Professors should not be allowed to ban laptops in class. Professors should not be allowed to ban recorders in class. Professors should not be able to ban students from taking pictures of the whiteboard at the end of lectures. Professors should not be allowed to ban ANYTHING that will make the class more accessible for ALL students. I don’t care what the excuse is.
“They might not even be taking notes on their laptop, they’re probably playing games!” So that’s on the student and they’ll have to live with those grades. They’re paying thousands of dollars to be there, if they want to fuck off and waste their money that’s on them.
“I’m uncomfortable with my lectures being recorded!” What EXACTLY are you saying in your lectures that makes you worried about being recorded, hmm?
“I just don’t like the idea of being on camera/recorded at work. How would YOU feel being recorded at work?” Buddy, I work in retail. I’m always being watched. Suck it the fuck up.
And before anyone says “but you can just bypass this by getting permission from accessibility services!” 1. Not all students with disabilities have up-to-date diagnosis to qualify, 2. Not all students with disabilities have had it confirmed by a professional yet and won’t be able to access those services, 3. Not all students who need these accommodations even have a disability! Some people just learn differently and lecture-style learning actually doesn’t work for a lot of people! and 4. This often puts a student on the spot to all their classmates and can make them feel very uncomfortable.
Students should not have to jump through hoops to get an education that they’re paying for. That’s not accessibility.
Students, however, who ARE just playing games on their laptops instead of taking notes, should have the courtesy to NOT SIT ANYWHERE BUT THE BACK ROW.
Because I am HAPPY to make things accessible for you. I will record my own lectures (so the online-only students can listen to the MP3s on their commute, too). The PDFs are on the class website. A copy of the textbook is ON RESERVE at the library, so you can do the readings EVEN WHEN YOUR CAR IS BROKEN INTO. I’ll give your ASL interpreter a copy of the notes so she can sit facing you, and I will harass the publisher until they get off their asses and FedEx a Braille textbook to me to give you.
But everyone else in that class is jumping through hoops, too. And you do NOT get to make it harder for other students to concentrate.
Which those blinking, MOVING games will do. Motion draws the eye.
Why else do you think I roam the classroom while I teach?
It’s not just so I can see IF you’re playing games and NOT sitting in the back.
It’s so I can keeep everyone else’s attention, too.
And rest assured, I will pull out my ‘Captain America is VERY disappointed in you’ face if I roam, and see you gaming (in a front row).
I’ll also happily stand RIGHT NEXT TO YOU until you start making it harder for everyone else to learn.
Game all you want.
Just don’t distract ANYONE ELSE.
Okay, reblogging again for only small thing.
About the professors feeling uncomfortable being recorded. Look. I’m a teacher myself – although I’m not exercising my profession yet – in a country where the fucking PRESIDENT told kids to record their teachers and SEND HIM the videos if they thought it was a SUBVERSIVE CLASS.
Yeah, i agree that you should let people watch your class however is better to them, but if you are in a complicated political climate, record your class yourself. Talk with all your students if possible, try and see who of them would have the class experience improved by it and then give it directly to them.
Praise for accessibility. But do not put yourself in risk.
All very true.
And to add: I’m one of those folks who takes notes better on a laptop. When I took History of Witchcraft (a bomb fucking class, by the way, should be required for women’s studies majors), THE PROF ACTUALLY USED MY NOTES TO HELP COMPOSE THE FINAL.
Why?
Because I can take dictation at 92 WPM unassisted, and with OpenOffice’s autocomplete and a custom complete list, I was able to bump that to 132 WPM.
In other words: she accepted my request to take notes via laptop, and in return she damn near got transcripts of her lessons, color-coded and everything. Which she, in turn, used to assist other students, because sometimes lessons go in directions you didn’t expect because of questions, or because your students may have put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble in their notes and it tells you that you need to clarify your key points.
