It’s almost finals grading time, and perhaps this is how I should be grading my students’ work. But I’m not sure how to translate online work to this system. Perhaps I can get Jason to write some software to emulate the paper-tossing process.

Thinking of studying Japanese? A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a degree in Japanese Language and Literature
has some suggestions for you.

“I don’t care how many anime tapes you’ve watched, how many Japanese girlfriends you’ve had, or books you’ve read, you don’t know Japanese. Not only that, majoring in the godforsaken language is NOT fun or even remotely sensible. Iraqi war prisoners are often forced to major in Japanese. The term ‘Holocaust’ comes from the Latin roots ‘Holi’ and ‘Causm’, meaning ‘to major in Japanese’. You get the idea.”

I studied Japanese, and enjoyed it, but I understand quite well what he means when he says “You should just be ready for a whole lot of pain.”

(This entry is basically here to get Google to include the HUX group in its search results. So it’s not very entertainin’ readin’, sorry.)

My distance learning graduate school program, the Humanities External MA (HUX) at California State University, Dominguez Hills, supposedly has an online discussion group at the CSUDH website. However, that discussion forum hasn’t been functional in ages. So there is a Yahoo Group/mailing list for HUX students instead. It’s really, really useful. Since we’re all distance students, it can be incredibly isolating much of the time, and this group makes it easier for us. If you are a HUX student, or are interested in the HUX program, you might want to check it out.

(There. Now Google might index the HUX group. Lately it seems that I can’t get Google to include anything at all via direct submission, but if I link to something directly from Slumberland, that usually works.)

The Seattle Times ran an article in Sunday’s paper about my alma mater, The Evergreen State College. As usual, the school has a better reputation the further away from Olympia you get; Newsweek and the Princeton Review love it, but local idiots like KIRO’s Brian Maloney think of it as absolute evil, as quoted in the article: “‘What frustrates me is there has been no effort in this state to get a real debate going about why we have an Evergreen State College,’ he said. ‘It is a school built on political advocacy and one viewpoint.’” Uh huh. Yeah, Brian. They teach you to think at Evergreen. I can see why you might find that to be threatening.