From a panel at Harvard the other night on technology in the university classroom:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology social studies of science and technology professor Sherry Turkle said technology-based multitasking can have negative effects on the learning process.

She also said students need to be in control of distractions in order to absorb what they are taught in the classroom.

“When students text in class and keep laptops open, they learn less,” she said…

Which is more or less what UD just said to the ABC guy who came to her office to film her talking about her laptop ban.

The ABC News reporter
interviewing UD tomorrow
might also interview Mr UD
on the subject of laptops in the
classroom. Unlike UD, Mr UD
allows them.

UD loves the image of

Les UDs as The Bickersons.

The ABC News technology feature, Ahead of the Curve, wants to interview UD about her laptop ban. Word’s getting around.

UD‘s limitless need for attention has been more than satisfied over the last few days.

She was interviewed by the George Washington University newspaper (the article featuring her and a colleague talking about laptop bans has already inspired a response); by a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (about blogging); and, last night, by the features editor of The Listener, a cool magazine from New Zealand.

The Listener wanted me to talk about professors who plagiarize.

… Bethesda Magazine, this
month features UD‘s next
door neighbor John Gould,
and his cat on a leash.

‘Gould has taken hundreds
of photos of their strolls,
which he keeps in thick binders.
Here’s Pud at the Tidal Basin,
on the limb of a cherry tree in
full bloom. Here’s Pud
nuzzling the statue of Fala at the
FDR Memorial…’

UD‘s friend Peter defends himself.

My old friend, Peter Galbraith, stands accused of it. An article about the matter appears on the front page of today’s New York Times.

… about student laptop use in class are here.

UD‘s sister-in-law, Joanna Soltan, reads Sonnet 90. In Polish.

*********************

Sonnet 90

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scoped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite
But in the onset come; so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might,
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

Current background,
from my office window: A big
pileated woodpecker stabbing –
very loudly – a series of hollows
in a semi-dead tree out front.

Foreground: Thickets of
cheepy wrens — I guess
they’re wrens — over and
under the azalea bushes
by the window.

In the back garden,
it’s all robins.
They’re diving into
our leafy gutters.

Nest material? I have
no idea what birds
do in November.

Raking has been a
pleasure on these
cool, light, and windy
autumn mornings.

Right now, on the
back deck, mourning
doves mass around
the birdbath.

In the evenings, from
the deck, I can just
make out full moons
behind all the high
branches in our forest.

I think back to my time
at the beach last week,
and how the cosmos
comes right up to your
balcony there. I love
Garrett Park’s arboretum,
but I miss the night sky.

… Slight tightness in chest… But put that aside…

We’re now officially off to the beach. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware — a three-hour drive.

Later.

… this event.

***************

OTOH…
He has been known
to dress up.

This photo (which you’ve
already seen if you’ve been
reading University Diaries
for years) shows him in his
peshmerga outfit — a present
from the peshmerga fighters
he hung out with a few
years ago in Kurdistan.

UD leaves tomorrow for Rehoboth
Beach, where she’ll be for a few days.

(She took the photo up there
a few Octobers ago.)

Blogging continues like crazy.

Longtime readers know that UD is a ‘thesdan. She wasn’t born in Bethesda, Maryland — she was born in Baltimore, at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Her father was a grad student in immunology at Hopkins at the time.

But since her father went on to spend his career at ‘thesda’s National Institutes of Health, UD was definitely raised in ‘thesda and became in due course a ‘thesdan.

Type the term thesdan in UD‘s search engine to get a sense of what that means. Here’s the Wikipedia page.

Or – here’s an even better way to get a grip on la condition ‘thesdanienne.

[Charley Cooper, a nineteen-year-old Georgetown University student, has] posted an ad for someone to tackle “some of my everyday tasks,” such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle).

The successful applicant can expect to work three to seven hours a week and make $10 to $12 an hour, although “on occasion it will be possible to work additional hours and/or receive bonuses at my discretion.” Preference will be given to Georgetown undergraduates, Cooper says in the listing, and the assistant can spread his or her tasks throughout the day.

“As my PA you will receive an email once a day by 9:00 am with a task list for that day and a time estimate for each task,” Cooper wrote in the job listing, which was first reported by the student newsmagazine, Georgetown Voice. “Important tasks will be bolded on the list and must be done that day (even though everything on the list should theoretically be finished on a daily basis). At the end of the day you will send me an email telling me what tasks are incomplete or that all tasks have been completed.”… [Cooper] grew up in Bethesda…

I didn’t want to walk. The morning was beautiful, sugar maples blazing on Kenilworth, but I didn’t want to walk. Not to Strathmore for a Ride-on, and certainly not all the way to the metro.

Five paces along, I bumped into Mrs F., red-faced from walking her two dogs (she has four; where are the others?). We talked about our daughters, lifelong friends. How do they like college?

Mrs F. panted away down Rokeby, pulled hard by the animals.

Follow her home wait while she showers get a ride…

Not practical. Take too long.

A small green Toyota rolled by.

STOP GIVE ME A RIDE

Slower, slower, stop. Window down, white-haired lady.

“Wanna ride?”

“You read my mind!”

Then commenced a classic Garrett Park encounter.

A scan of this woman’s features told me

1.) I’d known her all my life.

2.) I had no idea who she was.

Our varied, warm conversation began with the sugar maples, moved to the town’s antique streetlamps, swerved back to trees – the royal palms I admired in Key West, the stately palms she saw in Palo Alto – and then leapt for no reason to a hotel in she stayed in once.

“They gave you the loveliest, softest white robe. I wanted to wear it the whole time I was there. My daughter said Don’t prowl around the halls wearing the robe. Only tacky guests do that.”

Now town history.

“The town put an oak in front of our house. It grew too big. Next door used to be Joan R. I loved the way she called to her son all the time. HUGHIE! HUGHIE! HUGHIE!”

“She was Welsh.”

“British. Welsh. Something like that.”

“Evil husband who left her with tons of kids.”

“Right. He left her. But she only had three. I was the one with tons. I had nine…. Our line of houses on Strathmore — three houses, three breast cancer cases. I always thought that was odd.”

“Nine kids.”

“Eight boys. One girl.”

“You kept trying for a girl?”

“No. There was no excuse for all those boys. I just kept doing it. I got pregnant in 1976 and said to my husband a child for the bicentennial. Any excuse would do.”

We pulled up to the station. She wished me a wonderful day.