my new album drops next Wednesday

A meme I can get behind:
MAKE YOUR OWN ALBUM COVER.

1. Click on this link. The title of the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link. The last four words of the last quotation on the page is the name of your album.
(Mine was, "My life is like a zombie movie! I survive game after game after game, but the football just keeps coming! The only way to stop team sports is to aim for the head." -Matt Milby, 11-21-06)

3. Click on this link. The third picture is your album cover.

4. Add your band name and album title to the picture.

I tag WTF, MJ, & I would tag Lee, but how could you get much better than "Auditory Nerve?"

Another Tuesday Bullet Point List

• I have six back-to-back meetings with students this morning. At this point in the term, there are a few minutes in between meetings. That's enough time to type a sentence or two, but unfortunately, not enough time to get coffee. I have had no coffee yet this morning. I'm having problems putting words together to form sentences. In my most recent meeting, I gave the following advice to a student: "Read the article with an eye toward possible subtopics for your paper because you might find some topics that will make interesting . . . subtopics for your paper."

• Bloggity pedagogy. Exhibit A:

34. Every time Emily checks her favorite weblog, she sees that the author has updated it with a new post. Suddenly, the author stops posting entries on the weblog. What is likely to happen to Emily’s behavior of checking the weblog?
a. She will continue to check the weblog for updates at the same rate she had before.
b. She will immediately stop checking the weblog for updates.
c. She will increase the checking behavior for a while, but her checking behavior will decline eventually.
d. She will show a steady increase in her checking behavior over time.

• I have run out of grapefruit. :(

• I have a student who wrote on her introductory 3 X 5 notecard, "I smile all the time." I thought, "That's nice." Then I realized that she smiles all the time because that's how her face is. It's a little unsettling.

• It's now almost 11:30, and I still haven't had any coffee.

• I just found out from a newsletter that I'm giving a talk this weekend at a mother-daughter luncheon. Good to know.

*The answer to #34 is (c). If an organism is rewarded on a continuous schedule of reinforcement, extinction trials will result in an initial dramatic increase in the frequency of the behavior (extinction burst), followed by a decline in the frequency of the behavior (extinction).

Your economic stimulus package is coming . . .

Check out http://www.ferdinandhomestore.com/ Cool, original stuff and fantabulous customer service.

That's all I have to say about that.

A Mystery . . .

I can't figure out why it's taking me so long to get through this stack of assignments.


I also can't figure out why my slippers are wet and why it's so cold in my house.

I plan to use the video to demonstrate how, um, difficult shaping in operant conditioning can be.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

That quote is attributed to Voltaire and is usually translated as, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

I'm dispositionally anxious, but for some reason, I'm especially anxious about my intro classes this semester. It's like I'm going to a job interview every time I go to class. It makes no sense. This is the 10th semester I've taught the course here. These are my 17th and 18th sections of the course. I've done the course so many times that I keep track of the current date by thinking about what topic we're covering in intro that week. Also, no one will be paying any attention to my course evaluations for a while. And class is going fine. Yet right before class starts, I get that same feeling I used to get before gym class. That wasn't an excited, happy feeling, but more of a dizzy, pukey feeling. I thought I had left that dodgeball level of dread behind me.

I'm thinking it's a case of the perfect being an enemy of the good. When I spend too much time working, and when I spend too much time thinking about work when I'm not working, I lose perspective and end up obsessing over minor details about class sessions I could do in my sleep. If I could be less uptight about it, everything would be just fine--it might even be good.

What else is good? The following:

This fledgling, which pooped all over our car this past summer. Not the fledgling's fault. I was following it and making it nervous. It looks resentful in this picture. Sorry, fledgling.

Cinnamon rolls by Mr. Banality. When will he make these again, I wonder??

J's loyal friend. And J's loyal friend's loyal snowman friend, a jolly happy soul who does not suspect that J's loyal friend would like to chew him up in tiny, tiny pieces.

The best squirrel ever.

And can you believe life was ever actually like this here? (Note: This video will be posted for a limited time only to protect the innocent.)

Voltaire also said, "Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire," which means, "The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." So, I'll stop there.

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy blogger

Bullet points. My apologies.

