Best wishes to all for the coming year! May your teaching loads be lightened and your committee/administrative work be lessened as your salaries are increased.
A few notes about New Year's Eve (NYE), the new year, and other stuff: (1) Some of the news channels started showing how NYE was being celebrated around the world, starting with, I believe, New Zealand (NZ) which is about 16 hours ahead of the celebrations in NYC's Times Square (there a few islands in the Pacific that enter the new year earlier but these will only be of interest to fanboys of NYE). (2) One realization as the crystal Waterford ball came down at Times Square: there are probably folks in NZ, Australia, and the eastern Russian Federation who are starting their hangovers as the ball comes down. (3) While watching the financial news network CNBC, the newsreader was excitingly announcing that midnight had just come to Moscow and that a spectacular fireworks display would light up the night sky. However, as the skyline of Moscow remained dark for the next minute, the newsreader chimed in "Well, maybe those sanctions really are working!?" The fireworks started 4-5 minutes late. (4) As with every new year, people make resolutions of various sorts, usually to achieve positive goals like weight loss, exercising more, being kinder to people, giving more to charities, and so on (there are those who swear to carry out their revenge against their enemies, real or imagined, but I digress) and the NY Times is perhaps making suggestions about changing behavior on the subway. Let's be clear: "manspreading" might be a problem, especially one that some folks like to focus on (you know who you are) but New Yorkers who regularly ride the subway are all too aware of other "problematic" behaviors which the following NY Times story identifies based on polling of its readers: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/nyregion/door-hogs-music-blasters-litterbugs-readers-sound-off-about-subway-rudeness.html?mabReward=RI%3A11 One set of problem behaviors: |Grievances include smells that offend, sounds that grate and |personal grooming not appropriate for a public space. Riders |seethed over frequent culprits: the door hog, the pole hugger, |the litterbug. Smells that offend can come from a variety of sources, ranging from people with poor personal hygiene to the foods that are eaten such as: |Some think food should be banned on the subway altogether. |They had visceral memories of unpleasant odors on the train: |Mexican fast food, garlic breath, Chinese takeout. | |"I actually witnessed a man put on rubber gloves, open a can of |sardines and eat it on the train," Yana Ivanov wrote in an email. |"It was nasty." Somebody should do a memory studies for odors experienced on the subway. I'm sure they are especially durable. ;-) And one particular problem that I find offensive is people taking pictures on the subway. Consider: |Several complaints were logged against people who take selfies |on the train. Sharmila Mukherjee objected to riders who take these |photos with "preposterous smiles on their faces." Women are often |the culprits, she said. "They fancy they are girls in pearl earrings |and the smartphone camera is Vermeer himself," she wrote, referring |to the Dutch artist who painted the famous "Girl With a Pearl Earring." True Story: after a tiring day of teaching I was taking the subway home when a group of about 6-7 youngish people, obviously European from their accents, got on my car and started to act as though they were in a photoshoot. I could tell that they were amateurs because of their "Golly Gee! Let's Take This Shot!" attitude -- your average tourist who thought it was great taking photos on the subway without asking anyone not in their group if they minded being in the picture. I counted down the stations to my stop while this group occupied about a third of the car. As I got off at my station I prayed to God to send a homeless man to this car so he could take a dump in it. Another unanswered prayer. ;-) Good luck with that hangover. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@mail-archive.com. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=41345 or send a blank email to leave-41345-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
