Happy Columbus Day!
I’ve never been to a town named Columbus. To my recollection I’ve never met anyone named Christopher.
I’ve known several Italians. As far as I know none of them worked for any Spanish royalty.
I’ve seen the ocean, but usually on a motorized vessel, and never in ships of three.
I’m not a fan of subjugation, tyranny or any of the other things that we’ve lately come to attach to the explorer.
He was apparently tall. Six feet says the Internet. He weighed 237 pounds. Or 159 pounds. These things all seem difficult to know, particularly since we don’t know what he looked like.
Clearly I have nothing.
Things to read, which I found interesting today …
We live in the future. ‘Bionic Man’ Walks, Breathes With Artificial Parts
Well, yeah. Walmart shelves in Springhill, Mansfield, cleared in EBT glitch:
Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.
The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended.
The “Salute Seen Around The World” Wounded Ranger Salutes Commander Despite Injuries:
Despite being in intense pain and mental duress, Josh remained alert and compassionate to the limited Rangers that were allowed to visit his bedside. Prior to Josh being moved to Germany for his eventual flight to America, we conducted a ceremony to award him with the Purple Heart for wounds received in action.
A simple ceremony, you can picture a room full of Rangers, leaders, doctors, and nurses surrounding his bedside while the Ranger Regimental Commander pinned the Purple Heart to his blanket. During the presentation the Commander publishes the official orders verbally and leaned over Josh to thank him for his sacrifice.
Josh, whom everybody in the room (over 50 people) assumed to be unconscious, began to move his right arm under the blanket in a diligent effort to salute the Commander as is customary during these ceremonies. Despite his wounds, wrappings, tubes, and pain, Josh fought the doctor who was trying to restrain his right arm and rendered the most beautiful salute any person in that room had ever seen.
Maybe because he is a Ranger, but that story reminded me of this one, from 2009.
And they are both stories we should never forget.
On the other side of the spectrum of the human condition, email is hard. Technology and the College Generation:
Morgan Judge, a sophomore at Fordham University in New York, said she thought it was “cool” last semester when a professor announced that students could text him. Then she received one from him: “Check your e-mail for an update on the assignment.”
“E-mail has never really been a fun thing to use,” said Ms. Judge, 19. “It’s always like, ‘This is something you have to do.’ School is a boring thing. E-mail is a boring thing. It goes together.”
[…]
Brittney Carver, 20, a junior at the University of Iowa, said she checks her e-mail once a day, more if she’s expecting something. Before college, she used e-mail mostly for buying concert tickets. She said she would never use it if she could avoid it.
“I never know what to say in the subject line and how to address the person,” Ms. Carver said. “Is it mister or professor and comma and return, and do I have to capitalize and use full sentences? By the time I do all that I could have an answer by text if I could text them.”
I feel bad for these students insofar as they don’t realize how these quotes come off in the story. But the piece’s general observation is sound. Students don’t often react to email the way that email senders would want them to. That’s a real problem, though I’d never considered email as hard.
Soon we’ll be Snapchatting all of our coursework, one supposes.
I will not be Snapchatting coursework.
Happy Columbus Day!
