The Curmudgeon Speaks

I started what I call my living room garden in November of 2020 as a project to work on during the COVID pandemic. I have been interested in school gardens for years and was exploring what I saw as an option classes could use during the school year. Too often, school gardens are left with out a gardner during the summer months.

I just planted a crop I hope will be the last in my continuous streak of having the garden in operation. We hope to spend time in Hawaii in a few months to avoid the worst of the Minnesota winters. I would have to shut the garden down when no one would be around to keep it going.

The garden in the house ended up being useful even when my outside garden was available. I could grow lettuce during the heat of the summer and tomatoes during the winter and into the spring before plants in the garden would produce.

The following images may offer a perspective useful if you wonder just what this looks like. The first image shows the garden, a mature lettuce crop, and a younger lettuce planting. The lighting can be adjusted as plants grow and to accommodate plants that need more room (e.g., tomatoes). The second image shows what the newest planting (herbs) looks like. The plastic jugs to either side of the garden hold water that is siphoned into the gardens when we are not around. Plants use a lot more water than you might guess.

Worried your Twitter feed is dominated by those with political beliefs similar to your own? The Polarization Lab has set up bots that will relay tweets from politicians and journalists with opposing beliefs that are supposed to balance out your own biases.

This is an interesting approach based on research from the Lab that claims becoming aware of the position of others can moderate your own. I think there is an important difference between understanding the positions taken by those whom I find to think very differently from the way I do. I have studied work on argumentation and I know that those arguing different positions tend to write/speak more in substantiating their own positions than addressing the positions and supporting evidence taken by others. Tbere are so many issues on which my values leave me wondering just what could justify positions taken the oppose these values and I have been identifying the tweets forwarded by the bot just to see if justifications are included. So far, I have not found what I am looking for, but I will continue to try. I also have taken the proactive step of asking for justifications, but my requests are usually ignored.

This approach should interest others who care about social media and wonder whether there is hope for meaningful discussion of issues.

I can understand why a candidate for Governor might want to make public education a central issue. Teachers are drastically underpaid in many states, schools are underfunded, the gap in achievement between kids coming from poor and wealthy families is increasing, etc. However, when a candidate focuses on a vague and pretty much made-up issue such as critical race theory, even a very pro-public education person like me must just shake his head. A perspective has been falsely translated from the training in law schools because it has a scary sound to many white Republicans to issues such as the topics of history class and the selection of literature in English. At least, forget CRT and decide if you are against denying slavery and want to ban books by recognized scholars. Such topics are less important than the discussion of the Common Core and Modern Math and I am guessing voters have little clue what these topics involve either.

The Wall Street Journal has generated content based on the documents the whistleblower has offered. Reporters have done the work of reviewing these documents and offering summaries. Here are links to two such summaries – one in text and the other a series of podcast episodes. The full podcast series is unique to Spotify so you may not be able to find it with your favorite podcatcher.

Podcast

Facebook files

Facebook has some obvious problems and now frequently draws the attention of politicians and news sources describing how Facebook spreads tainted information and stokes negative emotions. There are things any user can do to limit personal damage. The first would be to be aware that Facebook feeds our personal biases to increase our engagement and time spent in order to show us more ads. In other words, we are complicit in the damage that Facebook does, but awareness offers the opportunity to limit the damage.

I have recommended my personal strategies before, but here is a quick review. First, I limit my purpose for using Facebook. My focus is on political discussion. Yours might be on sharing with family. Mixing the two is probably not a good idea. There are plenty of social media services you can use for other purposes. Second, understand that Facebook learns your biases from your actions – what you post, like, comment. I try to respond rarely and do so mostly by providing comments. The easy, mindless likes give away too much information for little value. Avoid all of those silly requests for input such as identifying a dog name that does not contain an A. Third, I friend quality news sources and not just people. If you use Facebook to keep up with the happenings in the world, it is probably best to do more than tap into the biases of your friends. Select some solid news sources to broaden your perspective (e.g., New York Times). In the search box where you might occasionally search for people, enter the names of news sources you trust. Friend these sources. Finally, I don’t block people no matter how much they irritate me. Inane comments are a reminder that Facebook is not about factual information and it is helpful to be constantly reminded.

You can limit the damage done by the Facebook algorithm. Switch your feed to “Most recent” so you get the input from all of your sources arranged by time and this will eliminate the prioritization of the news feed by the algorithm. You may have to search a bit, but “Most Recent” should appear somewhere in the left side column (on a computer) of the Facebook display.

