Monthly Archives: March 2008

Honor Code: Why Johnny Can’t Write, Only Copy-and-Paste

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Okay, this is both funny and desperately sad. Also, I really, really think the UT-SAT students really need to take a look at the fine print:

U. of Texas honor code apparently plagiarized from BYU’s code – Salt Lake Tribune

SAN ANTONIO – University of Texas at San Antonio students wanted to draft an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.
Unfortunately, it appears they copied Brigham Young University’s code without proper attribution.
The student in charge of drafting the code said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don’t know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

8pm Saturday 29MAR08: Lights out, Earth!

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Seen various places, but most recently at The Lead:

Many people around the world are planning on observing an hour of “darkness” tomorrow night as a way of participating in a global earth hour. The event was created by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007.From the Earth Hour Website:

“Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.”

I will try to remember to shut off all the lights tomorrow at 8pm CDT. On our last couple of trips to Mesa Verde, we’ve noted how light pollution encroaches on the remote places in America, and how the stars are dimmed. It’s quite a hot topic in Moab, UT, where the locals can get really het up about not being able to see the bright stars they remember from just a decade or so ago. Or sometimes about their neighbors’ new yard light.

There are alternatives to lighting up the night needlessly – it’s still possible to have attractive outdoor lighting, or safe street lighting, without making starry, starry nights obsolete.

UPDATE: Every light in the house is on.

I’ve got an alarm set to go off at 8pm CDT, and a few candles are burning. I wish I had a clear view of downtown Chicago, which is supposed to be participating.

I had a chance to go out to dinner tonight, but wasn’t feeling up to a lot of night driving after spending 3 hours getting my vision rechecked and my new glasses re-lensed (as I thought, they had the “sweet spot” in the wrong place for the right eye). So it works out okay after all is said and done; I’d rather be home tonight.

Also, my tummy is kind of bothering me, so it’s just as well.

Dinner 2nite: Cracked Potatoes

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Flickr

My sister-in-law made these the other night for Easter dinner, and the “whack-a-mole” method of dealing with the potatoes seemed like a good stress-buster. Besides, we have a long-handled meat tenderizer with a flat side, which worked extremely well at smacking the potatoes (we didn’t cut them in half, as they were smaller than the ones the other night).

However, the cutting board did not survive; it already had a couple of splits and was not very high quality, and it split right down the middle as we whacked away at the spuds. It did work really well to hold them in place, though. Oh, well.

Cracked Potatoes

12 small-medium Yukon potatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
2 sprigs fresh thyme, plus 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper
1 clove garlic, sliced

Special Equipment: a rolling pin or heavy pan

Using the rolling pin or a heavy pan, gently smack the potatoes, 1 potato at a time, until the skin begins to split, exposing the interior of the raw potato.Over low heat, add the olive oil to a medium-sized heavy-bottomed saucepan, then add the potatoes and thyme sprigs and season generously with salt and pepper. Place the lid on the pan and allow to cook, undisturbed, shaking the pan every 5 minutes or so, until the bottoms of the potatoes are browned, about 10 to 12 minutes. (Check occasionally to make sure the potatoes aren’t browning too quickly and adjust heat accordingly.) Turn the potatoes to their second side, replace the lid, and continue cooking undisturbed a further 5 to 8 minutes.

Remove the lid and cook a further 2 to 3 minutes, for the condensation to evaporate.

Remove the thyme sprigs and add the sliced garlic and chopped fresh thyme and cook until the garlic is caramelized and chewy, about 2 minutes. Serve hot.

The other item is stufed bell peppers with Italian sausage – something I threw together with a little Bertie Wooster and an entire head’s worth of whole garlic cloves. They had something like it for 3 times the cost at Meijer but it had cheese in it, a no-go for my husband David, so we’ll see how this version comes out. We’re just waiting for the potatoes to get done now, about another 10 minutes.

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr Title: Dinner 2nite By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 26 Mar ’08, 6.48pm CDT PST

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Reviewing Mass

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The movie reviewer for SFgate.com reviews a recent Easter mass he attended, and this paragraph jumped out at me (yes, because I’m in favor of traditonal liturgy and liberal theology):

Mick LaSalle

I was talking to a former Episcopal pastor yesterday, and he told me that if he were to do it all over again, he’d go entirely the other way. Bring in organ music. Incense. Choirs. Maybe choirs singing in foreign languages. Things to make people feel that they’ve entered another world — a mysterious place where God dwells. Instead what you get in church these days feels 30 years out of date, a throwback to the 1970s, and completely devoid of mystery or emotional power. There’s nothing visceral about it, and this is what this priest was saying: You have to make church a visceral experience — reach them through the emotions — and then, with the sermon, start trying to reach them through the mind.

That’s how I feel about it – modern music, unless very carefully chosen, just doesn’t tip me over into the realm of the sublime. And sometimes, it sounds distressingly like the Brady Bunch theme.  Is that church, I ask you? NO, Socrates, it is not.

At Holy Moly / St Nick’s, we seem not to be differentiating the two services music-wise. But there’s been some muttering from me and a couple of other choir members, and the choir mistress is coming around to the idea that we could have a choir that could sing trad hymns in one service, and the Gahhhtherrrr hymns in the other service, with no problems.

I’m personally not a fan of Gather, which is a Catholic 70’s-era hymnal that is in use at St Nick’s. To me, it’s like having to sit and listen to Muzak while trapped in an elevator with a proselytizing dentist eager to convince me that flossing will save my teeth AND my soul.