceases to need this cheat sheet.

Despite being about a legal battle, Land of Milk and Money is light-hearted, and I often found myself chuckling at Candy's follies, Ms. Onan's ineptness, Jojo's ingenuity, and Paul's pedantry. By the book's conclusion, I had developed an attachment to many of the characters, and I can't help but feel that there are even more wonderful anecdotes that didn't make the cut. While I doubt it's in the making, I would certainly read the sequel!

Land of Milk and Money is an extremely fun read, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Please, read this!

Nice! How could I possibly quibble with that? (Although I admit that I did correct one misspelling because it's difficult for me to resist such things.)

By the way, Jeffrey is completely correct. There were a number of omitted anecdotes. Here's a little list:

The voyage to Brazil
The wearing of the green
Alberto's wisdom
If I might have a word
Visit to the University Farm
I want to be a priest
A night at the opera
Want to be a teacher?
Walking past the church
The Einsteinian cow

All but the last of these episodes were written up and included in the manuscript at one point or another. The first one, The voyage to Brazil, was published on-line at the Comunidades site early last year while the manuscript was still under consideration at Tagus Press. During the editing process, the segment was flagged for its comparative length and for being too much of a distraction from the main plot. I had to (reluctantly) agree.

“The wearing of the green” is based on an old blog post from 2005. The time of red and green amused me enough to want to recycle it, but my editor deemed it peripheral to the plot. As he noted in an initial reading of the manuscript, “the story of Paul's evolution from child prodigy to mathematician is well-enough told and does present a focal point for an alternative assimilation narrative, [but] I'm not altogether persuaded it fully coheres with the rest of the book.”

Yeah, busted! He singled out several of the more autobiographical segments and recommended them for deletion. Of the ten deleted titles above, I see that fully seven of them were episodes of this kind.

What will I do with all of the chunks of text left over from the manuscript's slimming process? I don't  know. While most of them don't stand alone very well, neither do they form a coherent whole. Perhaps they are fated to go into literature's dustbin. Although crowded, I'm sure the literary waste receptacle can make room for these leavings. And who knows? With a little bit of patience, they might eventually be reunited with the anecdotes that survived the winnowing process, but ... on the shelf or in the dustbin?

Michael Voris vs. Bill Donohue

O brächten beide sich um! 

Sometimes it is impossible to choose sides. I mean, do we really care whether Mothra defeats Godzilla or vice versa? Does it actually matter whether it's the Wolfman or Frankenstein's monster who emerges victorious? That's the ambivalent feeling I have while observing Michael Voris locked in mortal combat with Bill Donohue. Both men are such perfect exemplars of shallow, sneering sanctimony that Mime's fervent wish from Act II of “Siegfried” comes to mind.

Voris has a well-honed more-Catholic-than-the-pope shtick working for him. He eagerly awaits the imminent Church schism that will drive out the insufficiently devout “cafeteria Catholics” and leave a small but fervent remnant of the ultramontane. Only then will the greatly reduced but greatly purified American branch of the Roman Catholic Church finally be cleansed of the taint of the heresy of Americanism—that vile doctrine of separation of church and state once embraced by the notorious John F. Kennedy but recently denounced by the virtuous Rick Santorum. (Yeah, that's right. There's a segment of modern Catholicism in the United States that regards Santorum as superior to Kennedy.)

Normally Bill Donohue of the Catholic League would not have much to say about Michael Voris. Donohue, after all, is much the greater public figure, a familiar face on television whenever he imagines that the Catholic Church is being unfairly maligned. If anything, Donohue might be inclined to give Voris a condescending little pat on the head (Don't muss the hair, Bill—or whatever that is!) and encourage him to keep up the good work. But recently Voris has been attacking Donohue, and sweet old Uncle Bill can't quite bring himself to ignore it. Those flea bites are getting itchy!

