Mutant super model gets ready to love math and show up that evil high school teacher who should be flagellated.

Dr. Crazy talks about how this (word that means separate into two parts that don’t overlap… bi-something) into women who want/have children and women who don’t is incomplete and inappropriate.  She hits compensating differentials and differing circumstances.  The comments are also excellent, and well worth reading.

On what seemed to be national blog book review day, wandering scientist recommends a really interesting sounding book about the first woman to circumnavigate the globe… which she did as a working class botany assistant disguised as a man.

I had to go to xkcd explained to understand Friday’s comic. That lead me to this. Enjoy!

… my most-disjoint part of class is after I work a problem and need to evaluate whether the class understands. Currently I look at their faces for signs of confusion (or sleep). Then I cold-call 2-3 people (out of 25-35) and ask them to self-identify if they understand or want to talk about it or want to work another problem. Then I ask the class “are we good?” And I’m not getting a good understanding of what level of understanding the class has. These problems take 10-15 minutes each, so I need to get a good evaluation before deciding whether to work another. What do you do to evaluate class understanding on the fly? (Or do you?)

#1:  I have the students do call and response or sometimes I’ll cold-call.  I don’t cold call enough in one of my classes and I wonder if that’s why I have a small handful of students who are getting Cs.  They all sit together and have last names that are similar.  I need to work on this.

#2  That kind of question is hard for me to answer because I frequently use problems for which there is no one right answer.  You can poll the class about what they got and how, having them report back to the big group, designating 1 person per group as the reporter.  I would have them vote:  “Raise your hand if you think you got the right answer and are very confident.”  “Raise your hand if you don’t know if you understand or not.”  “Raise your hand if you’re totally confused.”

Does anybody have better suggestions for Rumpus?

This stuff is good and is what we get at our local grocery (it’s in the fru-fru aisle, not with the other rices).  TJ’s has some California blends that are similar and Whole Foods has a similar blend in its bulk aisle.

We also like quinoa quite a bit.

If you have leftover brown rice, it might be better as fried rice or in something like soup or a fritatta.

#2 hates brown rice.  HATES IT, MY PRECIOUSSSSS.  Also wild rice.  That stuff’s not fit for birds.   Yukk.  Quinoa is ok though.

What are your favorite grains?  Have you tried fancy mixed brown rice?

Read Kitty’s Big Trouble.  Number who-knows in the series.  A little more relaxed than previous books, but still a good plane read.

Read Bewitched and Betrayed, #4 in the Raine Benares series.  Something *happens* in this one!  As in various plots move forward instead of just getting more tangled.  This is another series where I wish the heroine would be able to take a vacation between books, but it’s always running and fighting for her.

Eating for Beginners nowhere near as good as Hungry Monkey.  The author says things like, “Can pregnant women have raw milk products?  Well, the dairy guy’s wife did when she was pregnant once and that pregnancy turned out ok.  That’s good enough for me.”  She’s also really neurotic about what her kid eats.  The kid will only eat healthy and exotic (spicy/sour) foods.  He refuses unhealthy processed stuff and refined grains.  He prefers things in season.  Early on he may have one of those sensory disorders that may cause kids to dislike certain textures (IIRC from my forum days, this is something a speech therapist can fix?).  But he’s eating healthy food!  Why fret that he doesn’t like hot dogs? (Also:  the kid started eating more stuff at age 2.  Two!  Most kids wait until 4 or 5.)  Much preferred Hungry Monkey’s research base and the author’s realization that he should stop worrying and just go with the flow.  Also, he was hilariously funny.

Heroes at Odds by Moira J. Moore is some number in the Heroes series.  The series started out really strong with the first couple of books Resenting the Hero and The Hero Strikes Back, with great world building and interesting character development.  Somewhere in there it lost its way and became angsty with little character change and no more character development (or conversation really) regarding the male protagonist.  Heroes at Risk was so blah that I didn’t bother looking for the next sequel.  But Heroes at Odds leaped out at me at B&N when my parents were visiting so I picked it up.  Turns out I completely skipped Heroes Return, but the online reviews for it say it’s no big loss.  Heroes at Odds is a great improvement over the last couple books.  Again, stuff happens, and the heroine actually grows a little and stops being quite so neurotic and closed mouthed.  The plot is kind of interesting too and the other, non-main characters are interesting.  So, worth the read.

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal:  OMG fantastic.  Literally Jane Austen with magic.  I await the sequel!

Howards End is On the Landing by Susan Hill: adorable musings on books and reading. Her house sounds so cozy; I wish I had that many books!

