Truly random thoughts #49

Truly random thoughts #50

It is said that the sign of intelligence is learning from other people’s mistakes. If that is true then there are no intelligent socialists. 

It really is weird to be the same age as old people.

Those people who said that Trump is using tariffs as a bargaining cudgel were right in round one. Mexico and Canada have agreed to strengthen their borders and Trump has agreed to delay the tariff threat by one month. What happens then?

Trump is a bully. Even the Ontario prime minister called him that. Would Trump really plunge us into an international trade war if someone called his bluff? Probably.

Tofu is a food-like substance.

Trump’s press secretary really roiled things up by calling all illegals criminals.

I still say that Biden should have pardoned Trump.

BTW if an illegal commits a crime it seems strange to deport them rather than putting them in jail. Won’t they just sneak back in and commit more crimes?

Speaking of roiling things up, when the Army did not disclose the name of the third person on the Blackhawk helicopter that crashed into the American Airlines jet at Washington Reagan, speculation ran rampant that the person must have been a woman and that Trump would blame DEI. Indeed, the pilot was a woman and true to form Trump blamed DEI. He also blamed DEI for any air controller error. In so doing, he has caused large swaths of whites to assert DEI for any black or any woman in any position of authority. Surely, the women he appointed are not DEI hires. Sometimes I wish he would just shut up.

Speaking of DEI, I was once asked “How did you get to UT?” Of course I could have said “I drove.” But instead I said that I was walking down the street and was stopped by a guy claiming to be the business school dean who said “Can you spell “finance”?” I said yes and he said “Could you come teach it at UT?” And that’s how I got here.

What do you call a vegan gluten-free, no salt, fake meat burger? Compost.

Someone pointed out to me that in Oregon cocaine is legal but straws aren’t. I guess the junkies have now established a black market for straws.

It has always puzzled me that our institutions of higher learning have license plate holders that say “alumni”. I am always tempted to say to the driver, “I see that both you and your spouse went to the university.” The response is usually, “No, I went there. She went to Blah-Blah.” If that were then case then his license plate holder should say “alumnus” not “alumni”. The only schools that get this right are Morehouse alumnus and Spelman alumna. Isn’t it strange that only two HBCUs are the ones that know the correct Latin?

Trump is a bull in a china shop (boy I could get some milage out of that one). He proposed moving the Palestinians out of Gaza and into neighboring Arab countries. The Arabs went berserk. The Arabs have made it clear that they do not want them and all the problems that they bring. Egypt has barred them from entry. Jordan views them as destabilizing. Sad but there is really no place for them to go.

I told my students (yes I am back in the classroom after 13 years) that I don’t give multiple choice/true false exams even though this class is twice the size of any undergraduate class I taught in my 25 years at UT. I told them that because of that their grades were going to be lower but they will learn more and they if that bothered them to drop the course. Seven did. 

I found much to my surprise that I have missed teaching – although it will screw up my turkey hunting. However, I don’t miss it enough to do it again. This is a one off, Done as a favor to the department head. No way I could have done this is the fall and missed deer season. I said years ago that I would not be one of those doddering old coots wandering around college campuses because they had no life outside the university. Yet here I am.

Growing old at the university. When I first started, in response to something I said, students would say “My brother does that.” Later it was “My father does that.” Much later it was “My grandfather does that.” Now its “My grandfather did that when he was alive.”