You can almost taste Voris's jealousy of Donohue's high profile as he describes the Catholic League's president as a member of the “Catholic elites”: “you see and hear them everywhere as they appear on and run TV, radio, newspapers, and many magazines.” [Subtext: And all I have is this lousy YouTube channel! And my greatest hit rates occur when Pharyngula readers come to mock me!]

Last week Mr. Donohue appeared on the Lou Dobbs show on Fox News and absolutely ripped honest Catholics who are concerned over the scandal of Obama having been invited by Cardinal Dolan to the Al Smith dinner in New York.

Hint: Voris numbers himself among those “honest Catholics.” This diatribe is just one small segment of a much longer rant titled “Obama and Peasant Catholics,” available on YouTube as part of the ChurchMilitant.TV channel (for all of your right-wing extremist Catholic enjoyment).
 


In response, Donohue deigned to notice Voris's existence, although not by name (perish forbid!). The Catholic League issued a statement attributed to Donohue, here excerpted:

It is customary, though not compulsory, for the New York Archbishop to invite the presidential candidates from the two major political parties to the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York City. This year both candidates will be there. Some are not happy with these choices, especially the decision to invite President Obama. Cardinal Timothy Dolan has not been shy about his criticisms of the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, yet he decided to rise above the politics of the moment and allow the presidential candidates to partake in this charitable event.

On the August 9 edition of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (Fox Business Channel), I vigorously defended Cardinal Dolan’s decision. I talked with him earlier that day about this issue and found, unsurprisingly, that the New York Archbishop wasn’t budging in his conviction that the HHS mandate must be fought with every tool we have. His resolve is unflinching. For me, that was the bottom line. But not for others.

If Catholics want to change the culture, they need to engage it.... Acting diplomatically may at times make for a hard swallow. But following protocol is not analogous to prostituting one’s principles.

I hope this makes it clear. If Donohue had any principles, this would not compromise them. Here endeth the lesson.

But I'm sure the noise will continue.

Hey, Idiot! Buy this!

Selling to sociopaths

It's a problem as old as gaming itself. Stay home and just keep playing, or get to work on time so that your coffee-breath boss doesn't ride you like a rented scooter. Who says you have to choose? Your PS/3 stays at home, but the game goes with you. Never stop playing. PlayStation Vita.

Have you seen the charming advertisement? Do you identify with the tragic sufferings of the poor gameplayer who has to decide between soothing recreation and gainful employment? Do you rejoice upon learning of Sony's brilliant solution to the dilemma? With a PlayStation Vita you can keep playing anywhere, even as you're strolling to work! Even as you cross busy intersections with never a care about speeding traffic! Even at your desk after you survive the trip to the office!

No doubt many hot tears of relief and gratitude were spilled when Sony unveiled its “Never stop playing” commercial. Anyone who was in fear of actually getting a life was now miraculously granted a new lease on irrelevance.



But perhaps I overstate the case. Surely you might still be considered relevant by the survivors of the victims of the multi-vehicle pileup at the intersection where you stepped off the curb without looking. These things happen. Hope you didn't lose your place in your game!

Anyway, there are more direct ways to hurt people than stepping into their path. You could get Crackle.com instead. It has an even more devil-may-care approach to the welfare of the unfortunate citizens of reality. With Crackle.com and a smart phone or other portable video device, you can watch commercial-laden movies for free whenever you want. Even while riding a bicycle! As the Crackle.com commercial demonstrates, you can happily bike through the middle of a picnic or outdoor wedding ceremony while your attention is riveted to the screen. Not even nirvana could be better than this! Besides, those people in the park were just being stupid when they failed to take into account the possibility of bike riders under the influence of Crackle. I mean, it's like all their fault!

Crackle marketing has yet to upload the ad celebrating the destruction of a picnic and disruption of a wedding, but an earlier promo spot is just as true to the theme. With Crackle.com on a portable video device, you can conveniently destroy your neighborhood from the comfort of your riding lawnmower. Now who wouldn't want to do that!?

Oh, right. Sane people.

