Apology to Fatfu

A couple of days ago, I found this post in the “hot post” section of the WordPress Dashboard.

I linked to this post on my blog and commented; I realize now (as I should have then) that my comments might be “trollish” and unwelcome. I apologize.

But I’d like to add a couple of paragraphs of explanation. The reason I went to Fatfu’s post to begin with is:

• The post was listed on the hot post section of the WordPress dashboard; I wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise and
• The avatar was a rubenesque woman walking in tight jeans, from behind. Let’s just say that I have an evolutionary driven curiosity about such photos from such angles! The fact is that, while my visual tastes in women are rather eclectic, my “favorite visual range” is what would correspond to dress sizes 10-16. I don’t care for the anorexic look. Or put another way, I like big butts.

The reason I commented on the post (in my blog) is that fat phobia/hatred issues resonate with me a bit. On one hand, I hated being morbidly obese and I never want to go back. So I do have some somewhat latent fat phobia myself. On the other hand, when I hear fat people being attacked, I still feel attacked. On still another hand (Ganesh is one of my favorite deities) I don’t have much patience with those who take offense too easily.

Anyway, I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all in my blog, or if I did, I should have used a cut-and-paste link.

The only reason I am not using a cut-and-paste link right now is so those on Fatfu’s blog can read my apology.

Overslept again!

Workout notes I’ll probably irritate my family by running on the treadmill; I woke up late due to football watching last night. But it was worth it, at this time of the year. I might torture my daughter with a 7:45 yoga class tomorrow.

Update: 5 mile run on my home treadmill (10 minutes low grade, then varied the grade; about 51 minutes) then 1 mile walk in 13 minutes. The snow is coming down in buckets, though it should get above freezing today.

Some notes: the lovely Shalini sends along this lament:

(click here for a larger version)

She says that this has been the “story of her life”. I had to chuckle; almost everyone who has dated me expected me to be that way. I suppose that women are expected to be different.

I know that were I single and 25 years younger, I’d be on my knees begging her for a date!

Hillary Clinton:

Pat Oliphant weighs in:

(larger image)

Frankly, this captures my opinion of not only her and some of her supporters (not all of them), but also of the media (and campaigns) placing so much blasted importance on Iowa. I’m sorry, but who friggin cares what a handful of rural Iowans think? Or, more to the point, who should care?

I’ll finish this post with a couple of rants:

From Rate Your Students, a professor who won a “professor of the year award” for good teaching confesses:

I cleaned out my office over the past two days. No more teaching. Today’s the first day that I’m not a college professor. I’ve been teaching a dozen years, the last 6 at a medium sized state university in the northeast.

I tell my friends outside the academy that I just got tired of babysitting, and that’s as close as I can come to explaining it to anyone.

When I was in college, it never occurred to me that I was there to be placated and entertained. I wasn’t brought up in a time when every spelling bee contestant got a ribbon, and where every soccer team went home at the end of the year with a 4 foot high trophy. College was tough, and it was worth something.

But something happened – or so it seems – between the end of college and the end of grad school. As soon as I started teaching I was pressured in minor and major ways to ease the students through the big educational machine. Low student evaluations – always a result of tough classes or “honest” grading – resulted in ominous visits to the chair’s office or the Dean’s office.

And so I slacked off like my colleagues had done, became popular, and taught less and less. I won a teaching award 2 years ago. We have 350 faculty members and I was chosen professor of the year. I’m glad I didn’t have to make a speech because I would have choked. I knew I wasn’t a good teacher. I had become an entertaining facilitator and that was all. That I was good at that brings me nothing but unhappiness. [...]

I understand this person’s pain. No, I am not about to quit (too bad for you! ) but one thing many of us go through fairly routinely is the old “ok, am I really being demanding enough, or am I too easy? What is the line between spoon-feeding and giving them enough guidance? That isn’t always an easy question because the intellectually immature mind simply doesn’t grasp things the way a more mature mind does. Not only do I remember this from my own experience, but any professor knows that there is a huge difference between the way a typically “good freshman” and a “good senior” learns things. But even the seniors haven’t intellectually matured as yet; I remember trying to teach Laraunt Series, Cauchy’s integral formula and residues. As an undergraduate, this stuff seemed all but incomprehensible to me. Now, I wonder why it seemed so hard.

