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Steroid Fallout and Profiting from Injustice

Posted October 10, 2007 By Dave Thomer

In the aftermath of Marion Jones’ admission of steroid usage, one of her relay mates says that she should be allowed to keep the bronze medal that the team won in 2000. Passion Richardson says that “I should not have to suffer the consequences for someone else’s bad decisions and choices.” And maybe that’s so – but should she be allowed to profit from them? When you participate in a team event, you’re getting the benefit of your teammates’ skill, but you’re also taking on some responsibility for their actions as well.

It’s a dicey issue, and there are plenty of parallels to contemporary society – I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I am drawing some benefits from the unjust actions of others, but then what responsibility do I have to correct those injustices?

Filed in Philosophy
        

Shaking the Rust Off

Posted October 9, 2007 By Dave Thomer

OK, I swear, I am going to get back into the daily blogging habit again. It’s amazing how easy it is to fall off the wagon. Lately I’ve spent long periods of time staring at the screen, and about the only thing popping out of my head is:

I’m tired.
I’m tired.
Boy, I could use a nap right now.
Yep, still tired.

And I don’t think people need to read about that all the time. 🙂 Seriously, I’m getting into the swing of taking my daughter to kindergarten every day, which I have to say I enjoy even if it does involve scenes of frantic-guy-with-kid-piggybacking-on-shoulders-running-up-the-street-to-catch-a-bus once a week or so. So far, no late slips, so mission accomplished. Now I just need to carve a little more writing time into the schedule. Here we go!

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Guess I Gotta Buy the White Album Again

Posted September 5, 2007 By Dave Thomer

One of the major issues that comes up in my computers-and-education course is the idea of making electronic content accessible to people who use alternate technologies for reading/consuming information online. Intellectually this makes a lot of sense to me, but I’ve had some gut level resistance. And I think when you get down to it, the reason is that I’ve distributed course notes as PDF files for a few years now. My logic was that I didn’t want students to have to worry about how a browser would mangle the notes and make them harder to read or follow, and I do think that that’s a valid concern. But the problem is that PDFs are rotten for screen readers and other software that people with vision handicaps or other problems might use to navigate the web. So now I seriously have to think about re-formatting these online notes as XHTML pages with cascading style sheets, and at least see how they print out. Yeesh. Technology. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

Filed in Education
        

Smell the Productivity

Posted September 4, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Kinda wanted to have some brilliant thoughts to mark my return from blogging, but my brain’s getting ready to shut off, so we’ll have them tomorrow.

A lot of my energy today has gone toward technology problems. I want to make PDF files of several major writings from the anti-Federalist side of the constitutional ratification debate available to my students. The photocopier at work has a setting to create PDFs and e-mail them to you, which is great – but it could only handle documents that were three pages long. So now I gotta stitch ’em together.

Some of my students can’t even access the online material I’m posting using the university’s system – that’s the reason I’ve always set up course web pages on my own server, but then I always get students who look on Blackboard (the education system) rather than on the site. So I’m trying to work with the system and getting frustrated by the interfaces and lack of access.

I also had to do some work on a wiki for one of my education courses. In between arguing with the interface, I know I’m setting myself up to be a major putz, because I went through altering fonts and reorganizing material in a way that I thought made sense. I’m not sure my OCD allows for the plays-well-with-others skills required for being a wiki contributor . . .

Filed in Education
        

Taking the Rest of the Week Off

Posted August 13, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I think it’s time to recharge the ol’ batteries, so I’m gonna spend a week or so ruminatin’ on various topics before I return to the blog here. Have fun and keep cool.

Filed in Site Comments
        

Excellence Defined

Posted August 12, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Went to visit some college friends today, who are terrific people that have a daughter right around Alex’s age with whom she gets along with famously. On top of all this, when they moved down to the Philly area they bought an HDTV. So we had that on showing various sporting events in the background while we swapped stories and kept the kids from taking over the world. Or so we like to tell ourselves, anyway. Thanks to HDTV, we were able to tell that Tiger Woods was very, very warm when he won the PGA Championship today. I think I’ve mentioned before that I only turn on golf when Tiger’s about to win a major. There’s just something about someone at the top of his game doing things that no one else can really do that I like to see.