Publicity coup of the century!

Of course, the century is young 

The cover of my novel has now been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube. Can one million be far behind? No doubt bestsellerdom is right around the corner!

Or perhaps not. This “publicity coup of the century” is certainly amusing and entertaining, but I fear that it's no guarantee that my book will be eagerly snatched up by titillated YouTube viewers. One is permitted to doubt that YouTube is teeming with readers of the modern novel. However, if only one percent of the viewers were to flock to their bookstores or order my novel on-line ... pause to do the math ... omigawd! ... that's six times the original press run! Let's get started on the second printing! (Yes, small university presses are parsimonious with their initial commitments. I'll bet that movie rights are still pretty cheap right now.)

Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox are two young men from the Sacramento region who in 2006 had the single most popular video on YouTube (with nearly 25 million hits). Their video channels continue to be among YouTube's most widely viewed. Their Smosh.com website offers merchandise, games, and third-party animations, all part of Ian and Anthony's burgeoning entertainment enterprise.

I first stumbled across them because they were local (and, no, neither ever enrolled in one of my classes, so I don't really know them). Their cracked sense of humor may be an order of magnitude (and a full generation) beyond mine, but I started to think of them again while pondering my situation. How does a first-time novelist get some notice for his book if his publisher is a small university press with no advertising budget? Hmm. The obvious answer is free publicity!

It hasn't gone too badly. For example, I got on local TV as a stand-in for Star Trek's William Shatner. (Nope. Not kidding. Go look up serendipity in your dictionary.) The next step, of course, was intergalactic fame. Or, at least, world famousness. That's where Smosh came in, the megahit YouTube channel. I knew that the boys had a recurring feature titled “Mail time with Smosh,” during which they would comb through the booty found in their post office box. Imagine how delightful it would be if Anthony or Ian were to hold my book up in front of their video camera and gush over its excellence!

No, I did not think of this during a drunken stupor. Honest. I don't drink. The idea came to me while I was stone cold sober.

So I sent Smosh a letter touting the glorious features of my book. Strangely enough, I omitted my book's title and mailed the letter anonymously. That's right. It was a teaser.

A week later, I did it again. There were a couple of new items added to the teaser list. Still no title or author name, though. I wanted Anthony and Ian to be aware that there was something to anticipate in their future mail. Given the tonnage of fan mail that Smosh receives, I figured it was worth investing some effort in gaining their attention. Finally, of course, I mailed them the book, including the final version of the teaser list:

Here now! A book full of Anthony & Ian’s favorite things!

• Titties! (on the cover)
• Milk! (passim)
• Bullshit! (p. 78)
• Frontal nudity! (p. 236)
• Purple nurples (two!)! (p. 115)
• Sarcastic Spanish! (p. 251)
• Explosions! (p. 122)
• Collisions! (p. 227)
• The F-word! (pp. 25, 26, 38, 156, 203)
• Penile mutilation! (p. 140)
• Cows! (everywhere—including on the envelope this time!)
• Gay bars [where straight boys secure in their masculinity can go because they’re cool]! (pp. 159-164, 178)
• Lawyers in distress! (every chapter)

The only book in the known universe to contain the sentence “Jesus didn’t like having his dick shortened”!

My efforts were deemed worthy of Smosh's attention. On July 23, 2012, the boys posted another installment of “Mail time with Smosh” on their IanH channel. They devoted 30 seconds out of their six-minute video to my novel. Anthony started the segment (at 1:25) by effusively gushing, “Oh, my God, guys! We got the best book ever! It's a book full of all of our favorite things!” Tongue firmly in cheek, I'm sure, but one has to appreciate the cooperation.

Check it out for yourselves. (Then go out and buy copies of my fabulous Smosh-endorsed book!)

What's next? Well, I can't rightly say. (For one thing, I think the Vatican post office strictly screens the mail.)

Bedtime for banzai

Your afterlife is wrong!

