Entries from HumorAndSayings

This story is very far off topic, and is fairly upsetting, or at a minimum unsettling. So don't read if the first lines tell you not to.

I'm posting it only because it's my favorite story of synchronicity.

From the September 24, 2001 issue of THE NEW YORKER, the issue with the all-black cover.

Katherine Ilachinski is a seventy-year-old architect. As a girl, she survived the German bombing of Belgrade. On Tuesday morning, she was in her office on the ninety-first floor of Two World Trade Center, working on a sketch for changes to an electrical substation at the Hoboken terminal of New Jersey Transit. The first jet hit One World Trade just above the level of her office window

"There was an explosion, and a fireball went along the side of my building where I was sitting," she recalled. "It was so hot. It was like being in a boiler. I had to get out of my office. I went into an interior passage, then into the main corridor, to the elevators. You know, I was in the building in 1993, when we were bombed, and that time my instincts were completely different. Then, I closed my office. This time, I just wanted to get out of the building. Some people were taking the stairs. But I thought, I'm too old to walk so far down. Our elevators go to the lobby on seventy-eight. So I took the elevator to seventy-eight.

"The lobby there was mobbed, everybody trying to get in the elevators to the ground. I saw a guy who worked for me, Anthony—Anthony Portillo," Mrs. Ilachinski said. Her voice trembled. "He's a CAD operator—that's computer-aided design. I told Anthony, 'Let's take the elevator to forty-four.' It was still too high for me to walk, but the elevators to the ground were so crowded. There was no air. And I know what happens if the elevator gets stuck. You are doomed. But Anthony said, 'No, Katy.' He wanted to take the elevator all the way down. I didn't trust it. So I took the elevator to the forty-fourth floor. That elevator was relatively empty.

"But the scene in the lobby on forty-four was a repetition of seventy-eight. It was just mobbed. People all the way from east to west. Most of them waiting for the elevator to the ground. That was when I decided to try to walk, and something just propelled me to the north stairs. I don't know by what force I was propelled. But now, two days later, I can look at the pictures and see: that was the side least affected by the second jet.

"In the stairwell, it was quiet. There were announcements on the loudspeakers, saying, 'It's safe. The building is safe. Don't panic.' I think they even told us we could go back to our offices, but I'm not sure. I was just going down, down, down, like an automaton. After the plane hit our building, and the building started shaking, there were no more announcements.

"Through almost everything, I felt amazingly calm, except for that one moment in the stairwell, when the building started shaking and I thought, I'm a goner. I wished I was back on the ninety-first floor, and I could jump. Because I could jump from the window—reluctantly, but I could do it—because then it is over. But to be trapped under rubble, that is worse. I remember, from the war, from Belgrade, what it is to be trapped under rubble.

"I don't really know where I was when the plane hit. I had with me some water, but when the stairs started shaking I dropped it. There was smoke, but not too thick. A colleague was with me when we reached the ground, and we came out of the building together.

"We started toward the Manhattan Bridge. I didn't even turn to look back. I was just walking. We had gone three blocks when the ground shook, and it suddenly got very dark, and everybody started running. I'm not too good at running, so I was just walking briskly. The smoke came from behind us, and everything became covered with a fine white powder. I actually thought it was an atom bomb, because that is what it's supposed to be like.

"When I heard that the Pentagon was also attacked, I became very worried about my son, because he often goes there for his work. I tried to phone him, but I couldn't get through. I walked and walked. Finally, at Penn Station, I managed to get through to his home, and my daughter-in-law answered. She gave the phone to my son, and he told me he was packing to go to New York to my funeral. They had been watching TV all morning, and they saw the buildings fall, and they had already buried me. It was a conclusion that I am dead that would be easily understood. But my son told me that a very strange thing happened. He reached up to take my picture from the shelf to take with him to New York, and a book fell from the shelf, and he saw a word on the cover, 'Miracles.' And three minutes later I called. I think it's a miracle. Do you believe in God?"

Mrs. Ilachinski had worked in the World Trade Center since 1980. She still talks about the buildings as if they exist. Only two weeks before the attack, she went on a tour to inspect the provisions in the structural design of the south tower. The design, she said, was far ahead of its time. "The building was designed to move three feet from the center, which was remarkable," she said. "When we first moved in, some people got seasick. And when there was a lot of wind there was screeching in the inner core. You know, the buildings were designed for a jet hit as well. But that was thirty years ago, and jets are different now. And nobody thought about the fuel."

At points, without warning, her architect's curiosity and practicality falter. "Guilt feeling you wouldn't believe," she said, with a voice full of pain. "At this time of life. And all those young people went. Strange. Very strange. And I am only asking why. All those poor people. Thousands and thousands."

large version





telling more than we can know (cognitive science)
the 'normal' distribution isn't normal
synchronicity on 9/11
a science of the divine



-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Jan 2006

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PleaseRemainSeatedAtAllTimes 24 Jan 2006 - 21:42 CatherineJohnson







source:
Robert Paterson's weblog



please remain seated at all times
the girl show (8th grade graduation awards)
the boy show (character ed)
the other boy show

letter from Robert Lerner, former commissioner NCES
for every 100 girls —


-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jan 2006

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RTFM 30 Jan 2006 - 15:45 CatherineJohnson

Tracy left this for Christopher:






also this


I'm printing them out.


-- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jan 2006

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PutOnYourBigGirlPanties 04 Feb 2006 - 22:37 CatherineJohnson








I'd noticed that eduwonk had been somewhat perseveratively quoting Margaret Spellings' line about putting on her big girl panties.....which was just odd enough not to cause me instantly to go read the article it came from....but then joannejacobs finally read the article herself, which galvanized me into action.....and let me tell you, I'm glad I got over to WAPO.

Margaret Spellings: In Her Own Class is fantastic:

Spellings is blunter than you might expect, vivid and bigger, as if her photo had been cropped and enlarged. She is a tall woman swinging an iguana-green purse, wearing edgy rectangular glasses and chewing gum. (She spits it into the garbage when you arrive, as if you were the teacher.) Spellings scanned the crowd: "Colin's the little hottie of the school."

She had her babies without pain medication. She's a tough enough manager to be called a "bulldog on details" by Rove; strong enough to raise her girls as a single mom when her first marriage ended; brave enough to admit that she dreams of being a torch singer draped over a piano; Texan enough to live by the motto (on her notepad) "Put on your big girl panties and deal with it."

the good news is —

— she's got a kid in middle school:

Middle school is tricky, Spellings said -- too many hormones and too loose a curriculum. When boys in white shirts and ties shuffled onstage, Spellings said, "They're so awkward, it cracks me up." Her own experience in seventh grade was "the low point of my life," she said. ". . . There's a lot of mush going on in middle school -- one of the nuts we haven't cracked in public education policy."

You can order the big girl doll here.


-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Feb 2006

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DougOnDeadlines 08 Feb 2006 - 15:38 CatherineJohnson



A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the term guillotine deadline.


Here's Doug:

When I was a periodicals editor, the term was "drop-deadline". 8-)

I did that job for long enough to develop a real defense-in-depth approach to deadlines:

"I'd like to get all your new information in by ...."

"I need your information by ... to make sure it gets in the next issue."

"I know I said that I need your information by ..., but you know we build in a little bit of slop in the schedule to handle the occasional late arrival."

"I've had a few other people late this issue, so I still have a little bit of time. Can you overnight it to me today?"

"I'm sending the book off to the printer tomorrow; if you can fax me the new stuff today, I should still be able to get it in."

"Don't worry, I can insert it at blueline. Of course, I'll have to charge you for the blueline change."

"I'm sending the bluelines back to the printer today. If you send it direct to the printer, we can still get it in. But you'll have to pay for all the printer's extra work."

"Nope, it's too late for this issue, but send it anyway; the next issue's deadline is tomorrow."



file under: it can always be worse, and it will be

So for the past couple of weeks I've been flogging myself to meet a self-imposed deadline, and then, of course, not meeting it, then setting a new deadline, then not meeting that one, and so on.

All in all, a wretched experience. I was glad to be done.

But now today I'm sitting around biting my nails waiting for everyone involved to figure out how I'm going to revise this project, which means I don't have to try to Write Anything today, i.e. I have some Free Time I could use productively to, say, Clean Up My Desk (& Surrounding Floor Area) ......and waiting around for other people to get back to me with loads of new work is even worse than doing loads of work & missing self-imposed deadlines in the first place.

Apparently, the fish oil isn't working.



-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Feb 2006

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ILoveGoogle 08 Feb 2006 - 01:34 CatherineJohnson









I found this image while searching for "good things."








fellow math brain?

from unkemptwoman:

4 jobs I have had:
Graphic Designer (rubbish)
Barmaid (brilliant)
Meat Packer (now that was FUN)
Software consultant (hahahahahaha)

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Feb 2006

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TimeTimerPart2 11 Feb 2006 - 16:51 CatherineJohnson







I love my new Timer Timer.

Thanks to Time Timer, I now know that in 25 minutes I can:

• locate Allman article on Von Economo neurons in autism & DeLong review essay on autism & familial major mood disorders, print out, prepare package for mailing to Temple

• do 4 KUMON worksheets

• NOT read kausfiles (Time Timer says No!)

• pick up office floor

• take out office trash

• figure out a logical filing location for Edmark reading program originals AND RECORD

• figure out a logical storage place for metronome AND RECORD

• finish last of Cape Cod potato chips

Not bad.

At this rate I'll have my desk cleared by spring at the latest.







some books that have changed my life
the answer to all of Doug's problems
productivity question
what is an hour? Time Timers
my Time Timer came - how long is a nap?
Time Timer says no!



-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Feb 2006

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APoemAboutAutomaticity 20 Feb 2006 - 19:53 CatherineJohnson



Old Grouch found this at "The Centipede Who Went to School" !

