“I was sitting there and my skin was burning and I said, this might make a great TV show one day.”

I watched the new Chris Rock special on Netflix. Watching all these classic comics with new specials feels a lot like that Modern Seinfeld feed — Chris Rock on Trump! — but it had some very funny moments. The personal stuff (about his divorce and failings) was interesting too, but I sort of felt it would have been more sincere to just do jokes about it.

Anyway, one thing led to another after I finished the special, and I present to you the clip above.

I also present to you the very, very funny and awkward clip below:

 

Posted in Fun

Little Shoes, Never Worn

For sale:
baby shoes,
never worn.

Machine washable,
slight stain,
probably pee.

Baby fine;
shoes not.

In addition
baby has
huge feet.

Truly big,
flippers really.

Small head,
small hands,
small nose,
giant feet.

Never worn
baby shoes
for sale,
or just take them.

Posted in Fun

The Bible According to My Son, Who Likes Both The Exodus and Dora the Explorer

CHAPTER 3

1     When Pharoah learned what Moses had done he rose to kill him, but Moses fled to the desert.

2     The LORD sought Moses in the desert, but could not find him.

3     He could not find him wherever he looked. The LORD looked over here, and also over there.

4     And the LORD said, “I can’t find Moses no matter where I’m looking.” So he went to ask Dora.

5     Dora spoke unto the LORD, “I know how to find Moses. Check the map.”

6     And the MAP spoke unto the LORD saying, “If there’s a place you got to go, I’m the one you need to know,”

7     “I’m the map. I’m the map. I’m the map.”

8     The LORD thanked Dora very nicely and then he found Moses. “There you are,” He said.

9     “You’ve got to go back to Pharaoh, Moses. Otherwise you’re going to be in big trouble. I’m going to get mad at you, I’m going to yell and scream at you. And you have to tell Pharaoh: ‘Pharaoh, you’re a bad guy.’ Tell him that.”

10     And then the LORD went with Dora and they had arroz con leche with abuela and they sang songs and had fun.

Posted in Fun

Stopping by Ft Tryon Park, Way the Heck Uptown, on a Snowy Afternoon

So you’ve got woods? Yeah, we’ve got those.
Well, not exactly, but something close.
A park with hills and rocks and trees
That people flock to whene’er it snows.

Your woods are dark, deep, and lovely?
I think our park you’ll find quite comfy.
Your little horse would love it here
I’ve heard the woods get quite lonely.

He’ll ask if he can stay and play
Romp with kids and ride their sleigh.
When we get cold we can go home
To watch snow fill our alleyway.

Woods do sound nice – save your pity,
The park’s also very pretty,
And no one’s lonely in New York City.
And no one’s lonely in New York City.

Posted in Fun

The toilet is going to eat my pee

“I’m going to tell you that the toilet is going to eat my pee,” he said. It was my son, nearly three, standing with his pants over his ankles. He held himself, umm, firmly.

“I’m going to tell you that the toilet is going to eat my pee,” he repeated.

“OK.”

“The toilet is going to eat my pee.”

“Got it.”

“The toilet is going to eat my pee. The toilet is going to eat my pee. Water is going to come out and it’s going to eat my pee.”

Flush.

“The toilet — it ate my pee.”

***

This is more or less where my head is these days. The last six months have been ridiculous in our tiny apartment. Minus the random and intense freakouts, our kid is becoming a kid — out of diapers, into a big-kid bed, counting and talking all the time. And our baby is teething, sitting, eating, even maybe sleeping.

But most of all there’s been a lot of poop, pee, yelling, family time at 3 AM, etc.

In the meantime, I’ve been feeling a little bit lost lately. I’m feeling stalled out on a bunch of projects that I was excited about. I’m having trouble getting stuff done. I’m tired, and I feel dumb a lot of the time. This sometimes happens, I’ve learned (even before having little kids) and there’s nothing to do about it, just work it out.

Part of that working out is happening on this blog. I don’t like it, but the only way I know to get out of a rut is to find a low-stakes place to just make an ass of myself, and that’s what I intend to do in this space.

Without getting too whiny, I’ll say that I’m struggling with the same things that I’ve struggled with since the start: what does it mean to be a teacher who writes? what do I know? what can I learn? where can I publish? am I headed anywhere with all this?

I need to figure out if there’s a way to do what I do, but in a way that feels a bit bigger than how I’m currently doing it. I’m not sure what “bigger” means yet but that’s part of what I’m working on.

(Oh god, kid: go to sleep! This bedtime is dragging on and on.)

So: follow my Problems With Teaching blog for things that are a bit more put-together than what I’ll be trying out in this space. There’s an automatic IFTTT trigger so that posts here get posted on Twitter, so you can subscribe to this blog or just follow casually via my @mpershan feed. If I end up blogging a lot here, I’ll try to cut down on my tweets so the internet isn’t over-Pershaned.

Posted in Fun

My set theory book is getting kind of fascist

Definition: A set is said to be pure if no individuals belong to its transitive closure.

Well there are always individuals, right?

Consider now the following axiom candidate. Axiom of purity: Every set is pure

Fully pure?

The main reason for the [axiom of purity] is that, as was discovered fairly early, it is is not necessary to assume the existence of individuals in order that set theory should act as a foundation of mathematics, while if we rule them out from the outset, we can simplify the theory.

A TOTAL BAN ON INDIVIDUALS

After 1963, not even set theorists had any use for individuals. Worse, there are proofs in set theory that do not work if we have to allow for them. So it is unsurprising that in the last 40 years individual have largely disappeared from view.

FULL PURITY FOR MATHEMATICS. NO INDIVIDUALS. ALL ARE SETS. THIS WILL ENSURE THAT EVERYTHING IS WELL-FOUNDED AND REGULATED.

However, we shall not follow this trend here.

…ooh?

The reason is that to do so would cut our theory off from at least one of its intended applications. It is by no means obvious what justifies the applicability of mathematics in general to what lies outside it…the most natural, if not only way, way to ensure that that calculus is available to be applied to counting non-mathematical things — chairs, electrons, thoughts, angels — is to allow such things into the theory as individuals.

Phew. From Set Theory and Its Philosophy.

“Nobody is every going to invent an ethics class that makes people behave ethically.”

“Nobody is ever going to invent an ethics class that makes people behave ethically after they step out of the classroom. Classes are for riders, and riders are just going to use their knowledge to serve their elephants more effectively. If you want to make people behave more ethically, there are two ways you can go. You can change the elephant, which takes a long time and is hard to do. Or…you can change the path that the elephant and rider find themselves traveling on. You can make minor and inexpensive tweaks to the environment, which can produce big increases in ethical behavior. You can hire Glaucon as a consultant and ask him how to design institutions in which real human beings, always concerned about their reputations, will behave more ethically.”

From Haidt’s The Righteous MindThe elephant/rider metaphor is sort of clumsy, but his point is that rationality usually chases our moral intuitions; it’s rare for reason to override those intuitions.

Could an ethics class ever change the moral intuitions? Could a math class? What does ever change those moral intuitions?

Haidt’s answer seems to be that most changes to our intuitions come from our interactions with other people who we admire and want to admire us. I don’t know what that could mean for the possibility of moral education.