PBS has been rebroadcasting “The War,” the multi-part Ken Burns documentary on World War II. Last night I watched the final episode, “A World without War.” As its situation became more dire, Japan ramped up its use of suicide pilots—the infamous kamikaze. One survivor of a kamikaze attack was Maurice Bell of Mobile, Alabama, who was a sailor aboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis when a Japanese pilot crashed into the ship.

“They was trained to fly their planes one way and no return,” explained Bell. “And when they went out after a ship or something, they had their funeral before they actually left and they knew they was never coming back. They was under the impression that if they gave their life that way for their country they'd have a special place in heaven for them automatically—which wasn't true.”

Bell delivered that final phrase with an ironic emphasis, mocking the credulity of the kamikaze who was supposedly expecting to be ushered into paradise upon the completion of his mission. For some reason, the U.S. sailor seemed absolutely certain that the man who attacked his ship has not been enjoying the delights of a luxurious Shinto afterlife. I wonder: Does he similarly dismiss the dogma of a Christian afterlife?

I'm just curious how he can be so sure. Either way.

Stupidity in spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

Idiots write letters

There's nothing like a successful space mission to set off the smugly ignorant. “Think about the children!” they cry. They wring their moist hands over the millions and billions of dollars that they assume were wastefully blasted into space instead of used for charitable works. This morning's San Francisco Chronicle provided a perfect case in point:

But what about the hungry?

The land rover Curiosity arrives on Mars safely. What a feat!

But $2 billion to find water on a planet when hundreds of children go to bed hungry, when teachers, police and firefighters are dismissed? Where are our priorities?

People might say, “But look what we get from our space travel.” When a child says, “Mommy, I'm hungry,” does her mother say, “I know honey, but isn't it wonderful we have Teflon”? What a country.

RMS-O, San Francisco

Damn! The stupid is strong in this one. Did you catch the “hundreds of children”? The ignorant letter-writer doesn't even appreciate the scope of the problem she is decrying. There are millions of children in the United States alone who lack adequate supplies of food, without even taking into account the more severe problems elsewhere in the world. Totally clueless people should not be giving others advice.

That, however, is not my main point. I want to underscore the stupidity of blaming NASA's budget for our failure to ameliorate social ills. As Isaac Asimov pointed out decades ago, it makes no sense to take money from one worthy cause to fund a different worthy cause when so many unworthy money-pits are right under our noses. The cost of the Curiosity mission was reported at approximately $2.5 billion (which the Associated Press foolishly cited as “budget-busting”). That total amount would barely have covered three days of the misbegotten war in Iraq. And you may recall that war did last a little over three days.

That sheds a slender ray of perspective-giving light on the subject, doesn't it?

In the meantime, quite apart from the exciting prospects of scientific discovery and exploration, Curiosity's budget supported (and supports) teams of engineers, scientists, and technicians. These people are a key component of the nation's tech base and infrastructure. Should we outsource all of their jobs to China or India? Besides, they pay mortgages and feed their children just like everyone else. None of the Curiosity budget dollars were simply blasted into space. They were spent on the ground, adding to the economic contributions of our technological and scientific endeavors.

Let's take up a contribution to shoot the San Francisco letter-writer into space. She'll be right at home in the vacuum.

One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy, ...

Ma Bell always rings twice

First she came for my Internet service. Then she came for my cell phone!

Okay, I know it's anachronistic to refer to AT&T as “Ma Bell.” Those good old days are mostly gone, even if the company with the Death Star logo has gobbled up a number of smaller operations in the years since the big break-up. (Apparently we don't mind monopolies nearly as much as we used to in olden times. Life is much simpler with only a few phone companies and a handful of banks. I mean, what could go wrong?)

In my case, AT&T solemnly informed me that my DSL service was being discontinued. Not to worry! I would be offered a wonderful opportunity to upgrade to fiber-optical U-verse! My speed would increase and my costs would stay the same. Furthermore, I could sign up for all kinds of new digital television and music services. Yippee.

