Halfway There

After week-8 of a 16-week class -- MATH 125, Math for Liberal Arts Majors -- my grade stands at

92.9% (based upon completion of 39.5% of the material). This is an A-. In a math class!

It's possible that I can still make an A.

It's also still within the realm of possibilities that I bomb the whole thing.

What will happen?

Stay tuned.

---------------------------
June 12, 2014

Forgot to update this after I finished the class. Believe it or not, my final grade was an A-. After sixteen long weeks of frustration, I was very happy to escape with a grade like that.

Now, on to other things.

Think It'll Work?

See if you can find the cheap burglar alarm I installed.

Elections have consequences ... even in North Carolina

North Carolina On Cusp Of Passing Worst Voter Suppression Bill In The Nation

Liberals have a unique vocabulary. For example, they describe common sense voter legislation, such as are presently under serious consideration in the Old North State's capitol as "voter suppression" bills. There is much whining and snivelling going on at ThinkProgress.org and in certain state senators' offices.

North Carolina General Assembly
complex in Raleigh, NC

In the North Carolina General Assembly, lawmakers are about to enact legislation requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are. No more same day registration or voting outside of one's district, which plays havoc with the system to the advantage of Democrats. They probably won't even let dead people vote, or convicted felons, or non-citizens.

Man, those Rascally Republicans.

'Bout time!

Military History and Ted Williams

The thought occurred to me that I might want to take a break from military history and read something else. So, at the library, I selected a biography of a famous baseball player, Ted Williams, who played for the Boston Red Sox. Imagine my shock when I opened to the table of contents and found this ...

       Prologue

1     Boston

2     San Diego

3     Minnesota

4     Boston

5     .406

6     World War II

7     Boston 

8     Korea

9     Boston

10   Boston

11   Cooperstown

12   Washington

There it is. Two wars. In a book about the national pastime. I can't get away from it! I'll tell you more about it after I've read the book, but Hall of Famer, Ted Williams took time away from his baseball career twice to serve in the armed forces as a fighter pilot.

I don't think that's the right word

So, I'm at home and my wife is telling me a story about some guy that got caught stealing in a men's clothing store she worked in a long time ago. Not only was the guy taking money, he was giving suits to his buddies as huge unauthorized discounts. 

To this day my wife can't get over the guy's audacity. 

"Yeah," she said, with excitement, "the police came took him out in cuff links!"

"In Your Face"

My early
birthday present

So, Haydin, a rising first grader, sees on the computer screen that we are in the month of April.

"Good," I exclaimed.  "That means next month is ..."  (Sensing a good teaching opportunity, I said to him,) "You know what next month is, right?

"January," he says.

Nope.

"February?"

No.

"March?"

WRONG.

From the next room, someone whispered the correct answer to him.  "May!" he said.

Right, and you know what May is, right?  (He didn't, because his parents, apparently, have neglected one of the most crucial aspects of the young man's education).  May is the month of PaPa's birthday!

This news excited him.

So, I asked him, "Are you going to send PaPa a present?"

"No, I'm here," he said.

What?

"See," he said, as he rushed right up to me, "I'm in your face," he said.  

He meant it one way, but I couldn't help but take it another way.

Preparing for the Next War

General John R. Galvin

"We in the military often are accused falsely of “preparing to fight not the next war but the last.”  That criticism is not well placed: we are not, for the most part, obtuse enough to fight yesterday’s war—but we might be doing something worse still.  When we think about the possibilities of conflict we tend to invent for ourselves a comfortable vision of war, a theater with battlefields we know, conflict that fits our understanding of strategy and tactics, a combat environment that is consistent and predictable, fightable with the resources we have, one that fits our plans, our assumptions, our hopes, and our preconceived ideas.  We arrange in our minds a war we can comprehend in our own terms, usually with an enemy that looks like us and acts likes us.  This comfortable conceptualization becomes the accepted way of seeing things and, as such, ceases to be an object of further investigation unless it comes under serious challenge as a result of some major event—usually a military disaster."[1]

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[1] General John R. Galvin, U.S. Army, “Uncomfortable Wars: Toward a New Paradigm,” Parameters, Winter, 1986.