Giggling into the Pillow by Chris Bridges: misc. humorous writing about sexual topics. Pretty male-centric but still amusing. Probably the funniest is the story “Found: One Dildo.”

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury: Did I talk about it already? I love it! Everyone should read it and maybe the author will write a sequel.

We’re long-past this.  DH was especially good at avoiding and defusing any potential situations.  When he was gone for business trips, I would have to sometimes walk away and take a break in order to calm down and deal with a situation.  But in general we did ok.

Early on, a lot of frustration is inability to communicate.  For that reason, we still used baby signs even after DC was verbal.  More.  All Done.  Help.  Want.  Eat.  These all cut down on frustration for everybody.

Another thing to check is to make sure DC isn’t hungry and isn’t sleepy.  Those are two meltdown triggers… we don’t want to get past the time when it should have been bedtime, and we don’t want a starving kid melting down at the grocery store (thank goodness for free cookies).

One of the main things that we did was we copied our very excellent daycares.  We used their key words.  Walk away.  We don’t hurt our friends.  Up the stairs, down the slide.  When DC was at Montessori, we talked a lot about property rights and turn taking.  When DC was at a religious pre-school we talked a lot about sharing and being nice.  We learned from systems that worked and we were consistent with what DC was getting from other adults and later, other children.  It is amazing watching kids do their own conflict resolution at a well-run school where everybody has been given the tools they need and the culture is to use them.

Offering two choices was another super helpful thing. Do you want X or Y for snack? Do you want to wear red or green? etc.

Also at that age, distraction was really helpful, and getting hir to laugh helped (Oh! what’s that?!). As I said before, if I ever couldn’t handle something I would just walk away.  DH was better at not having to do that precisely because he was so very good at converting a potential meltdown into laughter.  (And the daycare ladies were masters at distracting away potential problems before they happened!)  Time for the tickle monster!

Another common trigger with kids these ages are transitions.  A kid is happily playing and all of a sudden it’s bath time.  And even if the kid loves baths, ze doesn’t want to take a bath now!  With transitions what was really helpful for us was blaming the clock or some other outside influence. It is *snack time* because it is 7:30. It is X time because it is Y:YY. Oh no! The mosquitoes are coming out! It must be time to go home.  And these reasons would become routine, and thus eventually expected.  One of our friends had a lot of success with 5 min warnings and sticking to them, but we found that we didn’t need them.

Adding onto the idea of routine, once these are in place they’re golden.  You can ask the kid, “What comes next?” and the kid will be excited to tell you and may actually do it of hir own volition.  With our (lengthy) nighttime routine we tried to alternate something ze loved with something ze didn’t love so much.  So, bedtime:  not that popular, but we started it with SNACK, which was very popular (also helped keep DC from screaming from hunger at 5am).  After snack, teeth brushing (not fun), bath (fun), pajamas (not as fun as nude streaking), being read to (fun!), staying in bed (not fun) while reading to self (fun).  Your kid may have different preferences, but being able to say, “after you do not fun thing we can do fun thing” helped move things along.

We NEVER assumed ze was trying to manipulate, unlike a lot of women complaining about their kids on mommy forums.  Maybe some kids do manipulate, ours did not.  Some parents seem to attribute things to manipulation things far too early.  Maybe some super-advanced two year olds can manipulate their parents, but an infant really can’t.  Sometimes a kid just wants more attention.  So we give more attention, but positively.  “Do you feel neglected?  Do you need more attention?”  “Behavior X isn’t appropriate… but did you need a hug?  You can always ask for a hug if you need one.”

We did a lot of explaining why it was in DC’s best interest not to do things that were icky. So, “Ew, that’s dirty” etc. Though we also did a lot of what the heck, it’s strengthening zir immune system. Our main things were: Dangerous, Dirty, and Not polite. Dangerous we always said with a scary voice and ze took it seriously.  We let little things go. Clashing clothing? Whatever. Running into the street? SCARY! DANGEROUS! and unacceptable.

We did about 5 time outs that we took very seriously (once a time-out actually started to have an effect… DC was a late-bloomer), always for hitting.  We used the standard Super-Nanny method.  Get down to the kid’s level.  Explain what they did wrong.  Tell them they’re in time out for a certain amount of time.  Then time them one minute for each year of age, restarting the clock each time the kid gets up.  Time-outs would generally result in a very sad very apologetic DC.  Then ask if DC remembers why ze is in time-out and request an apology and a promise not to do it again.  “Are you going to hit again?”

