Drop the Anchor!

I have been teaching at a local community college this semester and it has been so much fun. Admittedly, much of the "fun" has been diagnosed retroactively when I reflect on the lack of preparedness that both I and the institution have demonstrated in cobbling together a coherent learning environment week after week. It can be stressful in the moment when you realize that you're missing a significant portion of the material and you have to somehow fill the next three hours with pertinent content.

I had a student identify that my last name was German and then go on to suggest that I had taken up teaching as a way of getting past my inherited Nazi guilt.

Sometimes you find that your brake pedal goes all the way to floor and it alarms you. This happened to me just yesterday. Having brakes that are not so responsive anymore particularly hits home with me because a few years ago I had my brakes completely go out while I was driving. If I remember correctly I was actually on a date at the time. We were approaching a red light and I felt my foot sink effortlessly to the floorboard. Keeping my wits about me, I simply responded, "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we're not going to have to wait on this red light. The bad news is that we'll likely die because I have no brakes." I never heard from her again after that.

I recently saw the film Star Trek: After Dark and I must say, the teleportation technology that gets exploited in that movie seems a little finicky. I mean, "Can we send Sherlock Holmes halfway across the universe in the blink of an eye?"
"Sure, we can totally do that!"
"Can we use that same technology to follow him?"
"No, we're going to have to hoof it after him in our huge dang space ship. Should be there in a couple of days or whatever."

The teleportation "beam me up, Scotty" stuff was used to yank Spock out of an erupting volcano but it could not be used to save the doctor because his hand was stuck in a door. It couldn't be used to grab Sherlock off of the flying taxi (because it was going too fast?) but it could be used to send Spock to the flying taxi. Man. The future is complicated!

-Ryan