Blog Bonus: Beverage of Choice

Just a passing thought after my first visit to a Sonic restaurant:

Obviously, a liquor license at a drive-in restaurant is probably not A Good Thing... except maybe for the date you took there.

The Sonic logo is a registered trademark of SONIC Corp.

Showing Up

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

It's not about showing up. It's about what you do when you show up.

Warning: Mini-Rant: There is a odd philosophy that states that many students are failing the class because they don't show up. And logic dictates that if one shows up to class, one should do better than one who does not. And since the absentees are failing, then better than failing would be passing.

In the common parlance: "At least we're here! They don't even come!"

Which is why the space-takers get a 50 or 55 instead of a 45. However, this is anathema to their thinking. (Ubless I'm misusing the word "anathema", in which case, I'm still putting in more effort than the space-takers.)

A Corollary to this is the complaint by those who "take notes and do all my work". This, of course, is self-reported and doesn't seem to use the same metric I use. (Actually, I would use a yardstick -- called me "old-fashioned".) Their measurements are quite scientific as I've only encountered microns and angstroms in science classes. In the vernacular, they just don't measure up.

However, even granting their self-reported scores, it comes back down to testing. They consistently want to stress all the factors that make up 30% of their grade as if that can be stretched out to 65%. Sadly, 70% of their grades come from their test scores. This is a number that I was given when I arrived, that was already programmed into the online grading system. I've checked with other teachers and have found that the students' claims that "No other teacher in the school uses 70%" has fallen 9 times of of 10, the lone exception being an Honors class, which has its own grading structure. This essentially means that each test they took was 35% of their grade. They claimed I sprung this on them just a couple of weeks ago, even though they've known since September what the percentage was. I know I've mentioned it before.

I'm not a fan of high-stakes testing, and I will always try to squeeze in a third test just so I have one to drop. It isn't always possible, especially with breaks and snow days. Not to mention poor attendance surrounding breaks and snow days. And not wanting to give a test on the Monday after a break. Frankly, I've bent over backward to accommodate, and I think that's my problem. I put my foot down on the next test, and they whined and complained, but the test after that (the first one of the new marking period) went much better.

Thankfully, I have a long stretch with no breaks so we can get through the curriculum and not have to jump through hoops for assessments. And, yes, I just found myself being thankful for NOT having days off.

The life of a teacher.

Mathy Pick-Up Lines

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Full title: Mathy Pick-up Lines Don't Really Work. Avoid Them!

Haiku

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Have you ever been trapped
Inside poetry, without
A way to get out?

Okay, so maybe I still have Monster Haiku on the brain.

Happy (Belated) St. Patrick's Day (Again) 2014!

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

Be warned: in the future, I'll move these comics to their appropriate places in the timestream as if I never missed a day!

(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Or should that be Padraig with the Hadraig? I guess not.

Sorry for the late comic, but I didn't want to leave it uncelebrated. At some point in the future, I'll go back and rewrite time, and re-date this one.

(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Pi comics -- they just keep going round and round. Q-T, Q-T! Give me your answer true!

Built for Two?

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Pi comics -- they just keep going round and round. Q-T, Q-T! Give me your answer true!

Back From Lunacon

No comic today because I had too much fun at Lunacon and too little time when I got home and started grading papers. And had I left sooner (and avoided the two traffic accidents), I still wouldn't have finished.

A report on some kind will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, I've added two new blogs to my blog list because of people I met this weekend:

Monster Haiku is a daily strip where the dialogue is a haiku. Topical, given my recent contest, but even moreso in that the author, Jason Deeble, knows his math and tries to work calculus into some of his strips. I bought his first collection and had it autographed. He has almost as many strips as I do and should overtake me shortly. If I buy a book a year, I'll be current ... hmmm, set up a system of equations ... hmmmm, I'll do it later.

Genre-related, in that sense that math geeks and sci-fi geeks generally like movies (and many of us like redheads), another blog to check out is A Redhead at the Movies, which bills itself as Film and entertainment reviews, essays and lists from a ginger who loves pop culture (especially horror)! Sara, the redhead in question, is a Film Studies and Media & Communication double major at Muhlenberg College in PA, so you'll get a young person's perspective. She's also the daughter of a Facebook friend, whom I finally met in person this weekend. (I've met the friend before -- this year, I met the daughter. I'm a math teacher, not an English major, you know.) Great reading for entertainment news.

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2014!

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Or should that be Padraig with the Hadraig? I guess not.

Sorry for the late comic, but I didn't want to leave it uncelebrated. At some point in the future, I'll go back and rewrite time, and re-date this one.

Pi Day 2014: Pi-ku!

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Is it irrational to like pi? Or to like pi-ku?
FYI: A "pi-ki" is a 3-line poem consisting 3 syllables, 1 syllable and 4 syllables. Kind of like some other kind of poem you might have heard of.

And the winner and only entry in our

Only Annual Pi-ku Contest

Want to meet
pi?
Tourtière, tourtière.
-- Gregory B Taylor

I don't speak the language, so I'll assume that "Tourtière" has two syllables.

UPDATE: One new later entry:

Twenty-two
on
seven is close.
-- Justin Lanier

Dollars to Doughnuts

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

I'll bet you Godzillions that I just like doughnuts, no matter how they're spelt.

Pi-ku, Anyone? How About a Contest?

Who likes Pi-kus? Really, who doesn't?

What's a "pi-ku"? No, it's not some electrified anime mouse!
A Pi-ku is a poem consisting of three lines: the first with three syllables, the second with one syllable, and the last with four syllables.

For example:

You like Pi?
That's
Irrational!
                      -- Chris Burke

Think you can do better? (Well, you probably can.) So feed your muse some pi and show off your poetic skills. It can be about Pi or anything math-related. The best ones I get by Thursday evening (in New York) will be reprinted here and on the comics site.

You can post them here, on the Facebook page, or email them.

Spring Ahead, Just Not Out of Bed!

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(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

What is it always a Sunday morning I have to get up sooner instead of sleeping late? Can't they just cut an hour out of work in the afternoon? They say that you get it back, but you don't get it back with interest, so what kind of lousy savings in this?!

Lunacon Promo-Page

Every March, I go to Lunacon, a great science-fiction convention held in Rye Brook, NY. For the past few years, I have printed out a sheet or two of comics from this site. Nothing too fancy: just four or five (x, why?) comics, along with a logo and the URL for the blog and the comics-only site. Simple little promotion, and cheaper than bookmarks. (Actually, I looked into bookmarks once, but apparently, my comic dimensions and resolution are all out of whack.)

Are there any recent favorites, say, from the past year or two, that I should use? I'd lean toward the standalone jokes, not requiring background knowledge of the characters. And because it's a science fiction convention, the geekier or more "science-y" the better -- but only if the science is right. And, of course, there has to be some math and logic because that's the focus of the strip. I don't want to give the wrong impression.

Ideally, I would have to include my main characters, both human and numeric. Maybe the shapes as well, but there aren't any who stand out as characters.

I'm throwing the door open to suggestions. Either list them in the comments or email me or tweet me.