On one of the mommy forums I was on, people would consider time-outs to be the worst possible punishment one could give to a kid.  (Withdrawing attention is child-abuse, they say.  And it is true that our excellent Montessori has never needed time-outs for little kids, though I have seen it do cool-downs for much older kids when something is going on with the kid, like acting out because mom and dad just had a baby.)  On another forum, folks would argue whether or not parents who spanked were too soft.  We have never spanked, mainly because I don’t want to model any behavior I don’t want DC to think ze can do hirself.  I would have been mortified if DC started spanking kids at school, and how can we teach “no hitting” if that’s something we do?  (Plus I don’t think it works– I remember sitting on a plane pre-DC next to a woman and her lap child.  He would hit her.  “Don’t hit!” she would say, hitting him back.  Which he thought was hilarious, so he’d do it again.  “Don’t hit!” WHAP!  progressively harder back and forth until the kid got hurt and started screaming.)  Thankfully we’ve never needed to spank, especially with all the tools we’ve picked up watching the real experts (folks who interact with kids, not just those who make money writing books telling mothers they’re destroying their kids) along the way.

What do you recommend for the avoiding the terrible part of the terrible twos/threes?

If you think there’s nothing wrong with the above argument, here’s something we would like to say to you.  THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU.  Sometimes people would prefer to keep their own money and not lend it to you, whether or not you’re a good credit risk.  That’s their business.

Mature adults do their best to have emergency funds and low enough expenses so that they don’t have to borrow money from others.  It might be one thing if you had a sudden medical emergency, and even then, generally working a payment plan out with the hospital is the best idea (since they will usually cut the balance), or a temporary car problem making it difficult to get to work… but you have consumer debt and you don’t want to live on rice and beans while you’re getting rid of it?  Or you want to buy a house but haven’t saved a down-payment?  Suck it up.

We get these kinds of students in class on a pretty regular basis.  At least we’re not related to them!

Who says legos aren’t for girls?  Geeky mom blog’s girls are lego winners.

Speaking of Austen times, if you ever wondered what gout looks like, wonder no more.

Tiger beatdown discusses the TX abortion law.

Ianqui asks whether you call yourself a professor or a disciplinist.

A PSA from profgrrrl.

We recently discovered randsinrepose via a link off Wandering Scientist.  This post really struck a chord with both of us.  We may do a full post on it later after #2 has a conversation with her partner.  I will relate the IM conversation #1 had here:

#1: “Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention.”
is that TRUE???
Partner: yes. but you are always in my “relevant” filter
[pause]
you and I have already passed that before we got married
[pause]
or possibly a better way to think about it is that I don’t think I’ll ever lose that sense of wonder about you. I find you fascinating.

The first response is TOTAL NERD.  The third response is why we’ve been together for so long (SMOOOOOTH).  The second response is probably just demonstrating our midwestern pragmatism.

What was I doing with some dear student letters.

We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.

I have always, always wanted to be a professor.  I never trained for anything else, nor wanted to!  But now… Please help me brainstorm about jobs out of academia that I might be able to do without wanting to die.  Not in a cubicle.  Not dependent on grant funding.  Preferably with benefits.  Any ideas?  I don’t necessarily need health insurance (I could get on my partner’s, potentially), but I still need to fund my retirement and get sick days.  I worked in a bank for a while and it was hellacious.

Sometimes I take career inventories or similar tests… they always come out “professor”.  Always.

#2 suggests freelancing, and I think that’s probably the way to go.  Not that that’s a steady income.  Some quick googling turns up infinite scummy gross websites where “freelance” means “write your homework paper for you”

Even people that are supposedly skeptical and critical thinkers can fall into stupid fallacies.  For example, PZ Meyers is very vocal that people who homeschool their kids are selfish assholes equal in their danger to society to people who refuse to vaccinate their kids.  He says:

I am not a fan of homeschooling; in fact, if I had my way, I’d make it illegal.

and

If you don’t believe in vaccination, then don’t vaccinate your kids.

Sorry, but the same logic applies. Public schools are for the good of the community; homeschooling is intended for the good of the individual child.  I know that homeschools can be good (but most aren’t), and that public schools can be awful (and most are), but I consider homeschooling to be a distraction from the cause of a greater good.

he goes on from there in the comments, basically arguing that if you keep your kids out of (bad) public schools that hurts all the kids still in public schools, mainly because the school doesn’t get the federal money for the kid being there (partly because he says parents have some kind of obligation to be involved), despite perfectly logical arguments responding to his own (such as:  I homeschool because my child is autistic/requires other special accommodations– he would be costing the district much more than he brings the district in per-student federal funds and isn’t mainstreamed anyway… or, My kid was hospitalized after getting beaten up/bullied to the point of self-harm and the school did nothing… or simply, I pay taxes but am not costing my district anything).