It also occurred to me today that when/if we ever get an HDTV, the important thing might be asking the store what a standard broadcast looks like on the HDTV. ‘Cause the imperfections of a standard broadcast can become even more noticeable, which is kind of a bummer. But ah well.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

All About the Music

Posted August 11, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Yesterday was probably the best experience of live music I’ve had, one of those everything-comes-together situations that just makes me feel incredibly lucky to be living the life I’m living. I’m gonna try and get some of those moments onto the record and point you to some spots on the Internet where you can catch a glimpse of them.

I went downtown to World Café Live to see a Free at Noon concert with Crowded House and Joan as Police Woman, a concert you can hear online at NPR. I’d never been to the venue, but it’s a very nice little theater and the sound was pretty good. Joan was pretty good, doing three songs on the keyboard with a bassist and drummer before switching over to electric guitar for her finale. The radio host misread her notes at one point during the interview, which made me feel bad – I beat myself up when I mis-speak in front of 30 students, which is merely one reason that a career in radio is probably not for me. But this is an important point in today’s story – we’ll come back to it in a moment.

After Joan’s set Crowded House walked onto the stage, looking very much like they wanted to know whose bright idea it was to get them up to perform this early in the day. Most of the band members were wearing T-shirts, and I’m not sure Neil Finn had gone near a comb that morning. They were in good spirits, though. When someone from the audience yelled “You forgot Tim!â€? (Neil’s brother and frequent collaborator), Neil feigned surprise – “I knew I left something behind!â€? – before nodding toward his son Liam and saying “I brought his nephew.â€? At this point the radio host started introducing the band and referred to their most recent album as Together Alone, at which point the audience started murmuring in a way that I interpreted as “Umm . . . should we interrupt her?â€? before Neil said, “That wasn’t very recent . . .â€? Turns out the host had written a note to say that the band had just put out their first album since Together Alone. The philosopher in me thought that was an interesting case of how our brain can just grab a piece of information and run with it based on prior patterns and expectations, but I put that out of mind. There was music to hear, now with the added benefit of a running joke. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media
        

And Number 1200 on the Countdown . . .

Posted August 10, 2007 By Dave Thomer

At this very moment, I am listening to the last song on my iPod’s random playlist of my entire library. I have an even 1200 songs on the Pod, and I need to put a few dozen more on. But I couldn’t plug the iPod in to resync it without resetting the Shuffle Song list, and by God I was determined to get through all 1200.

It’ll probably be a while before I try this again.

At any rate, oddly enough, songs 1199 and 1200 were both tracks from Don Henley’s End of the Innocence album. (And 1197 or 1198 was Matthew Sweet’s “Nothing Lasts.” Don’t tell me the shuffling algorithm wasn’t programmed with a sense of humor.)

Filed in Culture and Media
        

A Legacy Honored

Posted August 9, 2007 By Dave Thomer

You know, some days it’s good to realize you can still be amazed. The space shuttle endeavor is currently in space for STS-118, an assembly mission to the International Space Station. One of the mission specialists is Barbara Morgan, a former elementary school teacher who has been a full time astronaut since 1998. Morgan was Christa McAuliffe’s alternate for the Teacher in Space mission aboard the Challenger in 1986.

21 years later, she’s in space.

I really have no words for how wonderfully cool that is.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

I See, I See, Said the Blind Man

Posted August 8, 2007 By Dave Thomer

As he picked up his hammer and saw . . .

(No, I do not get tired of that joke. Yes, I know it’s not particularly funny.)

Had an eye exam today. Got off to a good start when the doctor took a look at my glasses and said “I had forgotten how nearsighted you are.” Went downhill from there, as my prescription had to get stronger – again – as my vision had deteriorated to 20/50 with my old glasses. Walked home in the sunlight, and even though I had the protective shades, I am stunned I did not walk right into a moving car. When I could keep my eyes open, I saw the whole world through a haze.

Then my first attempt to get new glasses failed when the closest LensCrafters’ machines were broken. So we drove to another one and discovered that my current health insurance doesn’t cover glasses. Unfortunately, I had already donated blood earlier in the day, so trading plasma for the glasses was impossible. Visa is very happy with me tonight, lemme tell ya.

On the other hand, when I finally did get the glasses, I was amazed by how much clearer things seemed, and by how light the glasses were – lenses have apparently gotten even thinner in the last few years, which is great. I hope that lens-thinning technology manages to at least keep pace with my deteriorating vision for years to come.

So, long story short, if you haven’t replaced your glasses in a few years, and have a spare kidney, check out what’s available.

Oh, and if you can at all persuade your optometrist not to have Rachael Ray’s talk show on in the waiting room, go for it.

Filed in Life in Practice
        
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