The bulky new modem showed up (way bigger than the compact little DSL modem), complete with instructions for user installation. They informed me that my Internet connection would go dark at approximately 8:00 in the morning, after which I should replace the DSL device with the new U-verse modem (is it even correct to call it a modem?). I was told that my service activation would be at 8:00 in the evening.

Okay. I guess I can survive a day without the Internet and e-mail. Surely I would be back on-line before the withdrawal cramps and hallucinations became too debilitating.

By the excellent good fortune of being a teacher on summer break, I was home when the AT&T technician started messing with my home's external phone box. I nonchalantly strolled outside to say hello: “Hi! Whatcha doing?”

He had made short work of it.

“You're all set. Your twisted-pair DSL connection is now fiber-optical U-verse.”

“Already? The instructions said I'd be back on-line this evening.”

“Nope, you're ready to go right now. You received the equipment? Yes? Go ahead and fire it up.”

Apparently AT&T prefers not to tell its customers that the connection is ready to use as soon as the technician's visit is finished. Good thing I bothered to say hello to him.

Sure enough, I set up the U-verse “modem” and returned to the land of the digital. Are things faster? Not that I've noticed. Did I sign up for lots of wonderful new entertainment options? No, not a one. Is the cost the same? So far.

Yippee. Serenity returned to my life.

Then AT&T struck again:

AT&T is constantly upgrading the [wireless] network, and we're not done yet. When the network is improved certain older-model phones, like yours, will no longer be able to make or receive calls or access data.

Apart from that, though, my phone should be just fine.

After years of procrastinating (although “all my friends were doing it”), I finally acquired my first cell phone in 2000. I signed up with AT&T Wireless and got a nice Ericsson A2638SC phone. I stashed it in my car and there it mostly remained. Eventually AT&T sold its cell-phone business to Cingular, whereupon I ended up with a new Motorola V180. As you may know, AT&T later changed its mind and bought out Cingular. Hence I began with AT&T Wireless and I returned to AT&T Wireless all without moving a muscle.

I've had the Motorola for several years (eight, I think) and it still starts up with the Cingular logo. AT&T has not reprogrammed it remotely to herald its borgian renascence. Perhaps the new phone I'll get will be “smarter” and more willing to acknowledge its master. I will find out when I go into my friendly local AT&T store for customer service. It will be fun to watch the young pierced and inked employees as they reach out timorously to touch my old phone, afraid that it will crumble into ancient dust. They will desperately try to puzzle out the details of my calling plan, now mostly lost to the ages and bearing no resemblance to anything they now offer (and long past any contractual obligations).

The youngsters may well give me the same reaction that my father gave me the last time we discussed cell phones. (Wrong word: say, rather, when he interrogated me about cell phones.) How many minutes do you have? Do they roll over? Is weekend calling unlimited? How about international numbers? Blah, blah, blah. At least AT&T's minions will be more interested in extolling the virtues of today's spiffy new calling plans than in decrying my old one. Dad, however, was just fishing for information, wanting to compare notes. He grew quite exasperated as I expressed in detail my ignorance: How many minutes? More than enough. Roll over? Beats me. Weekends? Doesn't matter; I never use up my minutes anyway. International calls? I guess; we called Ukraine on it a couple of times.

The funny thing about it is that I am the numbers person, but I am not just pretending to be blasé about my phone plan. I actually don't have any reason to give it much thought or care. It's cheap and I never exhaust the minutes. I'm certain I average less than 10 minutes per month on the thing. No, really. This summer it jumped up a bit more because I've done a little traveling to book events and stuff. Hmm. Perhaps I should take my phone more seriously.

So what's going to happen at the AT&T store? Will I give in to the impulse to acquire a smart phone and be plugged into the world at all times? I wonder. If the phone is going to sit in the car like my current one does, it won't much matter, will it?

Blah, blah, blah.

