Disturbing pics of the day

First Catherine O'Hara and Macauley Culkin reunited for the first time since Home Alone 2... and then there are these vegetables.

The Catcher in the Rye

First, a confession: I never read this novel . (At least not completely.)

Upon J.D. Salinger's death I was reminded of what made me go to Barnes & Noble and buy the book: I sat in on a teaching demonstration for a Medical Assistant instructor. After she gave her demonstration she commented that she needed to leave so she get to her son's HS where they were requiring him to read this book. (She thought this was an abomination.)

Of course, I crossed Edgewood just to buy this book I hadn't read.

Sadly, I didn't find it to be an abomination; I found it to be boring. So a young guy goes to New York City and has sex with a prostitute. Bad things happen to him. Why on earth would anyone on the right oppose that?

Into the lion's den

Obama went before House Republicans today and took questions. I caught the last part of it and thought it was amazing. I wish we had a parliamentary system where every President had to answer to the opposition. Unfortunately, the video cut out on me several times. I hope to watch the full show tomorrow. This was much more interesting than the State of the Union.

I'm sure the full video will be available later and I'll update to include a link.

Iowa City's PRIDE

Soon to be flying over the Old Capitol?

Years ago my brother announced that his daughter wouldn't be going to Iowa State because there are "too many queers there." Never mind the humorous thought of the rural/farming university for being thought of as the gay university in Iowa...

The rich irony for me is that my brother lives in Iowa City. Advocate magazine just named Iowa City the third gayest city in America!

My confederate conservative friend Matt in Atlanta may not appreciate his city (not San Francisco) winning first place.

*****

On a related note: I finally watched the State of the Union speech. It was good, but then Obama doesn't give a bad speech. Noteworthy to me was his announcement that Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be repealed this year.

Really? Why this year? Maybe it's because the ball is already rolling in the House and since it is going to happen anyway the White House wants to look like it is leading.

It is certainly not the best time. This is an election year and many supportive congressman would prefer to have this sink in for a while instead of voting in July and having ads run against them immediately. Also, last year John McCain would have been a supporter. What more cover could this young president have wanted than war hero John McCain as a supporter?!?

This year McCain is in a fight for his political life in Arizona (he'll likely lose to a far right winger) and now he doesn't support repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Gee, another one the political team at the White House blew.

GDP numbers

GDP - Gross domestic product. Think of it as all the stuff produced within the borders of the US. The top line number reported today: "The economy grew by 5.75 annual rate in the fourth quarter" sounds too good to be true. And, well, it is.

Over the past 15 months companies have been shrinking inventory very rapidly. Imagine it is July 2008 and you work for Sony. Make a guess on how many 42" LCD TV's you'll sell during the Christmas season. Then watch the bottom fall out of the economy. What will you do with your inventory of TV's? Rationally, you'd cut the price, sell all you can and slow production of new TV's.

That's what happened in every industry from October 2008 to October 2009. By October 2009 inventories shrank to a level that companies decided, "Oh, maybe we better start producing again."

That's very good news, but it also inflates the GDP number.

Take out inventories and the economy grew a 2.2% annual rate.

The number that is more important to me is the jobs report we'll get next Friday. November's numbers were too good to be true. December's were a dissapointment. I believe Wall St. has way over played this recovery. (In other words, stock prices are too high given the current economy.) The real recovery doesn't begin until jobs return. I hope next Friday's news is as a pleasant surprise like today's.

Birkat Al-Mouz

Birkat Al-Mouz is a city near the mountains in the center of Oman. It's a little over a two hour drive south of where I live in Al Ain. The city has an oasis that grows a variety of fruits & vegetables and next to the city (upper left of the picture below) is an ancient fort.

Note the Omani hats. The kandoora (robe) is very similar to what is worn in the Emirates, but the hats are uniquely Omani.

This is a view from the top of the crumbling fort. I've read that part was built in 1200 and/or 1400. All the palm trees in the distance are part of the oasis. Climbing to get this shot was treacherous. At one point I grabbed the corner of a wall to climb up only to have it crumble in my hand.

These wood rafters have become petrified over the centuries.

Water that runs off the mountains is collected and distributed via this falaj (aqua duct) system. While the fort has been abandoned the falaj is still running.

I also read that the fort was bombed by the British in the 1960's. Those damn Brits. What were they thinking when they bombed an innocent people that would never be any serious threat to them? I'm glad the US would never do anything that stupid.

Err, wait a minute...

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Blog post title taken from Andrew Sullivan.

I look forward to the State of the Union speech. Obama could call on House Democrats to pass the Senate bill with plans to reform the mistakes (or not, the senate bill is not bad). Or he could do some unity campaign to just pass the parts people like (totally not feasible).

