Ginsburg Update: Trouble with simple grammar

The aptly named website “Jezebel” has the Ginsberg eugenics faux pas wrapped up. Those of you who have taken logic at the undergraduate or above level might want to sharpen your pencils and take notes.

In a later interview, the author of the NYT piece, Emily Bazelon said:

“…it was clear that when Justice Ginsburg said ‘we,’ when she was talking about populations that we don’t want to have too many of, she meant some people in the world, not herself or a group that she feels a part of. That’s not how she sees the world, as you I’m sure know. Her point was about other people’s conception of who they thought should be encouraged to have children and who shouldn’t be, not her own.”

In other words, the Supreme Court Justice can’t convey the simple grammatical difference between first, second, and third person singluar and plural.

“We” is the new “they” I suppose.

Somebody we really want on SCOTUS?

Do the people who work at sites like Jezebel understand that they’re making their subjects look even more stupid than they did before they started sucking on their toes?

 

Should I stay or should I go?

Just thinking that next week could be my last here in Western Illinois. I’ve submitted a packet to stay full time for a year, but it seems likely that it could fall through. There is an opening at my alma mater which could work out, but I could just as easily find myself out of work again for a few weeks, and then be left scrambling about schools for the kids. But you know what? I’m not anxious. God hasn’t let us starve, in fact He has been pretty darned good through everything.

 

Testing the app again

Something went wrong with my G1 WordPress app. Looks like it is working again. Today is SOAR, student registration at WIU. Lots of kids interested in ROTC today, so we’re expecting good numbers.

UPDATE:  Best numbers so far this summer.  26 Freshmen signed up for class.  If you’re a WIU alum, yes, the picture was taken in Stipes Hall.  Two more weeks to go on my current “temp” position contract.  Praying that it becomes full time.

 

Another extended sabbatical?

Sorry for the lapse in posts, folks. I didn’t float into the ether, rather started a new job. I’m alive and well and living in Macomb, which is the home of Western Illinois University.

I have many things to update, but I don’t know the timeline in which that will happen. I’m in a temporary position that may end in the middle of July, or it may become permanent. I’d like it to become perm, but time will tell.

In the future, I’ll try not to be gone for so long.

So long!

 

First outing of the year

Talk about a gorgeous day...

It didn’t take much cajoling to get me moving this evening when word came down that Grandpa was heading to the quarry with my kids in tow. We woke up to a perfect vernal morning, kind of chilly, but great weather for a PT test.  The robins have been back for a couple of weeks now, and each day more and more wings can be seen in the trees as they squabble about nest locations and who owns which piece of real estate.

The castin' crew

After 11:00 Mass and the requisite jabberjawing in the parking lot and a trip to our usual lunch hang out, Madame and I went back to the house.  Aaron came over and gave us an end of week update on how he’s getting along.  Then he casually mentioned that a bit of fishing was on the evening agenda since the younger kids had been begging my dad to take them out since the last warm spell we had.

The smaller of the two I caught

I dusted off the tackle box and jumbled the poles into the Cruiser and headed out.

It was a productive trip.  Stevo was the first to reel one in, and it was just under 18 inches according to Grandpa’s measuring tape.  A long winter can make you forget what an excellent rush of adrenaline that tug on the line releases, especially when you hook into a biggun’.

One quick skip of a heartbeat, though, and the rusty reflexes jump back to life, the  line cuts through the water like a knife, the reel hums like a gyro, and then brilliant green scales flash

Sure beats golf

in the sun and then disappear back into the water with a splash. 

The sun finally slid down behind the high limestone wall of the quarry.  Monday is a school day and we decided a fire would be impractical, so the gear went back into our vehicles and we  headed our separate ways, richer for the experience and hungry for the next opportunity to get back to the water’s edge.

 

State of the literacy address

What exactly is an "asocial work professor"?

Things are pretty bad when the largest newspaper in Indiana contains a typo in the second column of the day’s top story.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the picture to the left. 

What happened here?  Several possibilities come to mind:  The Indianapolis Star relies on spell check to proof copy; the editors all left their glasses at home that day; they were trying to save space by eliminating the real estate between “a” and “social”; they didn’t think anybody would notice since nobody in Indiana reads anymore; there actually is such a thing as an “asocial work professor”. 

If the last case is correct, I don’t know if Ms. Adamek appreciated being listed in the same category as disgruntled postal workers and bureaucrats. 

Dictionary.com (yes, I know I’m lazy) lists asocial thusly:

asocial (ey-SOH-sh-uhl):

–adjective

1.	not sociable or gregarious; withdrawn from society.

2.	indifferent to or averse to conforming to conventional standards of behavior.

3.	inconsiderate of others; selfish; egocentric.

Get on the ball, Ms. Adamek!  Your reputation is under attack.

---

 

Windy

The wind is trying to knock my house over.  One moment it so still that you could drop a feather to the ground, and the next the commotion around the trees sounds like the Cubs won the World Series.  It pried a roof off in Cass County earlier today.  Indiana spring weather is an angry hoodlum to be reckoned with.  Screw your hat on tight or he’ll be wearing it.

 

Thinking rock

This is my thinking rock, latitude: 40.8042, longitude -85.8511

I brought daughter one to Grandma’s and took a trek into the old woods since the ground wasn’t too wet and it got up to seventy today. There’s not like a visit to the Thinking Rock to set your mind right. After a cold winter it felt good. I’m sitting here now as I type this, listening to the wind through the bare canopies, knowing that in a couple of weeks the buds will have burst and the hills and valleys will be decked in delicate green. Ahhh…

 

Until then

See this?

This is me writing.

It feels good.  Maybe if I got up tomorrow morning, said my prayers, brought a cup of coffee steaming to the keyboard, set it down, cracked my knuckles and start typing, something would happen. 

If it was intelligible, or funny, or thought provoking I might be persuaded to wake up again the next morning and do the same.  What would happen, do you suppose, if a few people got wind of it and promised to slip me some stowing money to write something for them?

Until recently, I’ve had a fairly inflexible policy of writing only for kill fees and coupons.  But I’m thinking.  I’m thinking…

 

The day after

Sometimes the good can only become better with the passage of time. I’m not talking fine wine, mind you. I’m thinking more along the lines of morning after pizza or three day old chili whose ingredients have friended eachother.

I’m referring to the delicacy “paniscaro frigidus” or cold meatloaf. The catsup is my own addition, and though a bit pedestrian, brings back fond memories.