The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Good morning!

QBwH for pfft (really?) and pitfall. Genius with all three pangrams today, a bunch of words left.

LB: Langue_doc, I agree about yesterday's solution. I had hypertext, but it never would have occurred to me to consider omigosh a word, even if I had seen it. Needless to say, I did not find a 2fer yesterday.

Happy puzzling!

Itching to spend all my time in the garden including finishing transplanting all my starts outside, but work has been preventing me alas. Plotting to maybe take half a day tomorrow for the garden since I'm losing Sunday to commencement.

Good morning!

Pangrams and above genius. That's it for today--some of the puzzles are meant for people with oodles of time and plenty of hired help rather than us mere mortals. Last word yesterday was pliant.

Just saw the solution to yesterday's LB. WTF?!

Happy solving!

Quote from: secundem_artem on May 15, 2024, 02:35:40 PMI've posted it in another thread, but 1-2 year's salary?  What Daddy Warbucks College are you folks working at?  In the past, Artem U has offered a bag of chips.  And if you really complain, they'll throw in a pack of gum. Seriously, the crap offers they've made to date would only be of interest to those given a terminal diagnosis by their physician with a 3 month life expectancy.

I fear this might be the level of our next buyout offer!

The running joke among long-time faculty here is to reminisce about the truly wonderful food we used to get at every event--even things like academic council meetings:  in-house gourmet cookies, taco bars and salad bars, gourmet sandwiches etc.  Nowadays we're lucky if we get warm tap water and a package of stale saltines. (We usually don't get anything.)

I finished planting my 4 hanging baskets and 2 whiskey barrels on the front porch, and the flower boxes on our little back patio yesterday evening. They look nice!

Quote from: jimbogumbo on May 15, 2024, 03:20:11 PMOf course police should be called in when things are actually violent (UCLA) or a building is actually occupied (Portland State).

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Not trespassing, and definitely not violent in the vast majority of instances. I think you (maybe) just don't like The Guardian.

Given that on many campuses, students (and some faculty) have vociferously opposed certain speakers merely giving a talk in some room on campus (on the grounds of it making campus "unsafe") , to the point where the event had to be cancelled, it's ironic that these same people see big crowds yelling in public spaces on campus as not at all a concern for making campus "unsafe".

The inconsistency is breathtaking.

Every few years my employer issues an early retirement offer in the form of "Up to X faculty members with Y years of service get Z times their salary if they leave." X is always less than 10. Z tops out at 1. Y is usually something like 25.

Quote from: bio-nonymous on May 14, 2024, 07:32:08 AM[. . .]

the department where someone takes that option would lose that faculty line! So, it kind of screwed your colleagues over.

[. . .]

The situation of former colleagues should not be one's concern. The faculty line will not reappear because you've worked until you've dropped dead in your office at age 93.

I'd take 6 months salary, a year of health insurance, and payout of my 240 hours of accumulated annual leave. That would cover my lease buyout, moving expenses, and living costs until I found part-time job in fast food.

Quote from: Hibush on May 15, 2024, 01:00:29 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 15, 2024, 11:04:24 AMAsk ourselves: if these were registered students who were members of Storm Front peacefully occupying a campus but refusing to leave after lawfully ordered to, what would we have the cops do?

Jusrisdictions vary as far as what city cops can do. In some places, if registered students are peacefully hanging out in a public space on campus, an order to leave would not be lawful. Campus administration needs to follow whatever due process and regulations apply to their campus. Some seem to have gotten it wrong by jumping in haste.

Okay, but we are talking disrupting and occupying, albeit peacefully, and orders to disperse----not "hanging out."

Big difference. 

Edit: dismalist, maybe I am dense, but half the time I don't know what you are posting about.

Sorry for the double-post, it's getting to be crunch time for our Spring term.

A TA just told me today (it's Week 7) that a student has been arriving at lab 30-60 minutes late EVERY SINGLE WEEK.  And the TA has been letting them participate.  And giving them credit for their "due at the start of class prelab".

Why didn't the TA tell me the first time this happened?  The official policy is that 10 minutes late = you can't participate.  And late pre-lab assignments = 0 points. 

And the kicker is the TA casually mentioned that the student has been copying their answers from other student worksheets all quarter.