Or he could ignore healthcare altogether and pivot to the economy and jobs.

I'd like to have hope but the gimmick of freezing the budget is ridiculous. It's the type of gimmick I expect from Republican administrations. It's very disappointing when it comes from my side. So, yeah, I have no idea what to expect in a couple of hours but I had better get some sleep to be up in 3 hours.

iPad

I confess: Ten years I had no idea the iPod would revolutionize the way we listen to music. I thought of it as just another MP3 player... maybe a little easier to use than most but priced too high.

I will also confess that I have no idea if the iPad will be revolutionary or just a cool gadget that only early adopters will love. I do not see people using it to type (like the picture above). Having read all I can about the product it kinda feels like a SNL skit: "It's a giant iPhone! Way too large to carry with you everywhere, but where you do, you'll be telling people you're an Apple guy. No amount of money is too much to say that."

I can imagine buying this in a year when they've come out with the updated model. I like the lightness - 1.5 pounds - and if the battery is as good as they claim - 10 hours - then I could use this to teach. (My notes are on my computer.) I won't rush out to buy one, however, because most products' first edition have flaws.

Hmm. So I am curious if any of you think this will be a success. I can see a practical application for me but if I weren't teaching I wouldn't consider this.

Congratulations Robby!

My friend Robby Marvin has been named Corridorian* of the Year. Robby has been giving a large chunk of salary to charity plus hundreds of hours of community service work. You can follow Robby's plan at the Robject.

(I'm pretty sure Corridorian is a made up word to refer to the Cedar Rapids - Iowa City Corridor.)

Oman pictures

I hope to post pictures from the trip tomorrow. Deleting all the ones of those-who-shall-not-be-named is depressing and time consuming (to figure out how to create the narrative without those pics.)

I have no idea why two 45 year old men who have been traveling together for six years would be scared of having their pictures on my blog... A blog that - without using last names - nobody who knows them would ever find, anyway.

Update: Apparently, I'm the dumb one for not knowing that from the start. It should have been as obvious as "telling someone to tie their shoes."

Blog update - posts deleted

Ann's friends - that I spent the last four days with - want no part of my blog. I have deleted posts that referred to them and when I post about the trip I will not mention them in any way.

Sadly, that will make the pics from the trip less interesting because they are in many. Had I known this at the beginning of the trip I would have shot it differently.

Amazing.

Palm tree bonfire

I'm back from the trip to Oman. On the way back we drove past these trees on fire. Ann, knowing I'm total pyro at heart, stopped so I could take pictures.

Insomnia's benefits

On this trip my insomnia has reached new heights: On the night before the trip I was up until 4AM. On the first night of the trip I went to bed by 10PM and read/tossed & turned/played sudoku until 5:30 AM.

The next night I was still awake at 3AM. As I'm sure my fellow insomniacs can understand: I want to have something positive come from a night like this. My revelation: Converting dirhams is easy: Divide by four and add 8%.

The next day I proudly exclaimed my revelation to Ann who replied with:

1. You're such a geek

2. It doesn't help me because divide by 4 and add 8% is something only geeks would understand.

She's right but I spent the better part of two hours in the middle of the night doing test runs and found that it worked with less than 1% error (usually less than .5% error)... so see? being a geek has its advantages.

*****

I first wrote this post in the hotel. It's a goal of mine to post each and every day of 2010. I have no idea why this didn't post when it should have.

Nizwa

Imagine a several hundred year fortress city with walls made of thatch, small rocks and mud. While climbing up the fortress my hand made indentations in the walls. I'll post pics when I'm back, but safe to say it's been a good start to the short vacation. Tonight we are staying at a hotel on top of a mountain. The temperature outside is 39 degrees and we have a heater in our room.

It's the first time I've turned on the since I moved to the middle east.

Not the worst news of the day

As a political geek I'm hard pressed to think of a week worse than this one. Today I got an e-mail from one of my conservative friends. The subject line read: The Dems. Without opening it I sent him this message

"I haven't opened your e-mail and probably won't until I'm back from vacation. I'm sure this will make you happy: This has been the most depressing week of my life following politics. Healthcare, Coakly, coporations can spend as much as they want to buy candidates... and now Bernanke's confirmation is in doubt? I'm sure you're loving it all."

If Obama's going to go down - a thought I didn't seriously entertain until this week - I'd like to see a Republican with a heart replace him. The Public Policy Survey has a new poll showing that for the first time a Republican that can beat Obama. The man? Mike Huckabee.

Hamilton effect

It's 3AM. In less than 4 hours I'm getting up to go on vacation. I've done no packing. Earlier I watched a movie where many, many people lost their jobs. I came back to the apartment for a brief Skype with a friend still teaching at Kaplan. The call lasted two hours. Listening to her depressing story caused a rock to grow in my stomach.

