The Fora: A Higher Education Community

As someone who used to work in an academic integrity office at my previous institution, I can share on this. That institution had the policy that students could submit work to two courses if they had the permission of both instructors. While it could happen in the same semester, there were situations in which students had a paper from a previous semester that would fit an assignment in the current semester, so they would still be required to contact the previous class's instructor for permission as well as the current instructor's. I do not suggest this is a perfect solution, but it does remove concerns that arise from something like TurnItIn if the current instructor is unaware of the previous course's assignment.

May Goals

• Finish writing chapter with coauthor due 5/31
• Keep working on book manuscript due 8/1
• Return to chapter with spouse, now accepted for special issue due 8/12

I did work a tiny bit on the book this week but I am so behind! My spouse and I submitted a chapter proposal to a special issue with our rejected (after revision) manuscript from last year and it got accepted! So now my spouse begrudgingly has to write with me again, ha!

T1 work today, although I should probably start filling out the forms and stuff for T2, which should be back from the referee soon. Suppose I should sort out my one image permission, too (not hard, it's from the NPG).

I don't have a specific text but I'd try to find some way to ensure those completing the course are aware of the effect Islamic Finance and the unique features of the regional economy may have on trade in general. Many people focus on the religious, geographic and other factors of the region in an intro or survey course while placing little emphasis on the vast economic differences that are in some ways as consequential.   

Good morning!

Past genius with pangram and hopefully heading into the home stretch.  Congrats again, Langue_doc! Yesterday we had team QB, thankfully, because it was a busy evening.  I think I needed arrowroot, tramway, warm, wart.

No luck on LB.

We had planned to do a surprise Facetime call over dinner with youngest and partner, which was partner's idea, to celebrate youngest's birthday.  There is a chili we make that is a favorite, and partner made that on their end.  We decided to make a non-vegetarian version over here, so husband went to the store after work to get a bunch of stuff for the recipe he picked out.  Naturally, the power went out for one second at 4PM or so, and when it came back on the HVAC on our side did not come back on.  Long story short, I tried almost everything I could find on google to no avail, we managed to wrangle a tech to come out, and he just unplugged it and plugged it back in, and we paid the after-hours dumb tax, and husband will always have to listen to me from now on when I say that google said to try such and such.  Still managed to get the chili cooked and have our dinner date, but timing is, as usual, everything.  I'm glad the power came back on, of course!  In the grand scheme of things, it was pretty minor.  Earlier in the week I had a coffee-rug incident that cost me several hours of my day, so I am just still getting over that and trying to catch up on things.  I shouldn't complain.  Husband has cardiologist appt this morning because he's been having some issues, so I am going to place my wishes in that direction!

Anyway, hopefully smoother sailing today! Happy solving!

The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester.  As much as anything, this is a love letter to the Oxford English Dictionary.  The print version of the OED, which I recall using some in grad school, is an awe-inspiring work.  Multiple, vast, well-produced volumes, filled with hundreds of thousands of words, each with a painstaking etymology and numerous quotes tracing its assorted definitions and shades of meaning down through the centuries.  Though the first edition was not completed until the 1920s, it was in origin a fantastically ambitious Victorian project. 

It was the life's work of editor and academic Dr. James Murray.  Murray enlisted an army of correspondents to search out references and historical uses of words.  Interestingly enough, among the most valuable correspondents that he credited were two eccentric expatriate Americans.  Actually Dr. W.C. Minor, the surgeon of the title, was more than merely eccentric.  After serving as a U.S. Army surgeon in the Civil War, Minor was discharged for showing signs of mental disorder.  He kept saying that somebody was out to get him.  His room was invaded nightly by fiends who crept up through the floor and mistreated him.  His delusions sound not unlike accounts of alleged alien abductions.  Today he would be diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.

Minor had enough wealth to move to Britain and settle there.  One night, in the grip of his delusions, he murdered an innocent man whom he thought was out to get him.  He was judged insane and institutionalized for what turned out to be the rest of a long life.  Minor's social status and wealth enabled him to set up housekeeping in comfortable quarters at the asylum.  He built up a good private library, and spent his days obsessively indexing the words in his books.  This interest made him just the sort of correspondent Murray was looking for.

Legend has it that Murray, after years of corresponding with Minor, went to visit him and was shocked when his address turned out to be an asylum.  The real story wasn't quite that dramatic, but Murray was indeed shocked when he learned of his valued correspondent's situation.  He didn't let that stop him from visiting Minor anyway, and the two became good friends.  Murray was eventually instrumental in getting Minor returned home to the U.S. for his last years.

A fantastic stranger-than-fiction true story, as well-told as one would expect from Winchester.  Winchester ends with a little memorial to Minor's victim, an Irish laborer named George Merrett.  Minor expressed remorse when he was lucid for what he had done, and Merrett's family is said to have forgiven him.
 

Good morning!

QB. QB yesterday as well, but don't recall the last words.

Happy solving!

The bottom dropped out on me this morning as I was walking to work.  If it had started only 20 minutes later I'd have made it to work safely.  Twenty minutes earlier and I'd have known to drive instead.  As it is, my legs and feet are pretty well soaked.  I'm just glad I made it okay through the thunder and lightning, which I would not have chanced if I'd known it was that imminent. 

Looks like pretty much nothing but rain, rain, and more rain in the extended forecast.  Coming on top of everything we've already had, I'm afraid we're going to be looking at a real problem for the local economy, and possibly some flooding in places.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 02, 2024, 09:10:09 AM

Quote from: apl68 on May 02, 2024, 07:45:35 AMWonder whether those non-students spotted among the demonstrators are actually "professional agitators" from out of town, or simply local lewd fellows of the baser sort taking an opportunity to blow off some steam by joining a protest?  Either way, if the protest's organizers can't keep such people from co-opting their protest for their own purposes, they'd do well to reconsider the wisdom of these demonstrations.

I was on a "liberal" campus during the first Gulf War when we only had, like, a week to protest.  The students managed not to damage anything, but I became convinced that their motivation was not pacificism but the excitement and adventure of the protest.  I was a bit older than most undergrads, so while I went to see the show I wasn't terribly impressed. 

What we ended up with were a number of elderly hippies stoking on the disruption. I'm sure someone has done scholarship on this aspect of American college life, and I just wonder how much protest is genuine and how much is the perception on students' part that this is how they are supposed to object and express themselves.  Certainly it is okay to support Gaza in this situation and call on Israel to behave in a civilized manner (without being accused of antisemitism), I just wonder how much actual good it does for students to wreck their own campuses.

I remember an editorial cartoon from the Rodney King riots. It showed a big white guy in front of a smashed store window with a television on his shoulder, and he was shouting "Justice for Rodney King!" I thought that about summed it up.

During the George Floyd riots in 2020, it was the same thing with the looters; no-one gave a flip whether the stores where white- or black-owned. They were just thieves who wanted free stuff.

I would imagine at any sort of protest, from any part of the political spectrum, many (if not most) of the most violent agitators have little or no connection to the cause, but just want to steal and destroy.

Brown's administration negotiated dispersal on the condition that they put a divestment proposal to the Trustees. That seems like a pragmatic agreement. I expect the trustees will vote no on the proposal. Probably in the summer when the students are more widely dispersed.