So, when I read some of the bad solutions that the students wrote to some of these problems, my “you idiot” reaction that I mutter under my breath is tempered by “ok, how well did YOU answer these questions” and I remember the look of disappointment that my professor gave me when he returned my “D-” paper.

Here is a well done “social rant” given by one of my favorite bloggers; somehow the verse from the New Testament came to me: “filter a gnat but swallow a camel“

The rant from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

What has made so many Christians so irritatingly, depressingly crabby — and can we get them to just shut up about how great achievements are somehow sins instead?

Al Gore won a Noble Prize — for peace, not for science. Get over it. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a great accomplishment, a pinnacle of human acheivement. It’s a cause for great celebration for Americans — Christians, too. It should be a great plum for Christians when Gore, a lifelong, nearly-every-Sunday-in-church Southern Baptist who followed James Madison’s example of leaving study for the clergy in order to answer a clearly much higher calling, gets the call to collect the Nobel medal in Oslo. Instead, Groothuis says (in comments), it makes his head hurt.

Hillary Clinton may not be your choice for president, but that hardly makes her evil. And like Orrin Hatch, I’m sick and tired, of people ignoring Clinton’s 40-years of advocacy for children, and suggesting instead she has no moral roots. Methodists do have moral roots, and the critics should be ashamed of such attempted character assassination. If there is something wrong with Clinton’s advocacy for children, state it clearly. But don’t pretend to be “in the know” about some imagined sins of leadership you think you know she might have committed.
[...]

We can kick about any of the candidates, but the field in both major parties is as strong as it has ever been, and almost all of the candidates offer significant advantages over the current White House — none of them is running to “restore respect and morality,” which is a good sign they might actually do it. If you’re not out there advocating for one of these outstanding people, you’re a major part of the problem. You’re advocating against quality in politics. Shame on you.

Get a grip on reality, Christians (if you really are Christians), and pay attention to what’s going on in the world. [...]

Osama bin Laden is still at large. The United States is known more for executing prisoners and torturing people than any other nation.

But Douglas Groothuis, a philosophy prof in a Denver, ivory tower, fundamentalist Christian seminary, is blind to all of that. He’s crabby instead about trivialities. Al Gore got an award. Hillary Clinton is taken seriously as a candidate for president. People, tired of such hypocrisy among the religious, are actually reading atheists’ books. The courts won’t let woo into science classes to make American kids stupider.

That’s what makes Douglas Groothuis grumpy.

Groothuis makes me grumpy.

No kidding; here’s his list, verbatim, from his blog — there is nary a mention of Darfur, nor Guantanamo, nor Bosnia, nor bin Laden (terrorism has to share an angst point with abortion); no mention of our failure to eradicate hunger, or our failure to provide even decent health care to all Americans:

Go ahead and read the whole thing. The point about HRC is funny. Many people who hate her view her as a flaming liberal, whereas I (and others like me) have been critical of her for being too corporate and too conservative!

Holiday Bowl Blogging

Right now I am watching the Holiday Bowl as I blog; UT is up 38-20 in a wild game.

Texas has scored on a fumble that went forward, has fumbled themselves, and have has an untimely sideline violation which kept the Longhorns from keeping a fumble. Yet the Sun Devils have made tons of mistakes, including an untimely personal foul to keep a Longhorn drive alive, and a fumbled punt.

Oops, make that 45-20; the offense is moving well, and the defense has harassed the Sun Devil quarterback. Whoops, make that 45-27, with about 7:20 to go. Nope, make that 52-34 with about 2 minutes left.

(photos from Yahoo NCAA Football Gallery)

Other stuff

A yoga friend decided to poke fun at me for my tongue and cheek Holiday cards:

Politics Unfortunately, I’ve stumbled across yet another good blog; this one is called the Edge of the American West.

Two (of many) good posts:

An article about the Democratic Party and its “evolution” from racist/populist to being pro civil rights.

This article is about Charles Darwin, and how dumb it is to use the theory he developed to justify so called “social Darwinism”.

Obama

About 22 minutes long, but this is an excellent speech.

Just a note: Obama was elected to the State Senate in 1996 and elected to the U. S. Senate in 2004. He has more legislative and public office experience than either of the other top tier Democratic candidates, though I admit that he wasn’t the spouse of an elected official.