Two thoughts: 1. The little prayer I say every day that I am happy to be here needs to be doubled. 2. It all makes sense. Most people think that suicides reach a peak in December when depressed people choose to kill themselves rather than live through a period when everyone ELSE seems happy. Not true. The real high in suicides is the spring months of March, April, and May. Why? When the sky is dark and gloomy you don't realize how sad you are. It's only after the clouds have lifted and "spring is in the air" that people truly realize how much their life has turned to shit. Given the horribly abusive treatment at Kaplan they have no choice but to stick it out in today's job market. It takes an enormous toll on the body: Weight gain, anger, moodiness, depression... even irritable bowel syndrome.

I feel so much for my former colleagues. I've been through it. I lived it. My 2-3 year depression of 2006-08 cost me many friends. I had no idea how much I was affected until I was out. Seeing friends I care about going through the same thing is tough.

Oman

In the morning I am headed to Oman for a couple of days. On most days I drive right along the Oman border but in a year-and-a-half here I have yet to actually drive into Oman.

I will post if it is possible, but it is likely that the blog will go dark for a couple of days. I mistakenly thought we were leaving on Sunday, not Saturday. I have the mother of all weekend remainders that will now have to wait a few days.

What would you have done?

Tonight I saw the movie "Up in the Air." It's a very good, very depressing movie. Afterwards we stopped at a bar for a drink. When I paid my tab my change should have been $7. What I received was over $100.

Now in the US that would be a debatable topic: Do you take the money and run? I'm know my guilt complex is too high. I'm not saying I wouldn't because I'm ethical or moral; I wouldn't because as a child I remember MY heart beating faster when I read a Tell-Tale Heart.

In this country it goes beyond the ethical issue of taking money that doesn't belong to me. Here, that's the stuff that gets someone deported. Our polite Filipino waitress may have seen her career in the Emirates end as a result.

Two tables over from us a group was very agitated. I thought, "They just got $7 change..." The bills were exchanged and we all left peacefully.

There be POPCORN!

This well beaten box is a life line for me. It's Dad's popcorn When I left the US in August the popcorn was not ready to be harvested. So instead I brought over 20 pounds of popcorn from some guy in Indiana. His popcorn is OK, but it's not DAD's popcorn.

The woman at customs was quite rude. She couldn't seem to believe someone would spend so much money to ship popcorn. I explained, "This is not like any popcorn you've ever had..." Rather than being convincing it seemed to tell her there must be drugs in it. She sniffed the popcorn and even licked it! Her coworker was making fun - "It's just popcorn!"

Not entirely convinced I hadn't tried to ship in contraband, she was willing to allow me take it.

YIPPEE!!! I inhaled the first batch and ate the second batch slowly. For those of you who do know the joys of Dad's Popcorn... well, I pity you. Come and visit me and I'll be willing to share... but just a little.

Headline of the day

From the Village Voice:

Scott Brown wins Mass. Race, giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

Working vacation

Try to guess what this is...

For this break I planned to complete a major project: Rewrite the textbook Power Points for the introductory management class. It's not work I've been assigned but we're using a new textbook and the vocabulary is far above our students' comprehension. Power Points are often created by disgruntled Teaching Assistants who would rather be doing research. I think this textbook company must have paid them per slide because there's tons of useless material.

It's a sad fact that our students often study ONLY using class notes and the Power Points. The picture above is a textbook a student brought to the final... still in its plastic shrink wrap.

The task of converting the slides is not hard work, it's just tedious. Also, I plan to share with my colleagues teaching the class and I often think, "OK, will my they appreciate how much I've dumbed that down  brought that to the students’ level or criticize me for it?" In work avoidance mode I've cleaned my apartment beyond what is rational. Today I had nothing more to clean so I finally got to work. I completed two chapters. Eleven more to go.

Quote of the day

When people here see my autograph from Obama and my picture with Hillary they ask if it is photoshopped. "No," I reply, "It's the advantage of being from Iowa." (I also have the picture of me with Huckabee but nobody asks about that because I don't think they know who he is...)

After the grueling 2008 primary season Democrats are reviewing the process. The good news for us Iowans is that nobody is even remotely suggesting Iowa lose the number 1 position. I doubt the same would be true if Hillary had won. I think the party would have outlawed caucuses and Iowa would be assigned a date in early June.

In the comments section a person - who is clearly not a fan of Iowa - quoted Pat Roberston's Haiti Deal with the Devil and then wrote:

This man got more votes in the Iowa caucuses than eventual nominee George H W Bush. If this isn't reason enough to remove the 'first in line privilege from Iowa, I don't what is.

