#2 is in DC marching for science. I had been planning on going to our uni’s march, but then they changed the time and place and had competing Earth Day events so I said screw it and we’re at the march in the nearest big city. DH and DC2 have lab coats and if you see someone with a homemade “Dismal Scientist” t-shirt, that’s probably me. Here’s the link for satellite marches in your area. Slather on some sunblock and head out!
An app that makes it easy to pester your congress member.
Help people get voter IDs in Georgia.
Gloria Steinem and Chelsea Handler
In a move that doesn’t surprise anybody, TX lawmakers either don’t care about women’s health OR else they want women to be sick and dying. Why does TX hate women?
Nothing was weird at the whitehouse egg roll at all. Nothing. At All.
Washington Post uses data on social security disability that is just wrong.
Redshirting may do more harm than good
This is an interesting phone scam.
I believe that this happened because on my flight back home there was a United flight attendant being a jerk about exactly the same thing. United was so nice and well behaved on my way to the conference, but completely awful a few days later on the way back. (I told the guy who had to go back to my row that at least he hadn’t been dragged back to his seat.)
I still want to publish scenes and rage against machines
How to support authors if you can’t afford to buy their books.
How to cite tweets if you use MLA
Tiny SF short stories.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
April 22, 2017 at 1:09 pm
Interesting article on redshirting. All my kids are in mid-to-young part of their cohorts; Smurf’s birthday is in late June, so he’s among the youngest if not the youngest in his class. While he’s not among the biggest kids, he’s a high academic performer, and I honestly think it has to do with having older siblings as much as anything that the schools have done.
My folks “reverse redshirted” me — I started school a year early because I was very tall as a kid; my grandpa was worried other kids would tease me for being a “flunker” (someone who flunks grades, i.e., who was held back) because of my height. Even as a year younger than everyone else, I was still tied for the tallest kid in class for a very long time (until the boys started hitting puberty). I was socially immature and naive with respect to other kids in class (still am, nearly 40 years later), but was the top of the class throughout school. I think my parents did the right thing, even though they weren’t primarily thinking of academic achievement when they put me in school a year early.
I think kids can handle a lot of challenge, and challenge is generally better than boredom, for boredom leads to restlessness and mischief, although it depends on the kid’s personality. I could have handled more academic challenge, but I found ways to entertain myself in class, had extracurricular activities, didn’t get in trouble, and generally more-or-less enjoyed my pre-college schooling.
April 22, 2017 at 10:19 pm
I love the MLA citation format for tweets. In my field, we don’t have one rigid citation format – we just try to be sensible. It got me thinking about how a few of my students have been citing a stackoverflow post in a paper they’re writing for my class. It drives me nuts that they’re citing that kind of source, but they have independently verified the information (in two different ways), it doesn’t seem to be available in any other source, and they didn’t come up with the idea themselves, so they definitely need to cite it, but still…
April 24, 2017 at 4:14 am
I totally believe the couple over UA. What a way to start your honeymoon! I wonder if you’ll soon be able to buy travel insurance with “airline bafoonery” as an eligible claim.
Hope you enjoyed the march! Ours was good. No need for suntan lotion, but good. 😊
April 24, 2017 at 11:46 am
We had booked PiC on a flight on United before these recent incidents and we couldn’t change them but I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be a long time before United gets any of our money again.
April 24, 2017 at 6:12 pm
This is not relevant to your links, but in case you didn’t see it/ want it, KJ Charles’ Rag and Bone is back up for purchase. (Eeeeeeee!)
April 24, 2017 at 6:14 pm
I READ IT! I liked it! (#2 here.)
While I’m here I’d also like to note that it’s “publish zines”, not “publish scenes”. Thank you, my pedantic nature is now satisfied.
yay science!
April 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm
I think they’re all back up now!
April 26, 2017 at 8:20 am
We did our local March for science. My soon to be 6 year old said, “we already did this, mom!” We did the women’s march, but I said our work is not done. So much to stand up for. We talked about the need to be active and stand up for values, principles. I want to keep them little, but also instill some awareness of the world.
Thanks for the redshirting article. I posted earlier about my August/September babes and thinking about kindergarten start. My middle child is going to be 4, so we have another year of preschool before deciding. One of the teachers in his school who I’m friends with suggested waiting in her experience was better BUT another (3rd) year in the same preschool would be worse (bored). Considering alternative preschools is probably not an option (other Montessori options too expensive), so he may start at 4. We may also decide to move in 2019, so I’ll be looking at age cutoffs for the districts we’d possibly move to. If moving, it would probably be easiest to do a preschool year than a full day k year and less disruptive for him. Lots of thinking ahead!
April 26, 2017 at 11:11 am
Right now we’re seeing if DC2 (who will be 5 by September) is going to get into the dual language program. If zie does, zie will start K in public school, but if zie doesn’t, we will have hir skip K and do 1st at the private school that DC1 went to.
DH had a similar talk with DC1 (age 10) who wanted to know why zie couldn’t have spent that Saturday playing computer games instead. Zie said zie understood at the end of the conversation. It’s hard raising kids in interesting times!