Accommodating my disability helped THE ENTIRE CLASS. Being open to diverse learning styles created a better class FOR EVERYONE, including the professor.
…..also, she did stop class one time over my laptop. She walked behind me, looked at my screen, and I heard her just….slowly stop…..and then she looked closer over my shoulder, obviously reading the text, and there was this pause, and then she picked back up. I don’t think she believed I could possibly actually be typing that fast until she saw it with her own eyes.
I remember as a schoolboy being told by artist Roger Dean that Chris Ross’s SF book covers, featuring enormous space ships, were actually pictures of Vaccuum Cleaners, Irons, and things you’d find around the house. (Also being told by Roger that Chris Foss could indeed draw people and had illustrated The Joy of Sex.) Which meant I could never again see a Chris Foss spaceship without imagining it in a kitchen.
When you hit your elbow against something, but that specific point of your elbow
it’s…called your funny bone…
that gif tho
It’s not a bone actually- it’s a nerve that is exposed, specifically the ulnar nerve. The reason it feels so weird to hit it is that it’s not designed to deliver pain signals, so when you hit it it just wiggs out and sends Garbage signals to the brain, and the brain is just like “uh, dude- Ulnar, what the hell is this garbage?? You’re supposed to curl a finger and a half, and move some muscles in the forearm, why are you sending me this crap? How am I supposed to make this into sensory output?” And the Ulnar nerve is just like “dude dude dude, brain- what the hell is going on?!?” And the brain goes- “idiot. Fine. You’re on fire, freezing and being electrocuted. Happy?” And the Ulnar goes “holy crap brain!! I’m on fire, freezing and being electrocuted! What am I going to do!!??!” And the brain says “you’re an idiot ulnar. A damn idiot.”
This is how human anatomy should be taught
Instead my professor was just like “ur elbow has no pain receptors quick! pinch it!”
I WENT AND LOOKED INTO THIS AND DEADASS PLANET NINE HAS BEEN PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE SINCE 2016 AND WE HAVE ESTIMATES ABOUT WHERE IT IS BUT WE HAVE NO. CLUE.
IT’S 10 TIMES LARGER THAN EARTH.
WE THINK WE FOUND ONE OF PLANET NINE’S MOONS.
WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS.
WHAT THE FUCK
*jaws theme*
Bitcg it’s real
Space is big guys. Like really really mindbogglingly big, even if we’re only talking about the space in our solar system.
That tiny green circle labeled “orbit of Neptune”? That circle has a radius of four and a half billion kilometers (2.3 billion miles). It’s 30 times as far away from the sun as the Earth is; light takes 8 minutes to get to Earth, yes? It takes 4 hours for light to get to Neptune. It is ridiculously far away, going by the standards we’re used to on Earth.
And look at how small is it compared to the predicted orbit of Planet Nine. The estimates for the semi-major axis range from 400 to 1000 times as far from the Sun as Earth is.
Notice that the orbit is an ellipse? Statistically, it’s likely that this planet is currently closer to the far end of the ellipse (the aphelion, or to be generic, apoapsis), because orbiting objects move slower at the aphelion so they spend more time there. Pluto orbits the Sun once every 247 years – anything further out is going to take longer still, so we can’t wait around for it to get closer and expect to see anything anytime soon.
There’s also viewing difficulties. The wikipedia article says that if it’s relatively close, it might show up on pictures from stellar databases, but if it’s further away (more likely) it’ll be too faint and require a stronger telescope. Also, in the part of the expected orbit that goes in front of the galactic plane, it would look like any back ground star and be harder to pick out.
That is how you lose a planet. More specifically, that’s how you have trouble finding a planet that you don’t know for sure exists yet, that might be invisible to all but the biggest telescopes, and that’s exact position isn’t exactly known.