She's right: Pat Roberston did come in ahead of Bush Sr. in 1988 and religious nut Alan Keyes had a particularly strong showing in 1996... the year Pat Buchanan came in second and almost beat Bob Dole.

What she doesn't understand is that these are Republican caucus results. The Republican party in Iowa is loaded with the Bible thumpers. Supposedly they've been purged from the party leadership - and I hope that's true - but they still can give the wackos a nice finish in the caucuses.

As for Democrats: In 2000 Al Gore was polling behind Bill Bradley in New Hampshire. He won the Iowa caucuses and never looked back.

In 2004 John Kerry was running third in neighboring New Hampshire behind Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Once Kerry won the Iowa caucuses he became the anti-Dean candidate and never looked back.

In 2008, Obama won Iowa and Hillary came in third behind Edwards. Hillary won New Hampshire but Obama held on for the nomination.

In other words, yes, Iowa Republicans tend to go for the crazy unelectable candidate, but Iowa Democrats don't. Sadly, the Romney people are already sending the signal that they will use this excuse to skip Iowa in 2012.

Governing in the 21st century

It is entirely possible that Democrats will lose their 60 seat majority after Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts. In a normal world 59/100 seats would be a fantastic advantage. Of course, that was before it was clear that Republicans would refuse to negotiate on anything. Now it requires 60 votes for each and every issue. Biden has a good quote on the issue:

This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.

California plays by the same rules. Republican governor Ahhnold and the Democrats in control of the legislature have come to agreement on reducing the massive California budget deficit. The problem? Minority Republicans in the Assembly are able to stop it.

Biden's right: No democracy can survive needing a supermajority.

Sometimes the comments on news stories are worth reading

Below a relatively benign story of a producer for Glenn Beck leaving for MSNBC came this comment:

you people leeve Glen Bek alone-thoze of us who didnot finsh hi skool need a leeder too

oh an Obama is a dummi

go Paylin 2010!

Martin Luther King Day memories

In working weather we'd get paid for all federal holidays (13). January was one of the nice months with two bonus days. January 1 and MLK. Since we still had to work those days it was simply bonus pay.

Kaplan is a notoriously cheap employer but they do give MLK Day as a holiday. Why? Kaplan is owned by the Washington Post. A newspaper located in a city where 55% of the residents are black is not going offend that base.

Only my friends at YellowBook also got the day off so on past MLK holidays we'd go to Riverside. On my last trip two years ago I came in second place in an Omaha tournament. Omaha high/low requires a lot of thinking and playing for five hours straight turned my mind to mush. By the time I was heads up against the last guy I should have just pushed my chips to him. Still, I was happy because I've only played in two tournaments and coming in second was not what I expected.

What did I do here for the holiday? Mopped my hallway and stairs. Something very odd has happened to me lately; I've turned into a cleaning machine. You could eat off of my toilets right now... not saying you'd want to, but you could...

Ukrainian elections

Ukraine is going to the polls today. Sadly, the pro-Russian candidate is considerably ahead. Who cares? The last election in 2004 was considered a fraud and the people took to the streets to protest.

It was called the Orange Revolution and it led to new elections where the pro-western candidate won. Unfortunately, fighting broke out among the two leaders of the pro-western side and not much was accomplished. Ukraine entered the recession earlier than the rest of the world and hit much harder - GDP down 10%, currency down 60%.

So the reforms never really happened and the economy failed. It's not surprising that a pro-Russian candidate is likely to win today.

It's sad. Although the people above won the battle to have a new election in 2004, they lost the war and now don't care. They'll sit idle while an evil pro-Russian leader takes over and things will undoubtedly get worse, but it's hard to blame them for not caring anymore.

Hmm. Kind of easy to see similarities to the US.

Satan's open letter to Pat Robertson

Lily Coyle of Minneapolis channeled her inner Satan and penned this letter:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth - glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks skyscrapers, SUV's, exclusive night clubs, Botox - that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against - I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings - just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your contract.

Best, Satan

Dawn Pettengill

This is the face of a very nice, yet deluded person. She was first elected to the Iowa assembly in 2004. Democrats from my home county donated tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of volunteering to make that election victory happen.

Dawn quickly became aware that being in the minority party meant she couldn't really do anything. In particular she cursed Iowa House Speaker Rants. She longed for the day when she could be in the majority and do some real work.

Her day came very quickly. In 2006 the Republican party threw everything they had at her - allegedly spending over $100,000 but the Democrats held Dawn's seat. Through hard work they picked up several seats and took a 4 seat majority.

On election night 2006 Dawn was relieved not only that she won but the Democratic majority was 54. "Some of those reps may flake off," she observed.

"Flake off." That's a direct quote and the term still rings in my ears.

