Month: June 2005

I am so livid, I am approaching the foaming-at-the-mouth stage…

BUMPED to top for this week

Have you selected your Blogfathers Dayâ„¢ eCard yet?

As y’all know, lots of folks who blog have people who mentored them in blogging and speak fondly of that person as their “Blogmother” or “Blogfather.” Well, Blogmothers Dayâ„¢ 2005 was a modest success, with some Blogmothers getting the thanks they so richly are due. I’d simply like to encourage those of you with a Blogfather (or someone who served as a significant blogfather figure) to send them an eCard and post a “Thanks, Blogfather!” post for Blogfathers Dayâ„¢, June 19, 2005.

Between now and then, consider doing what you can to spread the word: Blogfathers Dayâ„¢ 2005.

This has been a Public Service Announcement of the Blogfathers Dayâ„¢ Association (mostly me, myself and I)

Crossposted at Cathouse Chat.

UPDATE: Welcome to y’all dropping in from Hugh Hewitt‘s blog. Do spread the word—and if you have someone who mentored you as you started out blogging, send a special thanks to your blogfather (OK, if you missed Blogmothers Dayâ„¢ and your mentor’s a Blogmother, send her an eCard—but don’t miss Blogmothers Dayâ„¢ next year! 🙂

And Hugh, thanks for helping promote Blogfathers Dayâ„¢. I’m sure YOU will get tons of Blogfathers Dayâ„¢ thanks, and rightly so!

Since my blog-birth was—oh so miraculously!—an immaculate conception…

Oh, and folks, if you really want to thank Hugh and benefit yourselves at the same time, try reading Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World.

At any rate, what I say and do here should not in any way be counted against either Carol Liebau or Hugh Hewitt. I’ve always been a problem child… 🙂

I’m just glad I don’t have to do this with Yacko, Wacko, and Dot…

The buffet table’s spread and there’s more food than a Baptist covered dish supper at Michelle’s place (Meanderings). Check out this week’s Carnival of the Recipes.Y’all come and get it while it’s hot!

And now, let the drooling begin:

A great start on a morning…

I had another good suggestion of what I ought to post this week, but then I recieved this in an email from an old friend (how old? Don’t ask 😉 and just recieved permission to post it. I have to go pick up some cranberries—now!

Kimberlee’s Cranberry Streusel Muffins

Baking time: ~ 40 minutes

Prep time: ~ 40 minutes

Notes:

If cooking giant muffins in ramekins, be sure to let them cool prior to turning out so they won’t fall apart.

If using dried cranberries, soak them in lemon juice to plump them up. (Microwaving for ~ 30 seconds helps speed up the plumping process) Provides a good tart flavor. If you prefer, you can substitute raspberries…

If you like hazelnuts, you can substitute them instead of pecans.

Yield: 14 regular or 8 giant muffins

Ingredients for muffins:

2 C all-purpose flour

1 C sugar

2 t baking powder

½ t baking soda

¼ t salt

1 large egg

½ C sour cream

½ C milk

1/3 C melted butter

1 ½ C cranberries

Ingredients for streusel:

1/3 C pecans or hazelnuts

¼ C sugar

3 T all-purpose flour

2 T butter

¼ t ground nutmeg

Preparation:

1. If using pecans, eliminate this step. If using hazelnuts, toast them: place them in an 8″-9″ baking pan; bake at 350 degrees until golden beneath skins, ~15 minutes. Rub in a towel to remove loose skins.

2. Chop nuts. In a bowl, combine streusel ingredients and mix with fingers until the mixture is crumbly. Set streusel aside.

3. In another bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a third bowl, whisk the egg, milk sour cream and 1/3 C melted butter until smooth. Add flour mixture and stir until evenly moistened.

4. Fold in cranberries. If using raspberries, do this step gently…

5. Spoon batter into lined muffin pan or into 8 buttered ramekins (about 1 C size). Top evenly with streusel; press slightly into batter. Bake in 400 degree oven until deep golden, about 25 minutes.

6. Loosen muffins from containers (if using ramekins, let cool completely) and turn out onto a rack.

Per regular muffin: 253 cal. (99 cal., 39% from fat); 3.6 g protein; 11 g fat (5.8 g sat.); 35 g carbs; 238 mg sodium; 29 mg cholesterol

Kimberlee W.

After this post, and this one, well, three in less than a 24-hour time period makes a theme, doesn’t it?

Just read Academic Boneyards, the current issue of Credenda Agenda.

“FoxNews Responsible for Global Warming

NEW YORK—New studies looking at warming oceans and melting Arctic ice find FoxNews broadcasts emit really hot television signals, Tim Moore of the Scripts Institution of Oceanography said.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Moore said, “I’m surprised people’s eyes haven’t melted inside their heads while watching FoxNews. Other network news programs emit waves that bring life and health and nutrition to the world’s ecosystems.” Moore said the pattern of evidence also suggests that FoxNews also contributes significantly to poverty, tsunamis, mad cow disease, low test scores, and the expansion of mean people…”

Walter E. Wallis on Jerry Pournelle’s Current Mail page, commenting on typical Mass Media Podpeople misconduct at White house press conferences:

The latest “You are dethpicable” response to White House critics demonstrates the need for a change in that office to someone who can respond more in the language of today’s discourse.

Gulag/Nazi accusations need something more than prissy tsking.

I propose that the office be shared between Ann Coulter and John Bolton, with the occasional addition of a sock puppet to respond appropriately to the more idiotic, Helen Thompson type questions. If that does not bring the press conference back from the gotcha game it has become to a sincere machine to answer questions, we can borrow one more device, pouring green goo down from the ceiling on really inappropriate commenters.

Maybe we can expand on this idea…

A followup to “Nearly speechless” below

“… I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I’ve come to see that truth and teaching are incompatible.”

“…We’ve had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.”

“Somehow out of the industrial confusion which followed the Civil War, powerful men and dreamers became certain what kind of social order America needed, one very like the British system we had escaped a hundred years earlier. This realization didn’t arise as a product of public debate as it should have in a democracy, but as a distillation of private discussion. Their ideas contradicted the original American charter but that didn’t disturb them. They had a stupendous goal in mind—the rationalization of everything. The end of unpredictable history; its transformation into dependable order

“From mid-century onwards certain utopian schemes to retard maturity in the interests of a greater good were put into play, following roughly the blueprint Rousseau laid down in the book Emile. At least rhetorically. The first goal, to be reached in stages, was an orderly, scientifically managed society, one in which the best people would make the decisions, unhampered by democratic tradition. After that, human breeding, the evolutionary destiny of the species, would be in reach. Universal institutionalized formal forced schooling was the prescription, extending the dependency of the young well into what had traditionally been early adult life. Individuals would be prevented from taking up important work until a relatively advanced age. Maturity was to be retarded.”.–The Underground History of American Education

Also see, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

So there I was, perfectly set for another curmudgeonly day…

It’s been a long time since I was really stunned speechless

It happened again. This happens every semester. It’s become a sort of sick game for me, trying to guess which of my students it will be. Sometimes after the first test, most likely after the mid-term, at least one student will walk into my office to find out why he or she did so poorly on the exam for one of my science classes and inevitably declare, “Well, I skipped THOSE questions because I don’t DO math.”