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Cavern News
With Rik and Paal talking about jobs in their life thread, I figured I'd start one and try to fish for some job luck [:p]
So I'll make this short for further reference: I'm a drop-out math graduate, figured after a year of research that it wasn't my world at all - I wouldn't have the seriousness it takes if my life depended on it. However, over the year there (McGill Univ, Montreal) I did some college teaching (in our school system, that means diff/integral calculus, vectors/matrices, basic engineering calculus and intro to simple differential equations; 14ish grade ±1) and I had a real blast doing it. So I'm back in my good old Quebec City's Laval university getting a college teaching certificate. Job fishing in Montreal didn't really go well because all their colleges require a master's degree and experience, and then they will only give you part-time replacement jobs for years. I didn't like Montreal enough to go for that. Hopefully I can find myself a nice quiet place to settle down with a permanent job in the years to come. |
Now enough with the melodrama.
When I came back from Montreal my brother dared me to grow a Hulk Hogan 1988 royal rumble type of moustache. Short of anything better to wage, he promised me his respect. http://www.civduelzone.com/forum/upl...2319_HOGAN.jpg 88.89KB I STILL do not have his respect, though. On an unrelated note, yesterday I took my year's first bike ride to the sugar shack. 46km total, loaded with the beer (going) and full with the beer (coming back) took me 3 hours, so this is nowhere near the kind of times I want to pull on my trip to Florida, but it shows hope. I also hit a parked car while checking up on my gears and brakes before leaving my place. I have a nearly fist large bruise on my chest, it's really funny. |
Ah McGill. Did you know that they are the #1 school for Space Law? And yes there really is such a discipline :). Its actually kind of interesting.
Teaching is alright if you can get the students involved a bit. Ive been teaching a juco Criminal Justice class the last couple of semesters. It can be frustrating at times though. I have reiterated what a grand jury is and does 8 times, and they still have no clue :(. |
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I like the minority government - these make the best clean-up crews - and I'm glad for Dumont, but I'd wish it was much bluer around here ...
Teaching is really sweet when you participate in it. When you keep by the books it becomes sterile and tedious really quickly, and to not blurt it out mechanically it needs more motivation, time and efforts than most teachers care for. During the fall semester, even though I took classes of my own, the only thing I could think about was how I'd present the next lecture I'd give - and that's motivation for you. |
I stumbled upon this in the news:
http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/ph...bear070813.jpg http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/...r.html?ref=rss A polar bear has decided that it liked the heat of North West Territories. Heat as in 15°C during the summer, -50°C in the winter. It's much warmer than the arctic ocean's coast, still. Makes you wonder what brought her there. Maybe menopause. Anyways the summer is coming to an end and despite the hayfever, it feels much better now that it's windy in the day and cold at night. I passed the 1900 km mark and will probably hit 2000 next week-end for the annual (65km + 40km round trip getting there) ride with the math dpt around the Orléans Island. Hopefully I can double that, next summer, if I can keep away from injury. I just might reach 3000 this year - I definitely will beat 2500. Last year I did 1500 but I wasn't half as well geared up, and I had a car for most of the average-long runs I do on bike now. So I'll be having an internship at a local college and I like the mentor teacher they paired me with. Simple, genuine, raw and most of all he loves his job. One thing he told me, which I found really interesting and to which more people here will relate than the math and the biking, is that there were once (years ago, in the US) serious recommendations from (at least one, probably among others) a university sociology study to reform the university professor recruiting and teaching system. While the core of researchers that essentially form the current university professorate (sp, ww?), there could be 2 other classes of professors, namely scholars and educators. All 3 would do a little bit of lower, higher teaching and research, but they'd have distinctions in tasks. Educators would be Ph.D's in their discipline with the desire to teach. They would handle most, if not all, undergraduate courses and study projects. They'd be in charge of program committees and student activities. Scholars would act as an in-between class, ideally being low-profile researchers with varied interests and good networking. They would give most high-level graduate seminars and be able to participate in both undergrad teaching and graduate research. In a word, they would consolidate the gap between educators and researchers, giving graduate seminars as much for educators as for the grad pupils. This all would leave plenty of room for researching professors to do what they are in a university to do: research and development. Now, a lot of current professors wouldn't see themselves as a clear-cut example of either one - some researchers would see scholar status as a downgrade, or some others wouldn't give up teaching to keep researching. Anyways, the pool of professors required as educators and scholars is actually limited, once some wear that hat and spend their work time in classrooms giving and attending seminars. This system is far from perfect; especially from a researcher's point of view, but from a student's perspective it would greatly decrease the mind-boggle associated with climbing the ropes of a department through hostile professors who don't want to bother teaching and zealous researchers who don't think your development as a student/researcher is worth their research time. I do think that it makes sense for departments to just open their minds to subclasses of professors that aren't meant to be prime researchers but rather educators or consolidating scholars would benefit everyone. It does happen, but in the Uni's I've seen in Canada, it's far from the norm. |
I need help with this one, the Idaho senator and his gay scandal thing:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/0...s.html?ref=rss Is the scandal because: - he is a gay republican? - he is a gay senator? - he is a gay american? - he denies being gay despite being 'proven' so? - he made advances to a cop? - he made advances to another male, at all? - he is a gay rights basher that made gay advances? If it was just for me, I'd say the scandal was that a cop was following him, undercover, in hopes of teasing him enough to receive gay advances. But that wouldn't make him resign would it. |
Yes, the scandal is that he's a republican that does not support gay marriage, but pleaded guilty to seeking lewd behavior (with a man) in a public restroom. Hypocritical, absolutely. Strikes down the whole Republican stance against gay marriage? Absolutely not. One bad apple does not represent every other apple.
Gay senator....wouldn't be a scandal I think, except that he's a republican. Gay american....nothing scandelous there as there are millions of them. Denying being gay....yeah, he's an idiot. He was caught red handed. Remember, if he were a Democrat he'd have a wonderful chance of being reelected over and over and possibly being the chairman of a rather important Senate subcommittee. Not an asinine statement btw, there are several democrat senators/congressman currently that prove this. |
I thought he had a good chance of beating the rap. He didnt do anything tremendously overt:
"My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall," the officer said in his report. The senator then tapped his right foot, "a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct," Karsnia wrote, and Craig ran his left hand several times underneath the partition dividing the stalls. "The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot, which was within my stall area," the officer's report said. When the police interviewed him later, the senator said that "he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom" and that was why his foot may have touched the officer's, the report said. Craig also told police that he had reached down to the floor to pick up a piece of paper, the officer wrote. "It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper," Karsnia wrote. "During the interview, Craig either disagreed with me or 'didn't recall' the events as they happened." After Craig ran his hand underneath the partition wall three times, Karsnia held his police identification down by the floor so the senator could see it, the report said. "With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, 'No!' "I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet," Karsnia wrote. The senator initially resisted the officer's request to go to the police operations center, he said, but finally did. There, he was read his Miranda rights, interviewed, photographed, fingerprinted and released, the report said. ---- He didnt hire a lawyer (dumb), he interviewed with the police (dumb), and then plead guilty without even a hearing (dumb)? I dont know gay bathroom stall protocol, but it would be pretty easy to attack the officer on his "experience" in this kind of thing and get it bounced either in a hearing or in front of a jury. |
So Craig is just an idiot in your opion, one which I'll echo. Although I'm not striking down the possibility of this guy being bi, but will save that full judgment for someone else. Maybe Tubby can help us out with the gay protocol thing?
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Double echo the idiot part, I mean, he's a senator, he absolutely should know better than to open the door to let them all bash his head. Alright, nothing worse than that. Makes you wonder why it made the front page of the BBC news feed. Ah! Americans ... [:p] |
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Craig is pretty much this month's Ted Haggard. An in-your-face, antigay, super religous by day, seeks it in-the-rear by night hypocrite. Seems like the most vocal of these antigay "advocates" always get caught doing the thing they rail against [lol]
I think, from now on, I'll just assume that the ones that are pushing these nonsense bills instead of dealing with the real issues facing the country are really just trying to make-up for thier own "bad" behavior. It's almost like they think that if they push antigay legislation while still being gay, that thier god will be ok with them. |
Our congress makes our athletes look like choir boys.
