One semester ends and another begins...

Spring semester classes were over as of last Tuesday (5/13) and the grades were due on Friday. I spent the better part of Wednesday and Thursday grading the last exams and most of Friday finalizing the grades. The grades have been available to the students since Saturday evening and I have only heard from two students. Fortunately, the reason they e-mailed me was to thank me for being such a good teacher.

Summer session started on Monday. I am teaching one class during the first 5-weeks (5/19-6/24) and hope to teach two during the second 5-weeks (6/25-7/29.) I would have taught 2 classes during the first session but my 8am International Relations class only had 6 students registered in it. Officially a class needs to have 10 students for the administration to let it run. The dean of my department will argue for keeping a class if it has 9, but 6 is just too few. Although that means I don't get to teach my favorite subject (and I lose out on the income) it's been nice to have a little more time to myself and my family in the morning after seminary.

Starting the lazy days of summer,
Brad

How many televisions do you have? UPDATED

We have reached the part of the semester where I turn the class over to the students for group presentations. One of the groups chose to present on the influence that television has had on presidential elections. An overall fine discussion including the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate and the 1964 "daisy" commercial:



Before the start of their presentation they polled the class to see how many TV sets each person had in their home. First they asked who had only one - and only Professor Young raised his hand. They then proceeded with "2 or more?", "3 or more?", etc. Most of the class still had their hands up at "6 or more?" The winner had twelve. Why does anyone need to have 6 TVs in his/her house?!?!

Well, without TV I would never have seen this:



Since all of my sibs normally agreed to watch Red Dwarf, I guess we really only needed one.

Still in a Britcom mood,
Brad

UPDATE: I've eliminated the embedded YouTube that had the "new" voice-over and replaced it with the one suggested by my wife in her comment.

Red Green & Politics...

I was first introduced to The Red Green show when I lived in british-comedy-friendly-saturday-night-pbs Utah. We only lost out to some station in Iowa when it came to supporting The Red Green show (even though it's Canadian - like the Royal Canadian Air Farce - not British.)

The British shows I came to know and love include:

'Allo 'Allo!
"listen carefully, I shall say this only once"

Fawlty Towers
"don't mention the war!"

Yes, [Prime] Minister
"Well, almost all government policy is wrong, but...frightfully well carried out."

Are You Being Served?
"And I am unanimous in that!"

Red Dwarf
"smeg-head"

Mr. Bean
"Christmas socks!"


and my personal favorite:

Blackadder
"Death and degredation stalk our land like two big stalking things."

So what the heck (did I mention I am from Utah?) does Red Green have to do with politics? First, it was the governing coalition that formed under Gerhardt Schroeder in Germany in 1998. Germany assigns colors to their political parties (similar to what we in the U.S. have done with our "Red State/Blue State" labeling.) Well, red is the color of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and green is the color of the Green Party (of course.) Which is why Europeans can't understand why we made the Republican states red when they make the left/socialist/communist parties red.



The second (and most important) thing Red Green has to do with politics comes from one of the political cartoon websites I used to frequent during graduate school - Iowa Presidential Watch. I was reviewing some of the old cartoons they had and found this one.

Being a conservative that has had major issues with John McCain since 2000, I was disappointed with the Republican primaries' results. However, I am pragmatic enough to easily accept the Conservative Man's Prayer and vote for McCain over either of the democrats.

Now that I've ranted about politics, feel free to post comments about your favorite Britcoms and episodes (Canadian shows accepted too.)

It's good my wife finds me handsome 'cause I'm certainly not handy,
Brad

Spending the rainy day funds...

The one textbook that I still have not finalized (and failed to mention last time) is the State & Local Government text. I have an e-mail out to another colleague who has more experience teaching state & local than I do, plus I have 3 examination copies that I need to look through at my office. I am really trying to find a text that helps make that subject interesting! State & Local Government lacks the quantity and quality of "sexy" issues and controversies that other political science classes can boast.