Dawn's time in the majority was not pretty. She couldn't make up her mind on major legislation. She dreamed up fights with the Democratic leadership (fights that nobody but her seem to remember). At the end of the session in 2007 Dawn stood next to Minority Leader Rants and announced she was switching parties.

Once again back in the minority, Dawn has an easy life as a legislator. This week Dawn made news by pushing for a change in the oath that lawmakers take. She wants "so help me God" added.

At first I was angry when I heard the news. In these times her issue is a complete waste. I realized, however, that these are the only issues she'll ever be able to address. By switching from the majority party she relegated herself to these feel good, light substance issues.

And Iowa is certainly better for that.

Leno had Jimmy Kimmel on his show?

On Tuesday night Kimmel did his show in make-up to look like Leno. His entire show was mocking Leno. What does Leno do? Invite him on to answer ten questions. Kimmel had no problem hitting each softball.

It was fun to watch Jay squirm.

Yousef

Yousef grew up in Dubai with an Emirati father and an American mother (his parents met while his dad was studying at UNC.) I met Yousef in 2004 during his freshman year at Coe when he pledged Sigma Nu. Just before I met him Ann had told me that the revered leader and founder of the country had just died. When I passed along condolences he gave me a look of, "How in the hell would you know about that?"

Yousef transferred to Houston after one year. Part of it was the weather, part of it was missing the big city. Houston is the American city that is probably closest to Dubai in terms of climate and ridiculous traffic. He finished his undergraduate and is beginning work on his Master's. The Emirates pays for his education and provides a generous living expense check. It would be easy to say he's spoiled, but he's not. He's very well grounded with a healthy perspective of the pluses and minuses of the Emirates and the US.

I had hoped to gain some insight into Emirati thinking but found that we pretty much saw things the same way. Trying to have him explain my students would be like asking me what it is like to grow up in the Bronx. I have as much in common with a kid in the Bronx as Yousef does with my students. He went to an all English speaking school, spoke English in the home and his classmates all prepared for college overseas. None considered universities in this country.

He told me many great stories. My favorite (that I'm able to repeat on the blog) was that as a child he didn't like visiting his uncle's house because they didn't have any toilet paper. At an early age if the family would go there he'd insist on bringing his own.

Although I didn't walk away with any flash of insight I left with something far more valuable: Talking to someone who grew up here who sees the oddities the way I do. That did wonders for my mental health.

A year ago

A year ago right now I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. I was greeted in Iowa with a low of -29... a record low.

-29 was not just a record low for the day, it is the coldest temperature ever recorded in Cedar Rapids. (Trivia to tell at work today.)

While I'd love to be home again this winter I'll settle for the 80 degree weather here. It's rough, but somebody's got to do it.

Update: Peachie asks about the coldest day ever recorded for Cedar Rapids. Here's the monthly data. I see the lowest lows to be:

December 28, 1924 with negative 28

January 15, 2009 with negative 29

February 14, 2006 with negative 27

You can look up each month... December:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/scripts/obsRecordsNorms.php?reportType=Data&site=CID&monthName=December&year=2009

January:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/scripts/obsRecordsNorms.php?reportType=Data&site=CID&monthName=January&year=2010

February:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/scripts/obsRecordsNorms.php?reportType=Data&site=CID&monthName=February&year=2010

______ Pizza

Take a good look and a good guess. If nobody guesses right I'll post the answer later.

Classic Conan and Letterman

As I’ve written before, I’m a long time fan of late night TV. I learned as much from watching Johnny Carson as I did watching MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS. In seventh grade Letterman started his Late Show and I don’t think I missed an episode in the first five years.

Now NBC has announced the Leno prime time show failure will end and he will go back to the 10:35 slot. Conan issued a classy letter to the people of earth explaining why he would not take the half hour demotion.

Dave seems to have returned to true form in his commentary on this matter:

As I said, I basically grew up watching Dave. His deadpan joke a minute into this clip is the Dave I came to know, love and attempt to emulate.

While this war is in its infancy it is already easy to spot the winners and losers. The clear winner is Dave. The NBC debacle clearly helps him and it seems to have given him a new energy. The other winner is Conan. His defiant letter is a rallying cry for his fans... now whether that will lead NBC to play nice and let him go off to Fox is unclear. Good politics says they should, but NBC has proven time and again that ego weighs more than logic. I wish Conan luck.

There are two large losers in this fight: 1. Leno. He never wanted to leave The Tonight Show. Now he's got it back but has successfully alienated a chunk of his audience. 2. NBC. Affiliates are very angry that Leno's prime time show killed their news programs by being a bad lead-in. Tack on the pissed-off Conan fans and it's quite hard to see how NBC could have played this all out any worse than they did.

