Uncooperative Crickets

I am bummed that that Patriots lost. As I told Skye last night, the last time I was in a city with a professional sports team that competed for the national championship was 1991. I thought the Patriots could end that streak.

Skye hosted a football party for me, which was nice of her. I had a lot of fun, and there were good people there. I only regret that I didn't get to speak much to the roommate's brother and girlfriend.

There is a new vaccine on the market, Gardacil. This is a vaccine that could drastically reduce the spread of cervical cancer. Some right-wingers are against it because it might promote sexual activity ("I won't get cervical cancer, so I'll just sleep with anyone!"). I am not against the drug, but I am against the ad campaign. Their slogan is: "one less," as in "one less case of cerivical cancer." Those of you who are well-versed with my more annoying qualities can probably guess that I am taking issue with the grammar of the ad campaign; it should be "one fewer," rather than "one less." I guess that didn't test quite as well.

In other news, my semester is approximately three hours away from being done. We gave the final in both of my classes today, and we graded it. I also completely prepared the spreadsheet that calculates the grades. All we have to do now is to determine where the grade cutoffs will be.

I rewarded myself for a near end-of-semester with samosas and Studio 60, which was on again tonight. It was still good, and had a couple of really good moments. I don't remember what they are. I followed that up with an episode of the West Wing as an additional reward. It was one of the better episodes of season 4: "Game On," which is the one with presidential debate. Good stuff.

I'm on the lookout for more music like "An Honest Mistake" by the Bravery and "Break," by the Cinematics. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Skye sent me an article that I am trying to digest. This is one of the secondary issues on my backburner that I am interested in, but frankly I am way underqualified to say anything about it at this point.

Other online reading is by Jordan Ellenberg, who I want to claim as a colleague (he is at Wisconsin, although we missed each other by a year). He wrote an article on slate.com about grade inflation. Also, he apparently wrote a novel, which I would like to read.

"It's just a trick of the light, she says."

posted by Dirk Awesome @ 10:19 PM