Other than Tubby, who knew about the tap a foot thing? Going to the bathroom in an airport will never be the same for me....or page boy or how the head of the Commerce Committee believes the internet is a series of tubes. [:p] This is a bit dated but here's some of the others in congress. Nice crew and really, really dumb. 29 have been accused of spousal abuse 7 have been arrested for fraud 19 have been accused of writing bad checks 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses 3 have done time for assault 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges 8 have been arrested for shoplifting 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year |
[mouth][aargh]
I can understand the bad checks, bankruptcy and credit - they're human beings. A shame they are running your country though [col] As for lawsuits, the first slanted word must provoke a lawsuit when you're a public face in the US, so I'm ok with that. Spousal abuse, fraud, assault, drugs, thievery, DUI ?!!! That's anywhere from 84 to 165 (there are most likely cross-overs, though I definitely expect the actual total to be over 120) elected officials I wouldn't want to live in the block of. No wonder I heard some Texans keep their grain silos filled with weapons to overthrow the government in case they go berzerk. |
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For all the Wesley Willis fans out there, someone made an awesome tool for unearthing his genius out of the grave:
http://www.monzy.org/wesley/ An excerpt: Paal will drown in SPAM by Wesley Willis You are a spam star. You can really rock your ass off. You can really jam harder like a magicist. Paal will drown in SPAM is very special to me. PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! You are the best in the long run. You can really rock your ass off. Right on brother. Paal will drown in SPAM is the best. PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! PAAL WILL DROWN IN SPAM!!! Paal will drown in SPAM really whoops a donkey's ass. You are my special spam. You really whoop a llama's ass. You really whoop a llama's ass. Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties - breakfast of champions. |
LMAO, that's funny. Here's my rendition:
You can really rock your ass off. You really whoop a llama's ass. I like Latino curves a lot. You really whoop a llama's ass. LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! You can really jam harder like a magicist. You are a hippaliscious star. You are my special hippaliscious. I like you well. LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! LATINO CURVES!!! You really whoop Saddam Hussein's ass. You really whoop a llama's ass. Latino curves is the best. You really whoop a snow lepoard's ass. Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. The heartbeat of America - that's today's Chevrolet. |
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The thing that Craig did wrong was trying to solict sex with someone other than his wife. He launched into the homosexual nonsense to try and provide some cover. His strong Gay/anit-gay declerations are merely to disguise the issue that he tried to in essence hire a hooker. And then he plead guilty to the deed, trying to make it go away. This is a monumental error. As a leader, when you screw up, you got to make it right, not just try and be right. I would make him resign, for two reasons. 1) for increasing hate mongering against homosexuals, 2) for being a law-breaking dumbass. If he wanted sex where no one would know him from Adam, Minneapolis is the 2nd gayest US city after San Fran. 5-7 blocks from the airport is the club scene for the gays, more than 4 city blocks of anonymous hookups. He was just dumb as toast. I am not advocating this kind of behavior, but by following the established, and legal protocol he could have avoided the two things that he should resign for. I am still adamently against homosexuality, I just want no one to use fear to beat a vice, I would rather use faith and reason. My 2 cents |
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...FcTeiB58cfy6Uw
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Paal
by Wesley Willis I love you a lot in the long run. You can really rock it out. I love you a lot in the long run. You are a spam star. PAAL!!! PAAL!!! PAAL!!! PAAL!!! You are a spam star. Paal really whoops a donkey's ass. You are the best in the long run. I like you well. PAAL!!! PAAL!!! PAAL!!! PAAL!!! You are a spam star. Paal is excellent. Paal is the best. Paal really whoops a donkey's ass. Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Pontiac - we build excitement. |
The 2007 IG nobels are out!!
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2007 The site cannot always support the traffic right after the competition is held, so you may need to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...e_winners#2007 for a summary. So, that thing with jap and dutch backwards ... I just can't picture the guy getting that idea. Wow. |
With the whole "American creed" debate over there, I came to wonder: am I 'tagged' as more of an American, a Canadian (if there is such a thing as recognizing Canada, let alone Québec, as an entity ;)) or do I blend in the bunch without much notice since Canada is a weenie country and I play C3C, which most have let down? It was out of topic there so I figured I'd post it here...