This is the same network that went from first to fourth in the network ratings in four short years. Unbelievably, the top management has remained intact.

Where did I go wrong that I never landed a multi-million dollar job to run a network? No matter how hard I tried I couldn't have screwed up NBC this badly.

RIP Republican Party?

How does a political party go into oblivion? As a (geeky political) child I remember reading World Book Encyclopedia about the Whigs. I wanted to understand how a major political party could simply disappear. 100 years from now a fellow geeky political kid may be looking up "Republican Party."

When polled, more people support Tea Party than Republican Party and now a candidate for congress has unregistered as a Republican and has re-registered as Independent Tea Party. It would be one thing if the guy was running in a hopeless contest in the heart of San Francisco. The switch would be meaningless. No, this guy is running for an open seat in a conservative Tennessee district that should be an easy pickup for the Republicans.

As a Democrat I'm cheering this on. Watching the Republicans embrace the far out wackos of the Tea Party can only be good for my party. As a nation, however, it is scary. In 2009 we saw seasoned reasonable Republicans back away from long held positions because of fear from this lunatic fringe. There's nothing good about that.

Potluck

Tonight I invited friends over for a potluck. The food was great and we all had a lot of fun playing a game called "Man Laws & Woman Rules." This picture was taken at the end of the night as the group tried to show amazement at the vegetable beef soup I made.

And this was the reaction a second later.

Good times.

Weekend remainders

Google offers suggestions based on searches others have made. It's interesting to see the difference in searches between men and women.

An Iowa guy wishes his wife a happy birthday by writing it out with hog manure.

Being super duper endowed does not necessarily = employment.

A guy robbed a restaurant and thought the chicken smelled so good he stopped to eat some. He's no doubt rethinking that decision in prison.

Ever thought about the evolution of video games? For my fellow geeks, here's a timeline.

For the political geeks: There's a new book Game Changer that has lots of juicy gossip from the 2008 campaign. Here's a rundown of the best gossip. And here's an excerpt from the book about the Edwards debacle.

And finally, more disturbing news from this country: A Brit is found with a grain of cannabis smaller than a grain of sand under his shoe and is sentenced to four years. And then there's this.

Iowa cold

It's been a cold start to 2010 for my friends back in Iowa. Thanks to a handy weather application on the IPhone I routinely check weather around the world.

Anchorage, Alaska,

Moscow,

Minsk...

... have all been warmer than Cedar Rapids for the past week. Temperatures have been below zero 9 out of the first 10 days of 2010.

Even for Iowa, that's a long cold spell. How cold has it been? Temps in Cedar Rapids have been matching Novosibirsk. Never heard of the place? It's the capitol of Siberia.

I suggest doing what I did living here last summer: Look up the places that have it worse than you. In this case my fellow Iowans would have to look to Barrow, Alaska. One of my friends from grad school is the DA in Barrow. Since Barrow is within the Artic circle they go weeks without daylight and in the summer there's daylight 24 hours/day. In the long dark freeze it is currently -37. The warmest temperature they expect in the next week is -16.

Rape victim charged

This is the type of story that will keep any of my family/friends from coming to visit.  What I'm not 100% sure about:  I know the alcohol charge would not be there if she were not Muslim, but I'm not sure about the "sex outside marriage" charge.

The day I was the innocent one

Thursday, January 7 will be remembered as the day where my innocence and naïveté brought joy to many others.  First, there was my quiet plantiff cry about losing my ability to focus.  Never once did I think of the childhood "you'll go blind" reference.  I'm too pure for that.


And on FaceBook I noticed many people simply putting a color in their status updates.  Just a color, nothing else.  So I decided to make my status:

Seriously. Am I the only person on FB that doesn't understand the color comments on others' status updates? Since I have no idea what it means I'll just say I'm orange... only because nothing rhymes with it.

It turns out the colors were to raise breast cancer awareness by the women posting the color of the bra they were wearing.  That brought a flood of replies of people who got a good chuckle out of my post.  My friend Thad said:

kranz, thanks for the image of you walking around today in an orange bra... started laughing, but then got somewhat disturbed...

I am glad to raise awareness for breast cancer, but the image of me in an orange bra has been giving me the shakes all day long.

Another never ending semester

I had hoped to have everything done by tonight and enjoying a bottle of wine by now.  This afternoon I discovered that one of my answer keys was wrong for several questions.  Good students were failing the final, but since I wasn't looking at the names as I was grading I didn't notice until after I finished grading them all.  Now I get to go back and make many, many corrections.  This is a final I wrote myself so I only need to look in the mirror to see who to blame.
Ugh.


*****
On the positive side I've confirmed having lunch with my American/Emirati friend on Saturday.  I am very much looking forward to seeing him.


