Busy, busy corner of 23rd street and 1st avenue in Manhattan…down the block from the VA hospital and down the other block from Bellevue hospital.
It should come as no surprise that some choose to self-medicate…
Froot by the Loop
10 Sep 2021 Leave a comment
in district office Tags: breakfast, Froot Loops
I am officially back in the office!
Froot Loops!
After a year of teaching science in-person to autistic students at P396K, I have returned to being a District 75 traveling technology coach (hence the URL).
And the district provided breakfast for its prodigal children!
And no “Welcome Back to the Office” is complete without Froot Loops!
And there was no bowl or milk to be had.
Hello Halal, Goodbye Hate
12 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
The NYCDOE has a diverse student body, including many Muslim students, and offers Halal meals in a number of sites. The meals have to have a Halal certificate to be acceptable.
The organization that the DOE has contracted to oversee the Halal certification is called the Majlis Ash-Shura, The Islamic Leadership Council of New York.
Unfortunately, in addition to certifying Halal meals, the Majlis Ash-Shura also issues inflammatory propaganda and lies about Israel. Recent press releases refer to “settler colonial ideologies of Zionism” and “Zionist settler-colonial ethnic cleansing” and “avoid interfaith gatherings with Zionist organizations.”
Majlis Ash-Shura deny that Jews are indigenous to Israel, and that Zionism is a movement to return Jews to their ancestral homeland. Most Israelis are Sefardi (from the Middle East and North Africa); they were expelled from their Arab residences (e.g., Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, etc, etc) in 1948 and emigrated to Israel. The Majlis Ash-Shura openly equate Zionism with racism and white supremacy, despite the reality that most Israelis are not of white, European descent, but are actually North African Sefardis.
It is shameful that the NYCDOE could not find a Halal certifier that is not also a hate certifier.
Preview Weird but True!
09 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in Macintosh Tags: Adobe Acrobat, Preview
I opened a pdf file using Preview, and copied the highlighted text, to view the hyperlink in a browser.
This is what appeared in the browser!
The link pasted normally when when I opened the file in Adobe Acrobat.
Has this ever happened yo you? Maybe something about how the text was weirdly highlighting is a hint…
This One Goes to 11
05 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in district office Tags: floors
The District 75 Office has secret floors that the elevator does not go to and that nobody knows about, except for the privileged few (i.e, custodial staff). They are used for storage. Also access to cool rooftop spaces
I got my first visit to the 9th, 10th and 11th floors about fifteen years after I started working here. Here are photos of the 10th and 11th floors.
What Do You Call This?
05 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in 721Q, physical therapy Tags: outfit
Is it a slanket? A blankecoon? Anyway, I believe the student was involved in a physical therapy activity.
What would YOU call this outfit?
Chancellor Quran and a Picture of God
05 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in Microsoft Tags: Live Captions; god, quran
In the early days of Microsoft’s Live Captioning, these messages were projected at an education conference:
“any of you guys know what that is cool. And if any of you have a good picture for us to use that represents God, I’d be really appreciative of that because I don’t know how to visually”
“educational policy. i also remain involved because of our Chancellor Chancellor Quran.”
Check Check 1, 2, 3 Check
04 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in Music, sounds Tags: adobe connect, google meets, speaker test, zoom
Have you joined an online meeting? If you have (and who hasn’t?) you may have noticed the “speaker test” option in the settings.
Here are the sounds you will hear for popular programs. #hauntingmelody
What other speaker tests have you heard?
Spotify Wikipedia Whatnow?
03 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
I installed the desktop version of Spotify, and then decided to uninstall it. While searching for additional Spotify files to move to the trash, I came upon this english_wikipedia.txt file:
Upon further investigation, the file was located in a Google Chrome data subfolder:
I opened the text file. It was 30,000 words, each word on its own line, comprising over 600 pages of text:
The words start off simple — the, of, and, in — and by page 600 are completely obscure and random.
I copied the text and pasted it into Word to remove the paragraph breaks.
I will do more research into this list.
Could it be every word from every wikipedia article I ever read using the Chrome browser?
Or maybe it is every single word in the English language?*
Why was it sorted into this particular order?
What other secrets can be gleaned from this 30,000-word precious list?
Download the reformated wikipedia word list in pdf format
* “If we want to talk about how many words there are in English, there are three key numbers to remember: more than a million total words, about 170,000 words in current use, and 20,000-30,000 words used by each individual person.” from englishlive.ef.com
Maybe it is every word I ever said, Loki-style?
Church and State?
19 Jul 2021 Leave a comment
in NYCDOE Tags: chancellor, holy month
Supposedly there is a separation between religious matters and governmental matters (i.e., church and state) in New York City. That is not always the case in the DOE. For example, students are allowed to leave school an hour early on Wednesdays for religious instruction (referred to as Wednesday Release Time.)
Favoring one religion over another is another thing altogether. That is why I was surprised that the new DOE chancellor has declared that certain months of the year are holier than others.
“As we come off the holy month of Ramadan, I am excited to celebrate the expansion of our program that certifies public school kitchens to serve halal meals,” said Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter. “
Read more about the DOE’s “holy month of Ramadan” here.