Here is an interesting hack you might explore. There is a way to arrange the Newsfeed on the fly. Use this link to connect to Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr instead of your normal link. You should be able to evaluate whether you are seeing a chronological list rather than an algorithmically controlled list by the dates/times associated with the posts in your feed.

Mask mandates have resulted in contentious interactions among parents often boiling over at school board meetings. Video from news stations has portrayed physical confrontations as parents attack administrators and other parents claiming their children have a right not to wear a mask.

The “side” being most aggressive in this battle kind of surprised me. I thought it most logical parents seeing masks as a way to protect their kids would be most demanding. I have long thought that resistance to a mask mandate given the scientific data on the value of masks would eventually result in legal action taken against organizations unwilling to require this protection. This story from NPR describes how Wisconsin parents with some assistance are now taking action in the way I predicted.

For those of us lucky enough to live in a northern state, the mention of Fall colors generates a consistent response. The phrase brings up images of colorful leaves decorating beautiful hillsides. I was at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market yesterday and realized there was an equally colorful option.

I saw this guys for three straight days working in the same trail head parking lot. You can’t see it very well in this image, but his jeep is equipped with solar panels and a satellite antenna. I finally decided I needed to have a conversation.

“Is that a satellite antenna on your roof”, I asked.”It is for Star Link”, he responded.”I have seen you working here for three days”, I said. “I am guessing you are a writer or a programmer”.”Software engineer”, he said.

I have heard both job titles and I am not certain how they are different.

I asked whether he had worked remotely for long and he said that this has been the case for a while. I said I had heard about people who lived the digital nomad life style, but he was the first I had met. He said he likes the combination. He said he is based in Colorado, but was working his way across the country to Maryland to visit friends. I asked whether he worked as an independent or for a company and he replied that he was employed by a company that let him work in this way.

He looks like my stereotype of a programmer. When I asked about his vehicle he said that it was has “latest build”. What a programmer thing to say.

Another of the cool experiences you have on the road.

Four Seasons

I am a fan of a location that allows you to experience all four seasons. The same temps and same look year round just seems boring. This is not to say that some seasons are not more enjoyable than others. If you have four seasons, you have winter and winter in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin get long, cold, and dark. I do cheat a bit and bug out towards the end of January to spend a couple of months in Hawaii. I see this as the reward for growing old and being able to take such liberties.

Fall is my favorite. The temps are cool and the air seems pure without the higher humidity of summer. These are perfect conditions for me as heat and I are not on good terms. This is the season of harvests and brilliant color. I enjoy taking photos of the leaves even though they likely look about the same as last year. Great colors against blue skies and reflected in still ponds and lakes. Others agree. A friend of ours wanted to schedule a business trip to Duluth/Superior last weekend and was unable to book a motel/hotel room in the area – too many tourists wanting to take in the peak of leaf season.

We are camping this week in order to explore the same area. Campgrounds are full despite most parks shutting off the water to campsites and closing toilets. Camping without hookups would not be my preference, but we are self-contained and can deal with most inconveniences. This will be the last trip of the season and it will be time to get the camper winterized. 

I am cross-posting this to my travel blog [https://grabetravels.blogspot.com) because I am traveling We are camped for a few days at Copper Falls State park which is fairly close to our lake home in Wisconsin. Various leaf photos are likely to follow as well as whatever else we can find. Just sitting around the fire this evening reading Wolfman written by our friend Stan Trollip. 

We had an interesting weekend with our friend Stanley Trollip. Stanley was a colleague of mine at UND and we worked together in getting UND to develop a graduate program in Instructional Design. Stan is one of the most interesting people I know and he seems capable of so many different things having moved through multiple careers. In my own retirement, I continue doing many of the same things I have always done with my hobbies related to my interests in education and educational technology.

In contrast, Stan, who is originally from South Africa, has taken up writing crime fiction. He has a series of books with colleague Michael Sears set in the south of Africa. The pair writes as Michael Stanley.

Like rock musicians, writers evidently have a strong urge to do things on their own. Stan has just finished a solo effort – Wolfman. This book is a crime novel set in Northern Minnesota.

Stan was visiting us at our northern Wisconsin cabin and we decided to visit independent bookstores in the region to see if they would stock his book. The idea came from a Duluth Herald article (you are probably blocked) reviewing works by regional authors.

I don’t write fiction and I had never thought about the strategies of promotion that apply. I have watched Stan do book talks at bookstores, but visiting bookstores was something different. The strategy seemed to work pretty well. One store had read the review and already had books on order. One store bought a couple of books from Stan (signed). The other store was being staffed by someone without the authority to make purchases. Independent book store folks think way different from the mindset of academic publishers.