Catherine Anderson

#birds

Enjoy!

I too am not fan of travel but OTOH it’s pretty easy to get from YHZ to Montreal , Ottawa, Toronto, where there’s a big variety of art & cultural experiences. And it’s a lot simpler than international travel!

You’ve posted occasionally about your art classes. A few years ago I stayed taking private singing lessons and it has been an immense joy.

I’m guessing your students were already aware of the relative goodlookingness of their profs…

McMaster has a pool. So why is it hosting swim nationals in Markham? Hamilton doesn't have a facility that can accommodate a modern, elite-level meet. The city and its athletes are losing out as a consequence.

McMaster has a pool. So why is it hosting swim nationals in Markham?

Word of the week: Clanker Is it OK to use the C-word for AI?

It's Offense and Derogation week in Intro #linguistics class and I am here to say that the word 'clanker' is a very useful example for teaching these concepts without doing harm to my students.

fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-th...

@fritinancy.bsky.social

Everyone knows everyone in the Hammer 💛

*honk*
I love nuthatches so much I tattooed one onto my body.
🪶

Also thankful for a functional hybrid option for those who can’t be there in person! #LSA2026

Ok this LSA panel is 🔥. So thankful for colleagues who are doing the work to make our field more just. #LSA2026

Introducing myself to my students, told them I like to play Wingspan. Figured that whatever else they infer about me from that fact will probably be accurate.

Two bright spots on a grey morning:
1. male cardinal at the crown of an otherwise naked tree, surveying his domain
2. red star-shaped mylar balloon floating about two feet above the arts quad trash bin

Opinion: An AI future demands liberal arts agility Graduates have the ethical and creative thinking skills that the AI-driven jobs of tomorrow will demand

A key point in this editorial, by Mount Allison president Ian Sutherland and student Lucas Orfanides, is that, along with possessing relevant (and essential) job skills, liberal arts grads are uniquely well positioned to deal with AI's ethical shortcomings.
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

Calling in from the Land of Decidedly Middle Aged to report that I enjoy looking at birds just as much without writing them down. Maybe even more so?!?!

My latest comic breaking down the “generosity” of billionaires is live! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/the-genero...

And put these two in your backpack to read a bit over the weekend 4 and 6 times respectively

A martini with an olive in it, with Xmas tree in the background

Both come in liquid form :

Just realized there’s a step before 14 that I missed: scan for 48s and 49s and bump them up to D-

Yes, we have one week from the day of the exam to get grades submitted. It's Day 6 and I'm on step 12 of the process and I'm not leaving here today until I've clicked that "upload" button!

14. Hold our breath, click Upload, and immediately turn on the autoreply so we won't see the email complaints until January. Pour ourselves a glass of something.

13. Are we done? Check the distribution and see whether it makes sense for an intro class. For a class of this size at this level, I usually expect about 30% each of As, Bs and Cs, and 10% Ds or Fs.

12. Reweigh the totals for the students that had the project excused. Reweigh the totals for the different students that had an excused absence for the midterm.

11. Now we are ready to calculate total grades. Work some more spreadsheet magic. But more complications await us!

10. Pick up that one remaining special exam and hand-grade both its components.

9. Realize some MC scores are still missing. Walk over to the scanning place and pick up the cards. Hand-grade the ones that entered their student number incorrectly.

8. Hand-grade the accommodated MC cards that did not make it to the scanner.

7. Compare scores for written and MC components. Discover that some students are missing one component and some the other.

6. Download scantron results and work spreadsheet magic to calculate scores for multiple-choice questions.

5. Pick up "specials" (i.e. exams written with accommodations) from the exam depot. Mark them and enter scores into spreadsheet.