Archive for re-post
Whining
Back in 2013 I wrote:
Unless they mean it humorously, when people utter this phrase – “but I’m not complaining” – they are *always* complaining; i.e., they are expressing “pain, grief, or discontent.” What these sad and/or irritated individuals mean to say is this: “But I’m not whining.” That is, they are not complaining in a petulant, feeble, long-lasting, or high-pitched manner. Nonetheless, they *are* whining, usually, despite their protests of innocence, aren’t they?
I felt I needed to come up with a formula to get my insight across: “If you complain about the same thing three times in a row, no other significant topic intervening, then you are in fact whining.”
With the pandemic, it has become almost impossible to interrupt one’s complaints with other topics. For example, my partner lives in the United States and we can’t cross the border to see one another. The “pain” and “discontent,” if not the “grief,” is continual. On the few occasions I am not talking about it, others are asking me about it.
So therefore, a new formula: Whining = just fine.
“Intimate supervision”: Surveillance on campus
This Washington Post report – holy crap:
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health. …
Instead of GPS coordinates, the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points to piece together students’ movements from dorm to desk. One company that uses school WiFi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 location data points per student every day.
School and company officials call location monitoring a powerful booster for student success: If they know more about where students are going, they argue, they can intervene before problems arise. But some schools go even further, using systems that calculate personalized “risk scores” based on factors such as whether the student is going to the library enough.
The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed.
cross-posted from nocontest.ca
h/t Clarissa
Simpleness
My recipe for making people happy:
- Tell parents that their infant is beautiful.
- Tell neighbours that their dog is beautiful.
- Tell children that their bikes are fantastic.
Facebook friends append some ingredients to my recipe:
- “Little kids also like to know that you love their sneakers.” (thanks to S.M.)
- “Also, tell them their lemonade is good. Buy a second cup.” (thanks to @bfwriter)
If you can’t exaggerate …
The renowned and divisive Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller would tell this little story about an exchange he had with the great Niels Bohr:
Some of us, including Bohr, were having a discussion about the spectrum and states of molecular oxygen. Bohr had some opinions, the details of which I have now forgotten, but which were in obvious conflict with the facts that were known. In this special detailed case, I knew the situation and tried to explain it. Unfortunately I could not do so to Bohr’s satisfaction.
He began his objection: “Teller, of course, knows a hundred times more about this than I.” With a lack of politeness occasionally seen among twenty-year-olds, I interrupted (with some difficulty): “That is an exaggeration.”
Bohr instantly stopped and stared at me. After a pause, he declared, “Teller says I am exaggerating. Teller does not want me to exaggerate. If I cannot exaggerate, I cannot talk. All right. You are right, Teller. You know only ninety-nine times more than I do.” He then proceeded with his original argument having dispensed with any possibility of further interruption.
I have never forgotten, nor have I often neglected to mention, Bohr’s wisdom: *If you cannot exaggerate, you cannot talk.*
This is one of my favourite stories. (I’m with Bohr, surprise.)
- from Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, edited by A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy, Harvard U. Press, 1985.