Commentary on social networking, technology, movies, society, and random musings
This morning Ellen told me that we were having a problem with the stove pilot light (subsequently fixed by this afternoon by, as usual, Ellen).
In a panic, I asked her if this affected the pilot light for the microwave.
She assured me it didn’t, thankfully.
After a big gap, which I will try not to allow to repeat, I am back and focused on my day job at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC).
My role as the Program Chair of the Information Systems Management (IFSM) Undergraduate Degree program means I have both academic responsibility for the quality of the content of our current 13 courses as well as owning logistical responsibilities associated with staffing and dealing with classroom issues. It is not always easy to spend as much time as I would like on the Academic concerns. Over the last couple of days I spent time assigning faculty for our Spring, 2017 classes which will start in January, 2017. The numbers involved will give you some idea of the logistic challenges.
The UMUC Undergraduate school runs multiple eight week on-line sessions each semester. After we begin the first session of the semester, two to three weeks later the second session starts. We hold four such sessions each Fall and each Spring, and three during the Summer. We cleverly refer to them as OL1, OL2, and OL3 (and OL4 for the fall and spring). The OL stands for on-line. We also hold overlapping hybrid sessions. Hybrid sessions include one three hour in-person class plus the rest is on-line, thus hybrid. We hold two of these in the Fall and Spring, and one in the Summer. We call these US1 and US2. On reflection, I am actually not sure what the US stands for, I’ll need to check. The hybrid classes are held all around the country. Making sure we have enough faculty to staff hybrid locations takes a great deal of time, since in effect all of the on-line courses are one big queue. We also have face-to-face classes, given all in person, in Europe and Asia. While I am responsible for the academic content for them also, I do not have any logistical responsibilities.
As I have mentioned a number of times over the last 18 months, I now work for the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), as the Program Chair for Information Systems Management in the undergraduate school, cleverly called at UMUC by the name The Undergraduate School (TUS).
Since the undergraduate degree I received over forty years ago from the University of Maryland College Park was, in fact, in Information Systems Management, my career path ultimately has only taken me a short distance from a geographic perspective though obviously a somewhat longer temporal one.
In any event I recently was asked to respond to a questionnaire about careers in Information Systems Management. The results are here.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, there tends to be two kinds of fans rooting for their favorite team in the playoffs when that team loses.
One type hopes the team they lost to wins the Championship The reason is that a case could be made that their team, their favorite team, which lost to the eventual Champion was very possibly the second best team. With a better draw, if the loss was too early in the playoff sequence, or a little more luck, if in the finals, then their team, their favorite team, might in fact BE the Champions. Except of course they were not.
The second type hopes the team that their favorite team loses to will at some point in the playoffs also lose but in their case in the most painful awful fashion possible. That the fans of the team that beat their favorite team are, regardless of their qualities outside of who they root for which in fact could be quite wonderful, are so diminished as people, for rooting for the team that beat the favorite team, that it is important to restore the overall karmic balance by having those fans suffer along with their team.
That is an introduction to the fact that the Washington Capitals lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins (of all teams not THAT team) and the Penguins are in the Stanley Cup Finals.
So which kind of fan am I?
Let us just say if the Penguins were playing the Winterfell White Walkers and Ramsey Bolton was the White Walkers best player, and even if somehow, mixing TV metaphors, Malcolm Reynolds became the new Captain of the Penguins, I would still be all in hoping the Penguins lost in double overtime in Game 7, and that instead of a handshake line Ramsey Bolton would flay each of the Penguins players one at a time.
I guess the story today is that mostly old people use Facebook, though of course that puts me right in the Facebook main stream.
Having said that, it is clear that people, old or young, who do not use Facebook or at least one of the more popular social networks do not realize how much interaction goes on that has a reasonable amount of social meaning. While I recognize that in-person relationships are deeper and agree with the studies that most of us can only have a limited number of ‘true’ social friendships, the interactions on Facebook have meaning and allow us to interact with people we otherwise would not touch.
My recent example is a post I made recently about a book that was sent by a publisher to Ellen so she could potentially review it, the joy of leaving your sh*t all over the place. My post said: “I am not sure if I’m more surprised that we have this book to read or that we were not the author.”
Third parties have not fared well in American politics over the last century or so, either having no impact on the Presidential race results though in a few cases potentially moving the winner from one party to the other (though not electing the third-party candidate). One example of the latter was when Teddy Roosevelt ran on the Bull-Moose party ticket in 1912 electing Woodrow Wilson and helping to elect a Democrat Congress.