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Also unrelated... not to concern anyone, but is an inability to focus a sign of aging or something I should be worried about?  I first noticed it in Ukraine where I was useless in reading maps in anything short of full daylight... and it became very apparent when grading finals when I pretty much needed a reading lamp.


This fall I had my eyes checked and I have the same prescription I've had for a decade.  Before I get too worried I'll buy some reading glasses.  Maybe that's all it will take.

Tonight the IPhone paid for itself...

... with my sanity.

As I've discussed before, when I write tests my answers create patterns that make sense to me and make grading very quick. Like: ABBA ACDC BADD or BAD CADE DEAD DAD

Tonight I had over 100 tests to grade where there were 18 T/F & 40 multiple choice answers, multiple versions and no pattern.

Grading each test was time consuming to be constantly be checking the key. I thought to myself, "If only someone could be reading me the answers this would go so much quicker."

Then it hit me: The IPhone has a voice memo feature. I read all 58 answers into the phone. It took 41 seconds. With a touch of a button it read them back and I was able to mark each exam in those 41 seconds.

I cannot express how huge of an improvement this is in my life as a teacher!

In academics we like to hold "workshops" and give ourselves credit for continuous education. It's ideas like this that I'd like to hear from my peers; practical real world ways to improve teaching and make our job easier.

Sometimes grading can be fun

The problem: A company manufactures shirts and has fixed costs of Dh 10,000 and variable costs of Dh 20 per shirt. They plan to sell the shirts for Dh 40. How many shirts will the company have to produce and sell to break even?

The answer from one student:

500 shits

Finals week

• Root canal
• Hemmorhoids
• A strange burning sensation...

I'm making a list of all the things I'd prefer over finals week.

The pleas for help and explanations of why they hadn't done better all term becomes very taxing. I wish I could be a bad-ass and take joy in seeing their misery but I can't... even for those who deserve it.

American students never learned to grovel. Here it is a finely honed skill. It's only 1PM and my interactions with students has already left a cup of acid in my stomach. I have two more finals this afternoon.

I'd definitely prefer a root canal.

Quote of the day

For the record, I am more comfortable speaking my mind here than I did working for Susan Hamilton, but tonight a colleague surprised me with:

"So you think we have less academic freedom here?"

I gave him my best, "Watcha you talkin' about, Willis?" face. He understood immediately.

I'm so excited...

... but it's not about these pictures.

Tonight the world's tallest building is being dedicated in Dubai. The event is a huge media circus and Mike said his friends videoing the event had to walk miles with their equipment because parking is so bad.

I'm not in Dubai and didn't see this. The reason I'm excited is that the one Emirati friend I had before I came here IS in Dubai and took these pics. I first met Yousef as a freshman at Coe in 2004 as he pledged Sigma Nu. I was disappointed in 2005 when he said he was transferring to Houston. Although we've kept in touch by e-mail/FaceBook we haven't seen each other since.

I very much hope to see him during his visit here. If I do I know what I will say:

Yousef! I have three things to say to you:
1. It is great to see you.
2. You are NOTHING like any Emirati I have met in the year and a half I've been here.
3. I'll repeat, it is great to see you.

As I told him on FB I have at least a thousand questions, but I won't take it personally if he doesn't have time. I know what it's like to be back home for a limited time. (The August trip still bothers me.)

I'll bet I wake up in time

I just realized I'm in a bizarre OCD mode. Tomorrow I have a final at 8AM. The tests are printed and ready to go, but I don't normally have to be in class at that time on a Tuesday so I set an alarm, and then another, and then another.

At this point I have 3 cell phones (each with two alarms) AND an old fashioned wind up alarm clock set to go off between 6:30 and 7:00.

Now that's anal retentive... even for me.

My head is going to explode...

... and I have yet to give a final.

I hate finals week in this country. I don’t love it in the US, but I hate it here. Students get a free education so long as they attend class. Five absences and they get booted. Four is OK. Ann is lucky in that her college (we both work at the same university) has a person who plays gatekeeper for excuses. In my college each instructor gets to decide whether or not to count an absence.

In the fall of 2008 my students took advantage of me relentlessly. It seemed 80% of my class was constantly sick, “in hospital”, and a stunning number of grandparents died (supposedly).

Since then here’s what I told my classes: “I will forgive two absences for anyone. After that you get four allowed absences. When you hit seven you are done, period. No family emergency/aunt dying or hospital visit will matter.”

Six absences means missing 3 weeks of class. I don’t think I missed six classes in all of my undergraduate career, let alone in one class.

Well, out of 160 students this semester 10 were dropped for attendance and now the groveling has begun. I was on campus for only a few minutes when I was surrounded by students. Each had great excuses for their absences.