• I gave my first pop quiz yesterday. Ever. I had never given a pop quiz before. I wish people would just write, "Yeah, I didn't read the assignment, so I have no idea," instead of using the strategy of writing as many smart-sounding words as possible and hoping that something is right. In response to the question, "How do experiments enable a researcher to focus on the possible effects of one or more factors?" one student answered, "Experiments can help the researcher(s) to see any possible effects that they have observed. These effects can show what caused the experiment to turn out the way it did." Nice try, young Skywalker, but your Jedi mind tricks do not work on me. I especially like how he included the (s) at the end of researcher to try to convince me that the answer was correct.
• One of the international students I work with (he's from Japan) was wearing a great jacket/shirt thingy today. It was black and had passants on the shoulders. Passants! The fabric was pinstriped and had patches of snakeskin print and crazy zippers with cut-out crosses on the zipper pulls. If the US male students would show this kind of innovative fashion sense, I might be able to remember them as individuals rather than referring to all of them as "Kyle."
• When I am not in class, I'm in my office. This is fine with me because I don't like people much (present company excluded). But this also means I do not keep up on the personal lives of people in my department (or anywhere else), and I don't know the latest institutional political goings-on, so if you ask me about them, it's likely that I will give you a blank stare.
• Clementines are delightful. Dried out clementines are not.
• I possess a deep hatred of teaching two sections of our intro class all spread out with one in the wee hours of the morning and one at the groggy post-lunch hour. I'd rather do them both in the morning, three and a half hours of back-to-back intro-level excitement. This is really bothering me this semester. Probably more than it should.
• When I have back-to-back meetings with students, the little bits of time in between can be used to write a blog entry. They probably also could be used to grade papers, prepare for the next day's class, work on a manuscript, etc., but I only know about the blog writing.
• It is 450 degrees in my office. You could bake a frozen pizza in here. Thus, I have my window open. There's a guy whose office is down the hall from me who is using a space heater because his office is cold.
• Mr. Banality and I choose pseudonyms when we play Scrabble. Last night, Morgan Freeman was kicking Cynthia's ass. I was Morgan Freeman.
• I would like to spend less time in my office, not only because of the sweat lodge atmosphere, but because I would like to die without people saying, "Wow, she worked a lot." And also, while I am alive, I would like to do more than just work a lot.

Hi, Kiwanis!

My mom is a songwriter. Actually, she used to write songs; I'm not sure if she still does or not. She wrote inspirational music with her friend, Margo. Someone else actually recorded a couple of them on their album--if I get a chance, I'll post a picture of the album cover for you because the big glasses and monster sideburns are pretty freakin' awesome.

My mom performed these songs as well. She was part of a group called Servants of the Savior, and they traveled around to various churches to perform. The women wore matching, velvety full-length dresses, and the men wore matching leisure suit separates. While you're under the hot lights in a church sanctuary, singing about being saved by the blood of the Lamb, you might as well do it in the comfort of synthetic fabrics.

I was roped into singing with the group a few times. Margo's daughter, who was five at the time, had a part in one of the songs--everyone knows that a kid ups the emotional impact of any song (e.g., "Enter Sandman"). However, little Danni was scared to sing on her own, so they convinced me to sing along with her. I don't remember how old I was at the time, but I know I was old enough to be humiliated by the experience of singing "I Believe in Jesus, Mommy" with a five-year-old, the two of us in matching pinafores, for the Lions' Club pancake supper in the basement of the Farmers' Savings Bank. Later, we sang the song on an AM Christian radio station's Saturday morning program, which I'm sure roughly four people heard.

The Servants of the Savior traveled to Illinois for one church performance. I don't remember if I sang with them or not, but I did have to go to the church's strange and foreign Sunday school class. The teacher asked me to recite one of the 10 Commandments.

"Um . . . don't kill?"

That response was followed by gales of laughter from the other students and the teacher. Apparently, I didn't recite the exact words that God wrote down with his Sharpie in the King James Version of the Bible. I was traumatized. The only other thing I remember from that trip was that we rode in an RV and I had motion sickness (for pretty much any story that involves me riding in an RV, bus, ferry, or back of a station wagon, that's how the story ends).

My mom was commissioned to write a song for a Kiwanis Club's silver anniversary celebration. As was the case with most of the songs she wrote, she practiced this song a lot. I didn't attend the celebration, but apparently, the song was very well received. And when I meet someone from Ankeny or hear someone mention Ankeny, which happened to me just today, the song plays in my head. On repeat.

Hi, Kiwanis of Ankeny/Happy quarter century/look at where you've been/look at what you've done/and it's been a lot of fun . . . etc.

Yes, they paid her for that. I have to hand it to her--it is a catchy little song.

And speaking of music, Okkervil River has posted a free "mixtape" on their website. It's a set of live covers, and although they do not do a cover of "I Believe in Jesus, Mommy," you should still check it out.