Apparently they’re tossing in an extra second on the atomic clocks. This is excellent, mostly becuase it serves to remind me of gnosticism—according to some gnostic texts, the bad guys (archons, demiurges, romans, regular, non-gnostic christians, evil monkeys, whatever) created the illusion that time had passed since the immediate post-Christian time, when in fact it [...]

Nick’s latest acquisition: illness, courtesy of Rosie. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be anything interesting; so far it’s mostly just a sore throat and feeling like crap. It continues to amuse me that I only get sick on weekends and holidays—my immune system seems to have its own version of my much-lauded work ethic. [...]

Christmas schwag this year include a Far Side collection, a Hokusai print (the wave one), a leather iPod (well, that’s what I’ll be using it for; it was originally intended as a cellphone case, I believe) case from one of the local leather-working folk who sell their stuff on Telegraph Avenue, and a couple two-pack [...]

One of the guys at work is a sociology graduate from Cal (having gone back through the community college system and transferred in maybe his fifties), and we have a tendency to get caught up in conversations about things like Foucault, the Protestant work ethic (and me as an example of it), academia, and whatnot. [...]

My hatred of MS Word is well known, and I’ve sworn a blood oath never to have another copy of it on a computer I own. However, I have to say that every day at work I grow increasingly fond of its cousin, Excel. I’m not a numbers person, and I don’t use any of [...]

Wait—Richard Pryor died? Well, that’s (i.e., not hearing in a timely fashion; not Richard Pryor dying) what I get for not reading or watching the news.

::sigh:: Is Bill Cosby still alive? Because if so, I’d like to register a complaint with the powers that be…

Somethinig rattling around my head from the conference:

Premise: Graduating education majors and newly certificated teachers are recruited into a national organization whose purpose is to maintain professional ethics in the educational context.

Signing up would imply commitment to standards, to inquiry, and to a conversation around good and evil in the classroom and the schoolhouse. [...]