Corporations are people

My sense of irony is rusted out

I find the pratings of Dennis Prager to be particularly difficult to listen to. While he is not overtly obnoxious like some other right-wing talk-radio hosts (e.g., the ebulliently nasty Limbaugh), Prager exudes a smug pseudo-intellectualism that is quite irksome to those who are not under his spell. Immodestly taking all knowledge as his province, he soothingly offers his expertise on every topic. He labels different segments of his program as such things as the “Ultimate Issues Hour” or the “Male-Female Hour.” His acolytes lap it up with a spoon.

As a non-acolyte, I do not linger when he pops up on my radio. Recently, however, I listened long enough to catch a sample of his wisdom and ended up laughing instead of groaning. (It's difficult to do both at the same time, but it would be convenient if I  listened to Prager regularly.) He was apparently defending the Citizens United decision and arguing that statism was a greater danger than corporatism. He does not fear the prospect that corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money to complete their takeover of our political system. Prager fears control by the state instead (even if the corporations own it?). He wrapped up a broadcast segment by declaring to his listeners, “I don't fear control by companies as much as I fear control by the state.”

Then the bumper music came on and provided a transition to the next batch of commercial messages. I began to chuckle. Then I began to laugh. The music? Ernie Ford was singing “Sixteen Tons”! Do you know it? It's a protest song that rails against corporate oppression! Did Prager choose this himself in a moment of callous irony? Despite Tennessee Ernie Ford's upbeat delivery of the catchy song, the lyrics carry an unvarnished message of hopeless bondage, referring back to the days when some companies paid their workers in script rather than money. The script could be redeemed only at company-owned stores and markets—where, of course, the company set all the prices. It created a system of debt bondage.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go:
I owe my soul to the company store!

If Prager did this deliberately, he was mocking workers everywhere. If he did it accidentally, then he's an idiot. I'm sure his corporate masters are pleased with him in either case.

The medical merry-go-round

Caught in referral hell

It seemed a good idea at the time. Heck, it still seems like a good idea. People did try to help out and some leads were followed. So they turned into dead ends. Whose fault is that? Everyone who offered suggestions deserves thanks.

I prefer to blame the doctors.

Frankly, it's like they're playing a game of keep-away with a friend of mine. However, instead of swiping some short kid's cap and tossing it back and forth over his head, it's more like they're lobbing his medical file to and fro: “Here! You take it!” “Hell, I don't want it! You take it!”

I get it. They can't figure out what's wrong with him, so they ignore him as much as they can (this part is easy, because they are actually very busy people with easier cases to consider) and then try to make him someone else's problem when he gets to be a nuisance. My buddy wouldn't mind this latter part so much if at least someone in the long-running game of tag-you're-it could actually make sense of his situation.

As previously reported, one of my good friends (we go back all the way to the height of personal computer fun, West Coast Computer Faires, and user groups) is suffering from a combination of symptoms that include ferocious migraines, loss of voice, and a strangling sensation of throat constriction. Doesn't sound like fun, does it? Initially it seemed like his lymph nodes were going crazy, but now it appears the swelling and constriction must be from some other cause. His thyroid levels were messed up, but medication to bring his numbers under control had no impact on his other ills (even though the thyroid tests got back into the normal range). It's as puzzling as ever. Here's his most recent update:

I have seen three different otolaryngologists in three different clinics: One at UC Davis, one at UCSF, and one at the Sacramento ENT clinic. No one could find a cause in my throat. I followed up by seeing an endocrinologist at the UC Davis Elk Grove clinic. He ruled out my thyroid causing the problem and also ruled out Riedel’s thyroiditis as a potential diagnosis. On July 26 I saw an allergist at UC Davis and she ruled out allergies as a cause because allergies come and go. She suggested I go back to the UC Davis ENT clinic because the doctor I saw at that clinic said that I should see them again if the problem persists; the allergist said I should see them for voice and swallowing problems. I told her that would be useless because all the doctors I’ve seen are trying to address the symptoms, not the cause.