After listening for a while I said, “I have no power to change this.” That didn’t get through and eventually I had to walk away.

Later a male student called me. I don’t give out my number and the IPhone is a new number. Even the department secretary doesn’t have that number! Anyhow, this was another, “But sir, you gave me seven absences…” He also could not understand the meaning of “There is nothing I can do.” I politely got off the phone as quickly as I could. He started calling and calling and then texting:

SORRY sair,

can u tell me who can hipe me? ;-( Please ;-( ;-( ;-( ;-( ;-( ;-(

In the meantime I started the IPod and I swear this was the first song it randomly picked:

I won’t back down.
No, I won’t back down.
You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won’t back down.

I’ve been playing the song in a continuous loop for an hour. The rest of the lyrics are appropriate for my situation.

*****
And the amazing thing is that this is just the beginning: Tomorrow all five of my classes take their finals.

Update: I posted the video having never watched it. I still like the song but the video is soo '80's (and not in a good way).

Notice anything wrong in this picture?

This nice graphs shows the weather for CR over 2009. See the super cold in January? That's when I flew back in. See the mild July? That's when I stayed away. The hottest day in August, that was me roofing, of course.

But all of that doesn't hold a candle to the real mystery. Look at this picture closely. Click on it it see it better.

The real mystery is in the bottom graph. It measures snowfall According to the NWS, no snow has fallen in Cedar Rapids so far this season. I've been watching this for months waiting for a correction and it never came.

I can't believe I missed this yesterday

Happy 0102/2010!

In my defense, I've grown accustomed to writing day/month/year. (Our system of month/day/year doesn't make much sense if you think about it.) So I'll try to remember to post this again on 1 February, 2010.

Weekend remainders - the apocalypse edition

Cows jumping six feet, a prominent economist calls for a trade war, tomato plants eating insects... They're all signs of the apocalypse. Fortunately, we now know it will all come down in 503 days.

A good sign of the end of the world? When you see a cow on a roof.

Weight loss surgery, it's not just for the obese anymore.

It may not be Armageddon but here's some depressing economic stats:

Here's food stamp usage by county across the US.

Here's a look a county by county look at unemployment for the past five years.

There are tomato plants that can eat insects!

Economists Paul Krugman falls just short of calling for a trade war with China. (For non-econ geeks this is very rare.)

Don't panic, but the real date of the apocalypse has been determined: May 21, 2011.

Those "The world will end in 2012" suckers won't know what hit them.

Depressing graph of the day

You may need to click on it to see it more clearly. What does it show? No job gains for the decade and a loss of household net worth.

Sunset at the tennis tournament

Mike captured this on Friday. We loaded up with sunscreen to watch tennis but it was mostly cloudy all day. It was even too cool for the shorts and t-shirts we were wearing. To feel warm kept looking up the temperature in Cedar Rapids on IPhone. Those negative 5, 6 and 7 readings took the chill out of the 70 degree air.

What I'm not seeing...

... is TV.

In mid-December my cable box stopped working for an unknown reason. I realized I didn't miss it so I turned it in. That will save $45/month. I sold my 32" TV to Ann & Mike. I'm looking for a larger TV... in the 42 to 50" range. The prices just keep dropping so I'm willing to wait.

Tennis greats in Abu Dhabi

I was excited to see Federer and Nadal play on New Year's Day. They each had different opponents and the idea was for them to meet in the championship round the next day.

For hosting the top two players in the world, the stadium was surprisingly small. A seat at the very top was still easy to see everything. The matches were "best of 3."

Federer played first. He exhibited absolutely zero energy. He won the first set in a tie-breaker and lost the second set in a tie-breaker. In the third set he gave up and his serve was broken a couple of times.

The event paid $250,000 to the winner and Federer gave everyone the impression that $250,000 was small peanuts and not worth working for.

As night set in Nadal's match began...

Nadal scrambled and worked hard. The effort you see here is more than Federer put into his entire match. Not surprisingly, Nadal won in two sets.

Going into this I had tremendous respect for Federer. Given his grand slam record he is arguably the best tennis player that's ever lived... It's too bad that guy didn't show up.

Christmas present

Our compound of 24 apartments has a maintenance groundskeeper guy. I'm not sure what his purpose is, but he lives in an shack right next to my building with no utilities. (He typically bathes using a bucket right under one of my windows.) He likes to sit out in front of our complex and the chair on on the right is what he'd been sitting on. For Christmas I spent $7 and bought him the chair on the left.

Sadly, this picnic chair may be the best Christmas gift I've ever given. He was very excited and now spends hours per day sitting on it watching... well nothing. I live in the boonies and there is just nothing much to see out here, but at least he has a decent chair to sit on.