Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

One of my (many) favorite films is The Usual Suspects. The cast is superb, the story twisty, but it is all based on the concept of an unreliable narrator.  I have seen a few other such films (Rashomon is in its own category) and read several novels using this technique. It is deeply unsettling, to me at least, to have entered a narrative that I know is fictional and have willingly suspended my belief only to find that I have been thoroughly misled. My consent to believe in the story has been abused on some level. It is a fact of life that outside of explicit fiction we rely on unreliable narrators 24/7. The people I have learned to trust over decades of reliability still only share their perspective on events, while folk on the internet trying to sell me things often are at the other extreme. There is no way for sentient beings to tell some kind of absolute truth because ultimately that requires omniscience which I believe to be the province of God and God alone. Absolute skepticis...

1) Long Island seems bigger when driving because you never drive at the speed limit for more than a minute before hitting another traffic jam. 2) Libertarians have lousy roads. 3) COVID protective gear (yellow paper gown, purple gloves) while visiting care facilities clashes with my eyes but we do what we must. 4) There is no moisture in the air on the east coast north of Delaware. (I've seen the ocean but it is being very selfish.) 5) There is no whinier being alive than a powerful person (e.g. Giuliani, Trump) being held accountable for their actions. 6) My kids are far better human beings than I expected them to turn out to be given that they are my kids.

There have been two activities that I've done for multiple years where I have been responsible for informing someone that their application has been accepted or rejected. The first was during the twelve years cumulatively that I served as department chair. I did not have the sole responsibility for full-time applications, which went through a departmental committee and then with our recommendations were judged by the dean, who had the power to hire. (I did have that power when hiring adjuncts, with a much more informal process.)  Ultimately it fell to me to call with the decision when it was a rejection; the dean would make the offer to hire. The second came years later when I started chairing a committee that was responsible for minicourse offerings at national meetings. Following the method of my predecessor I asked my committee to review the proposals and then reported back a summary of their recommendations leading to a slate. It then fell to me to write (email) the proposers a...

Of course I can only comment on what they mean to me; the thorniness of the question comes from its subjectivity.  It has been decades since I was on the receiving end so I shall only comment on giving them. For me, having taught full-time for over 34 years, the grades are categories into which I have historically been comfortable sorting students into based on their performance in my classes. I offer a good deal of assessment (weekly and monthly) of different kinds (computation problems sets, essay exams) and yet I view my assessment as a form of statistical sampling of student performance, mindful of all the noise (a roommate needing to go the ER the night before an exam, etc.) that affects measurement of student performance. In particular I do not feel as if my estimate has the precision to justify +/- grades but follow the system that is part of our culture.  We did not have +/- grades when I began and I was pretty comfortable with the five categories (Excellent, Good, Ave...

If you read the summary of the Ethics Committee report on Santos it was clearly unsustainable for him to continue as he did, particularly the credit card fraud leading to massive ill-well toward him. A very self-destructive individual. For me the biggest lesson from his congressional career is that we need to support local news reporting much more. It is not the responsibility of the voters to do background checks on candidates; we rely on journalists to help us to validate candidates in a free society. I continue to subscribe to my local newspaper that has in the past done a good job of covering the state government. They are diminished by business losses but the context and insight they provide are far superior to any video reporting I've seen.