The swelling continues to grow in several places that have been swollen for a while, and a new area of swelling appeared on the back of my neck in the last week.  I’m starting to feel more pressure and pain on my throat when I lie down, which makes it even harder to get comfortable when I need to sleep. Twice this week I’ve slept for 8 hours at a time only to wake up exhausted. I still have no appetite and I’ve lost nearly 19 pounds since this started 4.5 months ago – I was at 163.8 pounds when I started and I’m now down to 145.2 pounds. I’ve asked my current primary care physician about next steps including a PET scan and a follow-up ultrasound scan. I’m currently looking for a new PCP.

He doesn't mention it, but his PCP's referral to the UCSF otolaryngologist provoked an irritated response from the latter, whose specialty is oncologic surgery; he was clearly irked at being sent a patient with no indications for cancer. The wasted trip to San Francisco was further evidence that his primary care physician is out of ideas and is randomly sending him around, hence the search for a new primary. And for a new referral that finally produces results.

Anyone out there have any ideas? Are you a retired diagnostician with time on your hands and an itch to solve an intractable problem? Everybody needs a hobby!

The situation gets monotonically worse, with neither diagnosis nor remedy on the horizon. What can we do to get this guy out of purgatory?

And please don't suggest prayer.

The great white hope

Darn! Missed again!

San Francisco Chronicle writer Jon Carroll has a quirky way of signing off at the end of  each of his columns. He embeds his e-mail address in a pithy literary quote. Here's an example from Carroll's July 3, 2012, installment:

The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel and not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young shall never see so much nor live so jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Do you recognize the quote? It's from the end of King Lear, which Carroll has long been mining for material. And now it had run out!

Well, that's that. "King Lear," the story of a foolish old man and the terrible price he pays for his folly, is concluded, a sentence at a time with a few omissions, and now we turn somewhere else for our e-mail line at the bottom of the column. But where?

Carroll solicited suggestions from his cherished readers for a new public-domain source of meaty tag-lines. Naturally I hastened to his assistance:

Dear John:

A modest suggestion:

Call me Ishmael – or jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

and perhaps

No need of profane words, however great the jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

then

Cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

and

Does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great jcarroll@sfchronicle.com?

until, finally,

And I only am escaped alone to tell jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

That could keep you in sign-off lines for a good while, no?

Of course, if you were hankering for something more contemporary, I could – in a self-promotional move – kindly offer my new novel, beginning with

Greetings! We who are about to lose salute jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

and ending with

“We have a winner,” he murmured to jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Unfortunately, debut novels by math professors turned writers are too obscure to give your readers the desired literary frisson, so I stick with my recommendation of the great white whale.

“There she blows! there! there! there!”

Nice, huh? A good suggestion mixed in with a judicious dash of self-promotion. Carroll wrote back:

Nice stuff ...

I was excessively pleased, so imagine my reaction when I read Carroll's next column and saw this at the bottom:

There's Melville, of course, and Lewis Carroll, and more Shakespeare, and nursery rhymes and old-timey proverbs, all of them candidates for the words before the e-mail line, which is jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Of course, there was no guarantee that Moby-Dick was uniquely my suggestion, but it didn't matter. However many of us recommended Melville, there he was, leading all the rest. I was most entertained. Alas, it was not to be. Carroll pondered his options during a vacation from column-writing and somehow settled upon the runner-up in his list of candidates. The first column after his return ended thus:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Oh, no! “We're through the looking glass, people!” (Of course, that's an allusion to Oliver Stone's epic fantasy movie JFK.)

The polite student

A cure worse than the illness

An armed society is a polite society

—Robert A. Heinlein

The weight of events was heavy on our thoughts. The news reports were frightening and the college district had reacted. Department meetings featured safety lectures and the college had conducted an “active shooter” drill, in which the campus cops and local law enforcement rehearsed their emergency response procedures and tested their readiness for a Virginia-Tech-type situation.

