Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

I will be leaving in less than a week to go to a training course on the basics of being an ombudsperson. I have done the job at Elon as Faculty Ombudsperson for going on six years now, with another three-year term ahead of me. I don't feel insecure about my performance in the job but I am aware that I see far fewer cases per year than other ombudspeople, and it is good for me to refresh on the basics periodically. For such a course I am going to Miami for the first time. It is the nature of the trip that the days are very full with training; I have seen the agenda for this trip and there are no surprises. I will try to get away from the hotel for breakfast and dinner (lunch is provided) to see some of Miami but in my sixties I lack the energy to explore much after a day of work.

Our different experiences provide us all with different ways of assessing probabilities that are not axiomatic. (Axiomatic probability tells us that a fair coin comes up heads half the time. It is theoretical and not based on our experiences.)  If I know someone from work then I will have a sense of how likely it is that they will complete a task they have volunteered for. Their partner and children will have different estimates of the likelihood based on their different experiences with them.  We don't often discuss this nor do we often quantify our probability assessments but living in a world with other people requires that we make them. When someone tells me something happened that I deem (imperfectly, subjectively) to be unlikely I don't immediately believe them.  (Nor do I call them a liar to their face.)  I await evidence to shift my estimation.  If someone tells me that the sky is pink with green polka dots I will disbelieve them (and wonder what the jok...

Meta's AI used a pirated database (i.e. without any permissions) of writings for training. The Atlantic has broken a story about this that included a link to search the database. I'm in there at least twice ("Derivative Sign Patterns" and "Forgotten Statistics", the latter with Doug Downing).. I feel validated as a writer to have been plagiarized by an evil billionaire to further his social media empire.

The Memory Palace podcast often finds ways to articulate values about how we use history in our lives that I feel very strongly about but can not put into words. This is a heartfelt defense of keeping the T in LGBT with respect to the Stonewall riot. pca.st/episode/6506...

I'm always nervous using the phrase "old friends" because of how the ambiguity is often used to joke about the age of the friends. I am in my sixties though and have some friendships that began in my twenties so I think the phrase is the best descriptor. One of the members of my department who retired some years ago was the chair when I was hired and I count him as one of my mentors. I know me and how things happen by inertia and decided that I didn't want to drift apart from him as a friend when he retired and asked if he would like to meet for a lunch on a monthly basis to keep up. Both of us being morning people we quickly moved it to a breakfast meeting.  My friend and I started meeting monthly in 2008 and have yet to miss a month. Some of the things that made my friend a good mentor also make him a good friend; he is attentive and remembers things I have said years later. He is good-humored even in times of adversity, and we share a lot of values that make it pos...

My wife and I discovered years ago that it was a useful preventative for us to compare calendars on a regular basis. We both have active professional and personal lives, and particularly with hour-long commutes for both of us and two children and their scheduling it was good to double-check that we weren't missing anything.  Our children have moved out but it is still helpful to compare calendars. My wife and I have noticed thought that in our fifties and sixties the majority of events seems to be shifting toward medical appointments; thankfully most are preventative. My wife had retinal surgery last month and visits related to it; I go in for a colonoscopy today. There are many pleasures to aging; I do find more joy in things, find people easier to understand and accept with each passing day. My children have turned out to be people that I not only love (pretty much a given) but also respect greatly and like a whole lot. That was not a given. Still, at this point more and more of ...

I recently lost an election. It was for a position in a professional organization and I felt that it was a good fit with my background. I don't know much about the candidate who won, just their short bio that was included with the ballot. Seems like a good person to have the job overall. I've had more than my share of opportunities to serve in this organization, and so I am sad but I do not feel that I have earned much of a right to complain. It does make me reflect on the leadership positions that I have held throughout my career. It's been more than a few, with many of them being appointments rather than elections or resulting from elections from within a small group. As an introvert I suspect that I am not good at presenting myself to a general audience for their backing, but that folk who know my record are willing to give me more responsibility. There have been two leadership positions that I have held of some responsibility that came to me when I thought that opportun...

I arrived today in San Diego for a conference. I love the look of the city and the drive from the airport to the hotel was glorious.