Having said that since I tend to support the non-Trump wing of the Republican party, I have noticed a bunch of like-minded individuals making noises about supporting a third-party Presidential candidate.
The thought is that Trump has no chance of gaining 270 electoral votes. The hope is that with a serious third-party candidate, Hillary Clinton also would not get 270 electoral votes throwing the election into the House.
I decided to take a quick look at how that possibility would play out.
The method for electing the President is covered in Section 1 of Article 2 of the Constitution.
Every year we are fortunate to have many friends who join us for our Passover Seder, and I am lucky to have married Ellen who plans, organizes, and works to make it a special event. My role is to find a bunch of quotes, see below, and lift and carry stuff up and down stairs and around the house.
One of the goals of the Passover Seder is to create, in whatever fashion makes the most sense to the participants, an evening of discussion and thought about the themes that flow from the story of the Exodus of the Jewish people as they left Egypt. Since I am not fluent in Hebrew, Ellen has allowed me to, subject to her review and approval, create an evening that I can understand better and more actively participate in, largely in English though singing some of the Hebrew prayers from a ‘standard’ Seder.
Each year we identify a theme that we want to focus on. To supplement the theme, I identify quotes from various sources associated with the theme. During the Seder a participant will read a portion of the Haggadah, literally in Hebrew “the telling”, the book which contains the fifteen steps of the traditional Seder, and then read the quote they have been randomly assigned. If the participant wants to they will then discuss what the quote, and/or any other aspect of Passover, may mean to them.
This year we return to expand on an issue we have touched on before, the uncertainty of change and how people react to the uncertainty. It felt to me that one of the driver’s behind some of the political events in the 2016 Presidential race and in the US in general derives from the great economic and social uncertainties that are impacting large segments of our country. In my most optimistic points-in-time, I hope, as is mentioned in one of our quotes, that it is not the end point of change that is the problem it is the situation in the middle when we have left what we are familiar with and not arrived at the next step in our journey. This was comparable to how I felt after Game 3 of the current Capitals-Flyers first round Stanley Cup playoff series. When I am feeling less optimistic, I worry about whether that next step is actually the problem and that we may be ultimately heading to a not so great destination. This is comparable to how I feel, like any long-time Washington Capitals fan thinks, after Game 4.
Regardless, the key aspect to me is the direction found in every Haggadah that each of us should consider ourselves as having been there at the original Exodus during that difficult transition and to consider the implications for us today in what seems an increasingly contentious time here in the not-so-United States and a complex and complicated world.
Here is a copy of the directions I will read from at the Seder: 2016 Seder Script. The quotes are organized into groups of ten, here are the three files setup to be printed (poorly) on labels: First 10 Quotes, Second 10 Quotes and Final 6 Quotes.
We reference a few external readings in the course of the Seder:
I find Passover perhaps the most accessible to non-Jews of all Jewish holidays, the theme of striving for Freedom and exactly what that means is a universal one and worth considering for all of us.
ME: “Ellen, I am thinking that I might, in the near-term future, throw out the pair of pants that are sort-of falling apart.”
ELLEN: “Which one?”
ME: “…”
It is my feeling that Ellen and I even after all these years have not developed a common understanding as to the desirable broken-in status that clothes should have. Just saying.
#neverwantingtogobuyclothesinastore
Now that I am in my 3rd (4th?)(nth?) career, this one as an academic at the University of Maryland University College, I am lucky enough to be able to experience new events and learn new pieces of information.
One of the areas which has become apparent is the seemingly consistent relationship between the fragility of elderly grandparents, in particular grandmothers, of students around exam time.
Here is an article, from 1999, reprinted in a newsletter I very much enjoy reading called the Conversable Economist, which explains what is meant by this relationship and provides an explanation for why it happens.
Since I wrote about the fact that I was going to see Batman v Superman on Sunday, a few people (to my amazement) actually asked what I thought about it. And since anytime I can talk about something that does not tie directly to the 2016 Presidential race is a happy place for me, I thought I would write a short set of comments. BTW, no guarantee about spoilers since when I write a blog entry it is almost always complete stream of consciousness and anyway since so few people read it, it doesn’t matter a lot anyway.
The short answer is I liked it. It was not the greatest movie I have ever seen, but on the other hand it is based on a comic book and I grew up being a comic book fan.
A few reactions:
Bottom line was that I thought the movie was worth seeing, was not as awful as the critics said, but considering its source material was not going to have a life-changing plot line. To be honest, however while there have been some comic book based movies I enjoyed more and some less, few (if any) are movies that I am particularly interested in seeing more than once (my bottom line for movies I really like, like Serenity).