Speaking of "not-so-sexy-issues", we discussed taxing and budgeting policy in both my state and local classes on Monday and Tuesday. One of the concepts we talked about was the "rainy day fund" that many states and municipalities create during surpluses to use for unexpected budgetary needs. I gave the practical example of car repairs as an unexpected budgetary need - which most of the students could easily relate to. Well, today we took Gandalf in to the dealer (Oh how I wish I had Tisch!) because he needed a LOF, tire rotation and was making a new and unusual noise. Well, $1200+ later he is running much quieter, has new fluids in him, and is half-rotated (I didn't get an explanation for that - I have to call tomorrow - but they did it for free.)

Gandalf may be going on 12 years old, but he only has 84,000 miles on him. Because he's a Honda, we expect to have him through at least 150,000 miles - so $1200+ in repairs is definitely worth it.

It would take a lot more money to replace him,
Brad

Talking teaching with old friends...

These past few weeks I have been trying to decide which textbooks to adopt for the political science classes here at OCC. Being the only full-time political science faculty member makes the decision mine (unless my dean decides to choose for me, which he could, but that's a different issue.)

The Federal Government textbook will not change until Spring 2009 (that's when the new edition comes out and I can change books) so we are keeping the current book. I am not impressed with the current book, but I know how to teach with it, so two more semesters won't kill me (Summer & Fall.)

I was able to adopt a new International Relations textbook. It is written by Henry Nau who was the advisor to one of my colleagues at UCI during his MA program. The textbook I currently use for IR is more a "global issues" reader. I love teaching with it, but it lacks a lot of the political science structure that can be employed to really understand global issues. I am very excited about working with the new textbook and taking my IR class to a higher level of analysis.

When it came to the Introduction to Political Science textbook, I was frustrated. The book I was interested in had received some poor reviews from both faculty and students. Therefore, I turned to a textbook that one of the professors at UCI had authored and that I had used as a teaching assistant. I looked up two former UCI graduate students who had used the book in teaching their own class and that I had worked with and called them to get their take on the book. I was only able to get a hold of one. She teaches at a small college in San Diego and was just preparing to teach her own Intro class from that very book. We talked for about 15 minutes about teaching, the textbook and the busy life of new faculty. In the end I decided to adopt that textbook and we both agreed to keep in touch with syllabi and teaching strategies for working with that textbook. I am quite enthused to have a colleague with whom I can discuss teaching Political Science - even if she is on the other side of the country.

Just another affirmation that this is the career for me,
Brad

Feeling guilty...

This month my wife has been doing her "write one blog post every day for a month." It has been great to read, but it has also led to a little personal guilt and hypocrisy.

The guilt is easily explained - she is blogging everyday and I am blogging once a month (if that!)

The hypocrisy comes in as follows:

When it comes to the end of the day and my wife still needs to post her blog, I tell her to just post something quick (anything will do!) Being the conscientious person she is, she puts some thought and effort into making every post worthwhile. So inside my mind I'm thinking "why can't you just post something short and call it good?" Now for the actual hypocrisy. When it comes to my blog, I always put it off by thinking that I don't have time to post anything worthwhile (the busy teacher and administrator excuse) so I don't post anything at all.

That only took three minutes,
Brad

Yes, I'm still here...

It's been too long since I posted. I wouldn't have posted today (still too busy) except for an e-mail sent me by one of my students. I recently had my students write a journal entry focusing on the article China Games by Arch Puddington (great name, huh?) In the article it basically compares China to two other undesirables in history that have hosted the Olympics: 1936 Germany and 1980 USSR. My students all did an awesome job in their journals so I opened up the beginning of our last class for discussion on the subject. It was totally great! So now all my students have a solid appreciation for the history of politics and the Olympics and a better understanding of the protests that have surrounded the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Now for the e-mail. One of my students sent me a link to this picture. From the signs in the background, this was taken in the U.S. I would be so embarrassed if that protester had been one of my students. My guess it was in San Francisco or some other part of the bay area - that's where all the good protests can be found. Just like this one, as reported by the Daily Show:



"If only there were an organization that was sworn to defend that free speech."

Proud to have never participated in a protest,
Brad

p.s. I also love the idea of ending crime by eliminating the police