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I agree with you up to a point. There are the issues that usually come with childhood. Teachers are equipped to handle obnoxious kids. But I'm talking about kids who intentionally upend water bottles onto the carpet, steal food from classmates and even teachers, and routinely hit their...

He gets it. Those aren’t my students, btw. They’re my wife’s and she and her colleagues are very much in agreement with me. And these are teachers who are around them all day, five days a week. “Feral” is an apt label considering our freakin’ DOG is better behaved than these particular...

It's a rough situation, no doubt. Ecuador is sandwiched between two massive drug suppliers (Peru and Colombia) and it's caught in the middle of their turf wars. Up until a few years ago, I wanted to visit Guayaquil. Now I'd rather stay away.

Behavioral problems in school have gotten much worse since the pandemic. Ask an elementary school teacher and they’ll tell you about the ferals in their classes. The parents never taught them even basic manners or self-control. Suddenly I’m reminded of The Boondocks.

There are two kids in my wife’s class who have been giving her hell pretty much all year. They are loud, disruptive, violent thieves. She can’t do anything except send them to the principal, and then their parents collect them. That’s exactly what those hellions want. Their folks brush it off...

I have just been accepted for a week-long faculty seminar at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Accommodations and a lot of the meals will be paid for. It will start the week after my NYC workshop. I'm going to have a busy June. The hotel I'll be staying it is modeled after a 1940s hotel...

It started off strong. I especially liked their long tracking shots that show how even one zombie is dangerous. Season 2 was just a relentless slog filled with selfish and unlikeable characters.

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...