Recent content by IronBrig4

I think they're supposed to look like toys. The 1950s saw ridiculous contraptions such as the Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless gun.

I just got accepted for a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop in New York City. In June, I'll spend five days touring the NYC waterfront and learning about New York's maritime history with nineteen other scholars. The only reason this isn't an epic win is because the stipend covers...

The first time you climb up to the Greybeards is a treat. It's just you and the elements, and it feels so immersive. It wears then after a while. XCOM 2 made me rage sometimes. But there were some instances where most of my team was low on health and out of both grenades and medpacks. That's...

They're apparently experts on European political history, American Civil War history, international security, public health, and evolutionary biology. I don't think the School of Hard Knocks is an accredited institution of higher learning.

I think some people try to deny the association between Nazism and far-right politics because of the troglodytes who have been causing trouble for the past eight years. For these folks, they don’t wish to condemn people who look like them, who they might know, and who share many of the same...

It was way too cloudy here so we couldn't see anything. It just got darker for a little while.

I'm playing Subnautica on PS5. It's pretty fun but I think I'll uninstall after beating it. There's only so much room on the console and I have a hankering for Ghosts of Tsushima.

The wife is going through her monthly cycle and apparently the object of all her frustration tonight is freaking BUTTER. We were eating corn on the cob with dinner and the pat of butter slid off her corn. “This butter didn’t stay on. Don’t just sit there. Help me!” “What do you want me to do...

I pass the attendance sheet around 10 minutes into class, then collect it 20 minutes in. That way I don't penalize the students who are just a few minutes late (parking can be a major problem). Anybody who comes in after that can stay but they certainly won't be counted as present. Students...

I’m rewatching Samurai Champloo after about 15 years. It still holds up.

Ever since I was a graduate student, I've been known as an even-tempered instructor. That's something I've taken pride in. That changed today when I blew up at a student. I gave him a dressing-down after class because he'd been habitually tardy, absent, or on his phone the entire semester. This...

I have a feeling that some of the wife's extended family pre-ordered them.

I’m noticing more students who aren’t turning in work because of family issues. These are assignments that they’ve known about since the beginning and they “forget” about it because “granny had an episode.” One even wanted an absence excused because she’d been arguing with her Mom. I used to be...

Given how underfunded and outdated so much of the school was, I was surprised the map didn't call Belgium the Spanish Netherlands.

I hear that. When I taught high school it was in an underfunded rural district. Our school used to be a fallout shelter. The school-supplied world map in my classroom was probably from the ‘70s because it still showed the USSR, Yugoslavia, and two Germanies. I left months after it was announced...