With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
2003-01-24 - 12:11 a.m.
I did not get enough sleep last night. I went to bed too late and to make it worse they started blasting the music from the high school across the street at 6:50 AM. I really have to call and complain about that.
I’ve taught all three of my classes now and they each have their own personality:
The morning finite math class is the sleepy one. They really don’t have the energy to participate at all. That’s rough on me. They never answer my questions. I need the feedback. They might be understanding everything or be totally lost. They aren’t letting me know.
The afternoon calculus class is the fun class. They laugh at my jokes. They ask questions, answer my questions. They are involved. There is lots of give and take in the class. It helps that there are four of my old students in the class.
The evening calculus class is going to be a problem. Too many of them are totally unprepared. I was discussing limits of the nth root of x and quite a few of them have never heard of the concept of nth root. It is in chapter 0 of the text. That is supposed to be the review portion for finite math the prerequisite class for calculus. I don’t know how I’m going to handle this. I told them to review chapter 0 now, before they get lost.
On the good side one of students in the afternoon class emailed me and wants to see me in my office for extra help. I’m always happy to give that. I love seeing someone who cares.
Several of my students from last semester want grade changes. I told one of them I’d give him a retroactive withdrawal. I won’t actually change anyone’s grade. One woman came to my office today to discuss her grade. She had actually cheated on the final. At first she denied it. I got her final from the math office and showed her where she copied and who she copied off of. She would do a problem wrong then come up with the right answer. It was really obvious. Usually I catch people because they copy off people making mistakes. She copied off someone who got a hundred. I was still able to make my case though. I was really lenient with her. I didn’t fail her or report her. All I did was not give her any credit on the questions that she cheated on then dropped her grade half a grade. Her average with the final counting 50% was 75. That’s a C. I gave her a C-. I thought I was being very generous. She wanted me to give her a C. She did poorly the first test and felt bad and I gave her pep talk that got through to her. It was a bonding experience. That made me feel worse about her cheating. I talked to her for about half an hour and she finally gave up. At least I didn’t have to kick her out. People have such chutzpah.
I just finished a conversation with Stacey. The funny thing is that I realized halfway through that I had had exactly the same conversation with Gella once.
Once again I’m putting off my political thoughts. I am too tired to write them well now. Go read Gella’s entry if you want social significance. She makes some really good points.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile 2003-01-24
