Started exercising

You can check with me later to see if I persisted.  I have heard of more than one person, sometimes younger than me, who jogged or something and died while exercising.  I don’t want to do that.  I like to tell myself that I am not afraid to die and when I do, I tend to believe me.  But I can feel and see that exercising is good for me.  I have not been a fanatic and I don’t plan to be.

Warm up with 2 minutes of stationary biking

Some push-ups for my arms

Some pull-ups

Sit-ups

Stand from sitting in a chair

I may offer signed photos later.

What is a phonebook?

Is a phonebook a new type of book that comes with pictures of phones?  Is it a book that can answer the phone?  It is a little shocking to an old guy that there aren’t phonebooks any more.  When I was a kid, we had phonebooks.  They listed the names of people who bought phone service from the local phone company.   Not just names, either.  Addresses and phone numbers, too.  Of course, they could be rather hefty for a large city.  They came with white pages and yellow pages.  The white pages listed people alphabetically and the yellow pages listed businesses.

Grading

I taught a course about giving grades to students.  What are some indicators a teacher could use to decide who gets a high grade and who doesn’t?  I thought of these indicators:

1. Judgment – “I think...”

2. % questions - 90% correct equals...

3. % peers - The top 10% of the students will receive...

4. Effort - You don’t know much but you try so hard.

5. Improvement - You aren’t quite so bad as you were.

6. Contract - A clear list of what must be done to earn each grade.

Teaching that over and over instilled in me the habit of asking what indicators were being used to decide a ranking.  In American politics, we use votes: if I get the most votes, I get elected.  

When I first used a spreadsheet, it offered me instant sorting in several different ways: high score leading down to low score.  I could put the student names in alphabetical order and given high grades to the first several name, lower grades after that.  Statisticians sometimes calculate the number of standard deviations each student is above or below the arithmetic mean, the “average”.  Putting all students in order by how far above and below the average is putting them in order by “average-ness”.  I don’t recommend that for a grading indicator.

This world is too big!

I looked up in Google Search: How many apps are in the Apple app store?  It must be a vague question. I got the answer 1.64 to 2.5 million.  I don’t want that many Apple apps to exist! But they do already.  Books, films, podcasts, emails, messages: too much!  I’m leaving!!

Link

Bill has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: fear, fun and filoz
Post: Stricken with early-itis
Link: 
https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2020/07/stricken-with-early-itis.html

I forget what I thought

I had a good idea for my blog but then I saw a title.  The words of that title swallowed my good idea!  Very impolite!  Some titles can linger.  “Don’t just do something!  Sit there!”, a book by Sylvia Boorstein, comes to mind all by itself.

Not too much heaven, please

Many conceptions of bliss or heaven depict a place and time of zero problems and negatives.  But I wonder if humans don’t need and depend on a string of difficulties and problems that assist us in noticing and enjoying times when things are just right.  I think we are built and evolved to be in this world of pestilence and pests, disease, failure and pain, disappointments.  As with much of our lives, we may profit most from the right balance of negatives and glorious, wonderful times.

Traveling

We didn’t spend the morning at home.  Instead we drove around central Wisconsin. We have had several days of excellent weather.  The fall colors of the trees are wonderful and widespread. Lynn and our daughter had already walked the newly open Plover River Trail and Lynn took me there during our travels. Very good morning.

"Good luck with that"

When I tell my friends I am trying to create gold from a mixture of lead and beer, they wish me “Good luck with that”.  My wife says they don’t really mean what they say.  Should I believe her?

Putting things back

The book by Judith Flanders called “A Place for Everything” and “The Address Book” by Deirdre Mask are both about inventing systems of location, such as where to put materials in a library and how to give useful addresses to buildings in a large city.  Sometimes, new materials such as slide/tapes are invented and somebody has to figure a plan for storage and retrieval.  

It is nice when we can find something we are looking for but after we finish using it, it has to be put back.  When I open the dishwasher to a batch of now-all-clean dishes, glasses, bowls and silverware, they each have to be put back where they “belong” for finding again when next needed