And while I'm at it, for the lazy ones who didn't click the link, here's the winners of this year - the viagra hamster and dutch rats I really liked. The 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Winners The 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday night, October 4, at the 17th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was webcast. MEDICINE: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects." REFERENCE: "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects," Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer, British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, vol. 333, pp. 1285-7. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer PHYSICS: L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled. REFERENCES: "Wrinkling of an Elastic Sheet Under Tension," E. Cerda, K. Ravi-Chandar, L. Mahadevan, Nature, vol. 419, October 10, 2002, pp. 579-80. "Geometry and Physics of Wrinkling," E. Cerda and L. Mahadevan, Physical Review Letters, fol. 90, no. 7, February 21, 2003, pp. 074302/1-4. "Elements of Draping," E. Cerda, L. Mahadevan and J. Passini, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 101, no. 7, 2004, pp. 1806-10. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca's sister Mariela. BIOLOGY: Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night. REFERENCES: "Huis, Bed en Beestjes" [House, Bed and Bugs], J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, vol. 116, no. 20, May 13, 1972, pp. 825-31. "Het Stof, de Mijten en het Bed" [Dust, Mites and Bedding]. J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk Vakblad voor Biologen, vol. 53, no. 2, 1973, pp. 22-5. "Autotrophic Organisms in Mattress Dust in the Netherlands," B. van de Lustgraaf, J.H.H.M. Klerkx, J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Acta Botanica Neerlandica, vol. 27, no. 2, 1978, pp 125-8. "A Bed Ecosystem," J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Lecture Abstracts -- 1st Benelux Congress of Zoology, Leuven, November 4-5, 1994, p. 36. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk CHEMISTRY: Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin -- vanilla fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung. REFERENCE: "Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction," Mayu Yamamoto, International Medical Center of Japan. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Mayu Yamamoto PRESS NOTE: Toscanini's Ice Cream, the finest ice cream shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a new ice cream flavor in honor of Mayu Yamamoto, and introduced it at the Ig Nobel ceremony. The flavor is called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist." LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. REFERENCE: "Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats," Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: The winners could not travel to the ceremony, so they instead delivered their acceptance speech via recorded video LITERATURE: Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order. REFERENCE: "The Definite Article: Acknowledging 'The' in Index Entries," Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119-22. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Glenda Browne PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other. REFERENCE: "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals," Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994. NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup. REFERENCE: "Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake," Brian Wansink, James E. Painter and Jill North, Obesity Research, vol. 13, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 93-100. REFERENCE: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink, Bantom Books, 2006, ISBN 0553804340. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Brian Wansink. ECONOMICS: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for patenting a device, in the year 2001, that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them. REFERENCE: U.S. patent #6,219,959, granted on April 24, 2001, for a "net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately." NOTE: The Ig Nobel Board of Governors has attempted repeatedly to find Mr. Hsieh, but he seems to have vanished mysteriously. [Breaking news: Mr. Hsieh reportedly has seen a news account of the Ig Nobel ceremony, and contacted the news agency. Details soon.] AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. REFERENCE: "Sildenafil Accelerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules," Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Diego A. Golombek |
THIS JUST IN: I have now officially applied for math teaching jobs, and been denied such, at every college in the Quebec City area. Each one found me witty, funny, qualified, said I had enough experience and they all had better candidates. So I guess it boils down to either licking more ass or widening my search. Sending more resumes now ...
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Well, I got my current job at the moment that I was desperately wandering from agency to agency. So no reason to despair. ;)
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Come to Germany. As far as I know, they desperately look for math teachers here...
Maybe you don't need to widen your search area as wide as Matrix did... |
Too many math teachers? Who would've thought that could actually happen...
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So many of us trying for teaching? I'm currently trying for Maths or Physics, but teaching adults. I'm now at the point that I need teaching work to do the qualification, but can't get the work without the qualification. Got an interview next week although only part time, so fingers crossed.
Best of luck with your attempts. |
Likewise Furiey.
Mein Deutch ist nicht genung klar yetzt doch ich will probieren ;) |
Sehr gut. Du hast Potenz!
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Finding job takes time. IMO, finding a teaching job in college is very hard. I save sent a large fraction of my applications to colleges (and undergraduate universities) for a total of about 200. Not a single one of them worked. I got a few phone interviews and that was all. It seems, I am overqualified for college teaching. Besides, they don't give you any money to start with which makes these jobs less attractive.
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Now Master Beorn and Prof Beorn all in a week. Exciting slash drunk times ahead :)
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Don't drown to many brain cells at once ;)
Congratulations |
Congratulations!
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Well done!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch! |
Congratulations! [drunks1] [beer1] [drunks1]
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Awesome! :)
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