‘pop’ is pretty heinous but like, I’ll accept it, yknow? it’s just the other half of ‘soda-pop,’ like how ‘cab’ and ‘taxi’ are the two halves of ‘taxicab.’ it’s fine. it’s chill.
but coke? that’s a fucking brand name! of a specific drink with a specific flavor! that shits RUDE, it’s CONFUSING, it’s DOWNRIGHT NONSENSICAL! fuckin misusing the art of language to confound your fellow man! the gall! learn some fucking respect
No it just happens sometimes. Its like jell-o, kleenex, popsicle, scotch tape. It just happens.
But that’s not a good parallel at all. You can’t compare calling Sprite “coke” like a lawless heathen to the classic linguistic phenomenon of generic trademarks / proprietary eponyms, and I’ll tell you why:
‘Jell-o’ is a brand name under which multiple flavours of gelatin (and pudding/custard) are produced. There isn’t just “Jell-o” and then special “strawberry Jell-o”; the name has never denoted just one specific flavour.
‘Popsicle’ is the same as Jello, it was never a name for just one flavour of popsicle.
‘Kleenex’ is a specific brand of tissues, but it’s not inherently that distinct from other tissues. They are all lightweight tissues used to blow your nose.
‘Scotch tape’ is used to refer to any tape that is like the original scotch tape, i.e., clear, thin, small, sticky on one side. We don’t call all tape ‘scotch tape’. Electric tape, duct tape, and packing tape are all their own things, and anybody who calls any of them ‘scotch tape’ has no regard for their fellow man and ought to be thrown into the sea.
MEANWHILE, Coca-Cola is a specific kind of soda with its own distinct flavour. When Coca-Cola makes other flavours, they’re called “vanilla Coke,” “cherry Coke,” etc. but “Coke” is still its own standalone flavour, a wholly other Thing apart from the “special” flavours the company produces.
It would make far more sense if people used ‘coke’ the way we use ‘scotch tape’; that is, to denote only those sodas that are similar in appearance and taste to Coca-Cola (Pepsi, RC, Shasta Cola, etc.). I could see all of those being lumped in under a generic term ‘coke’. I could even see it being extended to all brown sodas, even though comparing Root Beer to Coke is like comparing a badger to a zebra just because they’re both black-and-white mammals. You’re on thin fucking ice but at least there’s still some semblance of logic.
But no. You southerners, who bask in your sun and heat and chew upon your wheat stems with the indifference of an armadillo in the face of oncoming traffic, you who revel in lawlessness and chaos, you linguistic delinquents who fear neither God nor man,
you are really going to look at a list of drinks that includes such variety in taste and apperance as Sprite, Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Code Red, Orange Fanta, and Dr. Pepper, and call it all “Coke.”
You’re going to picture, in your mind, a clear, lemon-lime fizzy drink and request “coke.” And then when asked “what kind?” you will not say “Coke Zero,” “Diet Coke,” or “Cherry Coke,” no. You will answer “Sprite,” like an animal, like a feral possum who knows the ways of right and wrong and chooses wrong just to spite its creator.
And then you have the gall to say it’s an eponym as valid as ‘Jello’. No. You tossed your logic into the dumpster fires of the underworld long ago, you cannot justify it now. You cannot tell me you don’t know your own crimes. “It’s all coke,” you say, and you taste the sin of it on your tongue, and you laugh. Know this, that you are inviting judgment upon yourself and one day you will be devoured by the sun.
Sometimes, when I lived in Alabama, I’d get asked what kind of Coke I wanted when going to a restaurant. I usually answered sweet tea. This never confused anyone having the actual conversation but visiting northerners, well…see above.
You could see that whole rant, hiding behind their eyes and the curl of their lip.
Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.
Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together.
You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits.
Frankentrees.
As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.
On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.
But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:
I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be
I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.
I need to be more like tree
I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.
what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?
Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).
As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “
including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”
It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.
Shit’s tight yo.
Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.
Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.
HOLY SHIT
THE LAST ONE
Solarpunk as fuck!!
Reblogging for “I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.”