All you holier-than-thou folks on the internet: It’s easy to volunteer other people to be saints.  Not so easy to be one yourself.  If you don’t have 20 foster kids and 10 adoptees, then don’t tell people using fertility treatment there are tons of needy kids out there needing homes and that they’re sinners for trying to have a baby instead of adopting one.  Bless people who do foster and adopt, but if you’re not one of them, then why are you telling other people that they should do more than you are?

If you don’t have your own kids in dangerous crumbling schools (because you decided to live in a more expensive district, your kids are grown, or you just don’t have kids), and you’re not volunteering regularly and donating heavily, at least the amount that the federal government would be giving* for say, I dunno, 5 kids, then don’t say that parents who pull their kids out of public schools for private or homeschooling are selfish.  You’re even more selfish because you have more time and money to give, and you wouldn’t be physically, mentally, or emotionally scarring any minors as collateral damage.**

These “you want/have a child you should be doing X” are all stupid arguments.  No one person can save the world.  And nobody, just by dint of being unable to easily have biological children or by having children should be required to contribute to those specific causes.  Nobody is actually required to contribute to any specific cause.  But if someone chooses to put their kids in private school and also donates to people starving in developing countries rather than joining the school board at the local public,*** does that make them selfish?  What about public school teachers who send their own kids to private?

These kinds of arguments seem to be focused on fertility, race, and gender.  If you have kids then you’re supposed to support specific causes.  If you want kids but can’t have them, then that must be a sign from God that you’re supposed to adopt (but people who can have kids easily have no such obligation).  If you’re a black college grad, then you’re selling out your race if you’d rather be an investment banker than a high school teacher (this is a narrative that two of my black studies colleagues frequently argue about).  If you’re female then you have to have a certain kind of active feminism and aren’t allowed to make choices to be the trailing spouse or the one who cooks dinner, even if your husband is allowed to make those choices.  Why do these immutable characteristics (it’s hard to give a kid back), many of which we have no choice over, provide such obligations when others do not?  Owning a pet doesn’t make you have to support spay and neuter laws or pose nude for PETA.  Being a white male provides no obligation to any race or gender.  And yet, when historically you’ve been chattel, all of a sudden you have an obligation to change the world.  IBTP.

*~8% of the school’s budget… meaning that actually your paying state and local taxes without costing the local district to educate your kid (at a cost of ~10K/year to the district) is probably more than making up for not having your kid in school.  And if you kick an additional $800/kid-you-don’t-have to the school district, you should be able to say STFU to any guilt-mongers.  Me, I prefer to spend my education charity dollars in high poverty districts using Donors Choose because they need my money more than the local school district does.  If our district had less money they wouldn’t fricking change districts every 5 years because they wouldn’t be able to afford to bus kids to schools so far from where they live.

**Before having kids the one of us with a kid volunteered extensively tutoring and teaching math in failing urban school districts and at migrant summer programs in rural agricultural areas.  There’s a lot more time to volunteer when you don’t have a small child.

***After years on the school board, and while still on the school board, my mother sent my sister to a Catholic high school.  Does that make her selfish?  She continued on the school board after my sister graduated as well, even though she no longer had kids in school.  Her research career suffered substantially from her public service.

#1:  I came home from work and started drinking on an empty stomach.  This semester I must resolve to stay out of department and campus drama.  If I think about how bad things are I will just be angry all the time.  I should really try to care way way less about the lack of respect I’m getting.

#2:  was today your first teaching day or something?

#1:   SO FIRST my travel request to a conference was denied for no stated reason.
then an administrator gave a 2-hr speech about strategic planning in which ze said how much ze hates research (not in so many words)
also a lawyer talked for 20 min straight about discrimination laws “here are some examples of harassment. Don’t do them. Here is a list of protected classes. I shall repeat them like 5 times.” [Note: we all did the required online training.  It was less detailed than that, but seemed to last forever.  Duh.]
and the ethernet in my office died over break for no real reason.

#2: no no, just don’t drunkposte.  we could use some drunkblogges
I’ll go over it before it posts to make sure you don’t leave any “F*ck You [name of university]” in.

#2: I shoudl go to sleep
don’t get too hungover
drink gatorade or something

#2:   ah, that’s not so drunk blogging
unless you’re a lightweight
mildly buzzed blogging