It was not unusual for a student to approach me before the start of class for a private word, although it was just a bit strange to have one standing so close. I knew him better than most students. He had been enrolled in one of my classes before. He was unfailingly polite and applied himself diligently to his work. He spoke very quietly, so it helped that his lips were close to my ear.

“I don't want you to worry, Dr. Z, if any of the students give you any trouble,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Thanks,” I said, “but that hasn't really been a problem so far.”

“That's good,” he replied. His eyes flicked toward his classmates who had nearly filled the classroom. “It's just that I know some students get resentful when you're a strict grader and these days you never know how they might react. I just wanted to say that I've got your back.”

His coat was unzipped. With his left hand he pulled it open slightly so that I could see the holster nestled near his armpit.

“I've got a concealed-carry permit and you can rest easy. I've got your back.”

Hoping that my face did not show my surprise, I calmly replied, “Thanks. Thanks for letting me know.”

Mission accomplished, he returned to his seat.

The class continued without further complications, but every so often I threw an extra glance in the student's direction. Everything seemed the same on the outside, but the entire atmosphere of the room was changed for me. While my rational brain had reasonably reassured me that the active-shooter scenario was merely an extremely remote possibility (how many colleges are there? how many of them got shot up? we're talking good odds here!), my animal hindbrain insisted on stroking the panic button. Now, however, there was some additional solid data to process: A loaded gun was present in my classroom.

While gun-rights advocates like to quote Heinlein's aphorism about gun-mediated courtesy, they appear to care little for simple numerical arguments. Guns are an accelerant. People without guns can scream at each other and live to argue another day. Put guns in their pockets and the odds that someone will get hurt skyrocket. If a gunman strides into a movie theater and starts to shoot innocent bystanders at random, an armed citizen could presumably take him out, save lives, and be a hero. On the other hand, the result might just be more people killed in a crossfire—especially in a darkened theater and especially if more than one armed citizen joins the fight. And when the police arrive, at whom do they shoot?

I didn't feel safer with an armed student in the class, even though he was ostensibly “on my side.” He just made me nervous and acted as a constant reminder of worst-case scenarios. The worshipers of the Second Amendment extol the etiquette-enhancing qualities of firearms, but they ignore the risk-impact of the proliferation of guns while focusing on the deterrence of rare and extreme events. Their grasp of probabilities is shaky.

Still, it's not as though there is no evidence on the side of the gun advocates. History suggests that Tombstone was a very polite town. Quiet, too. At least over at Boothill.

Subatomic subgenius

Ommmmmmmmmmmm

Leon Lederman has a lot to answer for. He famously branded the hypothetical Higgs boson as the “God particle” in the title of his 1993 book on the subject. As a stroke of marketing genius, however, it's undoubtedly had him chuckling all the way to the bank. It follows that recent news from CERN has resurrected the divinely-inspired term, as well as rousing into action the usual crowd of scientific illiterates. A representative of that obscurantist cohort popped up in the letters column of the July 7 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The sages have been telling us for many, many centuries that God or love dwells within our hearts as ourselves. This is found in meditation and costs nothing.

The physicists' instruments have cost millions and are just getting a little glimpse of what is found in totality in meditation.

GVM, Gilroy

Oh, yes. Meditation and occult wisdom long ago revealed the essence of the Higgs boson and its function in the Standard Model of particle physics. We could all save a lot of money if high-energy physics research budgets were devoted instead to the purchase of floor mats and incense sticks. No doubt.

I fired off a response, which the Chronicle did not see fit to publish. Here it is, in full:

I eagerly await GVM's elucidation of the difference between bosons and fermions. Surely he must know.

Stay tuned for the next exciting breakthrough in meditation physics. I predict thrilling new insights into the nature of the bozon, the long-posited fundamental particle of clowning. One hears that the elusive mote might yet be detected with bubble chambers filled with super-cooled seltzer!