Two books by Jo Marchant

About 2023, I read “Cure” by Jo Marchant and I liked it very much.  Recently, I saw that her book “In Search of Now” came out.  I could use the more recent wording and say that her book dropped but I don’t feel comfortable with that. I like Kindle ebooks since they take up no noticeable room, are weightless and are delivered immediately over the Internet.  Another feature is that a reader can mark impressive passages and all of them form a file that can be searched, sent to a friend or oneself.  Amazon makes it clear when I look up a book that I once bought it and supplies the date of purchase.

Possibly the logical, scientific and personal aspects of the subject of now simply don’t hit me the way aspects of the mind and its medical influences do.  Whatever, we stopped my reading Now and switched to Cure.  The sub-title of Cure is “A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” but the text focuses on mind over body in medical matters.  So, the subject of placebos comes up.  A typical way of testing a medicine is to give it to a group and give some inert fake, the placebo, to another group of people and see how the groups compare.

Generally, the medicine and the fake are delivered under cover so people are not aware of which they got.  I learned about “honest placebos” where people getting the fake treatment are informed they are not getting the medicine being tested.  There are cases where placebo group members know they received a fake but feel benefitted anyhow and request another dose. 

Video libraries

You may know that YouTube is in many ways the hottest website.  It has billions of videos and something like 500 hours of additional video is added EACH MINUTE!

A library of videos could be an important tool in learning. Distance educators often make use of a real-time lecture that tends to become an addition to a video course and content of a video library.  That content can be available after the teacher has retired or died.

You may have heard of Canvas, software for making educational videos available to students and today’s hack that interfered with Canvas.  That system is back online now.

It is a different world when many people habitually spend their days with video equipment right in their pocket or purse.

Grade of A

Today’s Numlock News reports that some faculty at Harvard are unhappy that so many grades at the end of a course are A.    The item reports from The Atlantic that 64% of the course grades were A.  I notice that when people are trying to name a college or university that has a reputation for high quality, they often name Harvard. If Harvard gets very high level students, doesn’t it make sense that most, if not every single one of them earns a high grade?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dwilDyXwbXG_vQm7vKpMA5HwTuUiiAEZ/view

The link leads to my chapter on ways of grading students.  A single symbol such as a letter grade can mean many different things.  Many people assume some sort of competition that results in those who ‘win’ getting the prize of the highest grade.  I recommend that some sort of clear arrangement be constructed about the grading method so that if a student wanted to get the highest grade offered, it would be clear just how to do that.  

To me, it is the meaning of the grades, the basis for giving them, that matters. 

Lynn's photo of our apple tree in bloom

Talk like Artificial Intelligence

Before the current wave of articles and reference to Artificial Intelligence (AI), I often found that reading what other humans had questioned or said stimulated my brain to think in new directions.  Whether it is a party, a ride together, a group of researchers or just friends sitting and talking, such a human group has been a major problem-solving tool. It probably doesn’t pay off unless some or all of the people in the group speak the same language but with modern tools like photos, translating software, who knows what the outcome will be?

Kirbyvariety1 and 2 websites

If you read my blogposts, you probably know that each post appears on the Google blog site.  More people look at the posts on the blog site than get a copy in their email.  The total number of pageviews is approaching one million but that is since the first posts appeared in March 2008. The name of the blog (from “web log”) is Fear, Fun and Filoz, my attempt to suggest thoughts and items about worries and pleasantries and comments about them.

I sometimes feel that my daily blog is somewhat like a newspaper or magazine, being a place for immediate and short-term subjects. I want to point out that I have another place of information, one that serves more like a filing cabinet.  Kirbyvariety1 and Kirbyvariety2 are Google websites where I have information that may be seen as longterm.  Much of the information that appears on the website pages relates to various courses I taught between 1968 and 2005 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  

Once I was teaching in a certain classroom on campus a class for graduate teachers.  Teachers all over the US can often get raises if they earn a master’s degree, beyond their bachelor’s degree or get a doctorate.  Somebody from the campus department of information technology mentioned that the certain classroom was equipped with distance education tools that could allow teachers in a classroom 90 miles away to see and hear the lessons I taught.  Most graduate teachers are older adults who know themselves and adulthood.  The thought of such students gathering in a classroom right in their school after their teaching day ended to listen and learn was wonderful instead of not only driving 90 miles dodging deer and other animals on the road but driving 90 miles back home.  

Information, explanation could be made available using the school computers as well as increasingly affordable home computers and community businesses offering internet connections to schools and homes.

Take a look:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/welcome-to-my-home-page

CNN Photos of the Week 5/3/26

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/30/world/gallery/photos-this-week-april-23-april-30?utm_source=cnn_Five+Things+for+Sunday%2C+May+3%2C+2026&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=Hr%2FihbdNIWvhohCuX2VoMdqriU6tlApnbmO%2FpZ5cfuWp4krshJcq4Vww97haB%2FI3&bt_ts=1777812217678

State music evaluations

I tried to remember what I had written today’s blog post about, but I couldn’t.  I looked at the blog page for FearFunandFiloz and found I hadn’t written a post for today.  It makes sense.  My greatgranddaughter had musical state trials today.  She is a percussionist and I was the drum and bugle corps drum sergeant in my all-male high school.  She plays a full set of drums including a snare drum and a foot-pedaled bass drum. Naturally, when music students from many central Wisconsin high schools assemble to be evaluated by state judges, it is a big deal.

Her parents had gone to a nearby city to watch her younger brother play soccer but both her grandmother and her greatgrandmother showed up for her state evaluations. She is a senior so this was her last state evaluation.

Happy May Day!

It is not that happy here since it is too cold.  It is reported to be 46 degrees Fahrenheit here but with a cool wind, “It Feels” like 36 degrees.   That is a bit cool for May Day.  Hope we do better by July Day.

People here have a tradition of avoiding the word “cold”.  It is ok to use the word “cool”. 

Repeated subjects

I can search my 6000 blog posts for a word or phrase.  As I get older, a subject pops up, some subject of interest. That can happen repeatedly without my remembering that I have written in my blog about it before. So, yes, I can state that X is of interest when I have stated that interest previously.  

I made a note that I might want to state that I read that people who have a job of testing ballpoint pens to see that the pens write properly often use the name “Eisenhower”to get a new ballpoint working properly.  You know how it is: you don’t want to put a big dent in the ink supply just to test the pen.  I read that in my granddaughter's beloved cursive style of writing, the 34th president’s name has handy dips and curves that tend to get a ballpoint working nicely.

But since I have found repeated subjects before, I searched “Eisenhower” and found at least two posts that made the pen-testing point.  As Whitman nearly said, I repeat myself?  So, I repeat myself. Teachers are used to repetition.