A centipede was happy, quite,
Until an ant, in fun,
Said "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
Which raised his doubts to such a pitch,
He fell befuddled in the ditch,
Not knowing how to run.

cognitive unconscious



-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Feb 2006

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TotallyOffTopic 16 Feb 2006 - 02:01 CatherineJohnson




priceless

-- CatherineJohnson - 16 Feb 2006

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TodayInTheTimes 22 Feb 2006 - 00:10 CatherineJohnson



The New York Times has identified a Whole New Problem: college students who send inappropriate email to their professors.




Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Jennifer Schultens [associate professor of mathematics at UC Davis]
had a student ask what kind of notebook to buy.



Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College,
has rules for student e-mail...."One of the rules that I teach my students is,
the less powerful person always has to write back," Professor Worley said.


Various hypotheses are offered for the advent of this phenomenon, including this observation, from a professor of education:

Christopher J. Dede, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has studied technology in education, said these e-mail messages showed how students no longer deferred to their professors, perhaps because they realized that professors' expertise could rapidly become outdated.

"The deference was probably driven more by the notion that professors were infallible sources of deep knowledge," Professor Dede said, and that notion has weakened.

I'm sure that's it.


-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Feb 2006

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SampleExamQuestionsFromHell 23 Feb 2006 - 20:07 CatherineJohnson

Economics: Describe in four hundred words or less what you would have done to prevent the Great Depression.

Political Science: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.

Mathematics: Derive the Cauchy-Euler equations using only a straightedge and compass. Discuss in detail the role these equations had on mathematical analysis in Europe during the 1800s.

Computer Science: Write a fifth-generation computer language. Using this language, write a computer program to finish the rest of this exam for you.

Extra Credit: Define the universe, and give three examples.

source: Sample Exam Questions from Hell

Here's a real one:

My exams this semester are going horrible. I just love that feeling in which you leave an exam and you have no clue of how well you did. In fact, I feel as if I just wasted 13 weeks of my life studying, because my exams questions generally have nothing to do with the topic that I am studying. Our Con Law exam for instance wanted us to analogize an insignificant comment that Justice Breyer made in an interview about form and functionalism and how that relates to Supreme Court Commerce Clause decisions of the past 25 years. This is a least what I thought it said.

Thanks everybody I feel better now.

Sorry about the typos. I am a little stressed.

hoo boy

That is an exam question from hell.


-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Feb 2006

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FreeTeachToCrammeryClipArt 27 Feb 2006 - 19:35 CatherineJohnson



from the School Discovery Zone








if you prefer black and white:





cram school
teaching to crammery in middle school
the kind of kids who can be taught to crammery
free teach to crammery clip art

teachtocrammery

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Feb 2006

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SeaSpongeWorthy 08 Mar 2006 - 18:41 CatherineJohnson



Ken left a link to this story about spell check:

Then there's always the other types of spell-check related problems, like this classic:

Spell-checking on his computer is never going to be the same for Santa Cruz solo practitioner Arthur Dudley.

In an opening brief to San Francisco's 1st District Court of Appeal, a search-and-replace command by Dudley inexplicably inserted the words "sea sponge" instead of the legal term "sua sponte," which is Latin for "on its own motion."

"Spell check did not have sua sponte in it," said Dudley, who, not noticing the error, shipped the brief to court.

That left the justices reading -- and probably laughing at -- such classic statements as: "An appropriate instruction limiting the judge's criminal liability in such a prosecution must be given sea sponge explaining that certain acts or omissions by themselves are not sufficient to support a conviction."

And: "It is well settled that a trial court must instruct sea sponge on any defense, including a mistake of fact defense."

The sneaky "sea sponge" popped up at least five times.

spelling, reading, 4th grade slump, & multisyllabic words

learning to spell by memorization versus morphemes
spell check
bad spelling on job applications
sea sponges in legal documents



-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

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FallingOffTheMathCliff 09 Mar 2006 - 13:55 CatherineJohnson



I must have this cartoon!

“Falling off the Math Cliff” (Progression of student learning math.)
ID: 122047, Published in The New Yorker March 6, 2006

My friend Kathy told me about it yesterday, and we don't seem to have our March 6 copy of THE NEW YORKER. (Naturally I would have gone on a Throw Stuff Out bender on Monday....

If you've got a copy of the March 6 issue, hang onto it!

Please!

thanks



update: never mind

Fortunately for us all, I didn't get around to tossing the stack sitting on my living room floor.

Falling off the math cliff

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Mar 2006

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FallingOffTheMathCliffCartoon 11 Mar 2006 - 16:01 CatherineJohnson




Found it!




1 A boy begins his wondrous journey.
2 He perseveres.
3 Math cannot become any more difficult than this, can it?
4 Yes.
5 Yet he does not give up!
6 For a brief moment, there is a glimmer of comprehension.
7 Actual midair pedalling.
8 The plummet.

source:
“Falling off the Math Cliff” (Progression of student learning math.)
The New Yorker March 6, 2006 page 57




-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Mar 2006

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ActualMidairPedallingPart2 09 Mar 2006 - 13:59 CatherineJohnson



It occurs to me that I've done quite a lot of actual midair pedalling in my life.

And not just about math.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Mar 2006

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LearningIsCloselyRelatedToStudentSuccess 22 Mar 2006 - 00:20 CatherineJohnson






source: