Thank you Quill. I don't want to offend anyone, but you should know there are others who feel the same way as you. Personally, I'm very partial to the CS Lewis quote about praying not to change God, but rather to change himself. So, I find these requests for intercessory prayer confounding. Does God not already know whether someone with bad Covid is going to survive or die? Are we asking God to change His mind by lots of prayers?

Shouldn't Sid be wearing a mask?

And can we talk about the other part of the syllabus here? Ignoring how poorly it is written, essentially it is saying "if you quarantine or isolate because of covid, you might not be able to make up the missed classes. Ask your instructor if this happens". And what's the limit on missed classes? Well, we couldn't be bothered to put it in this syllabus, but that information is somewhere else. So, if you are exposed to covid after the drop date, what, you can't even get an incomplete? Isn't this encouraging students who may be exposed to not test or report exposures?

An oldie, but a goodie "If you could have dinner with any four people, dead or alive, who would they be?"

Feel like this was just a "gotcha" stunt on the part of the professor. Here's the text of the "free $50", from someone who posted the whole syllabus, but buried within a much large text: Looks like a cut and paste error to me. And is it ethical to go pawing around random lockers that aren't yours just because of a cryptic message in a syllabus? If the locker number and combination had been written on a yellow sticky note on the professor's computer, and a student happened to see it during office hours, would it be ethical for the student to find the locker and try the combination?

Dry ice sublimates into carbon dioxide, which can cause suffocation if in an air-tight environment for a long time. I'm no expert, but does anyone know about the safety of keeping dry ice in a car for 10+ hours?

Feel like TLC made millions exploiting this cult, and if they had any decency, they would quietly provide sufficient financial support for Anna and the kids so they can live independently, away from the whole family, without any need for publicity or TV shows or books or whatever.

I don't think this is a dumb question, at all. I don't know that anyone right now knows for sure, and I bet there's a bunch of reasons. Many reasons mentioned above seem plausible. A related reason is that gains in the US economy have been disproportionately in the stock market, as opposed to wages. Thus, any one with a good retirement plan in the stock market can probably retire earlier than if more of the economic gains had gone into wages.

You know, it's the darnedest thing. Just as every neurotypical baby learns sooner or later how to walk and be potty trained, clumsy teen aged boys eventually grow up to be real, functional humans. Just takes time.

If it is a relatively big meet, they may be selling overpriced shirts/sweatshirts there. One of these may become a favored keepsake/memory, so I'd send him with money to buy this, and perhaps some money for emergencies like broken goggles, ripped swim cap, etc. There's a ton of down time in a swim meet, so I'd also make sure he has something to keep him occupied, like a book or kindle or game or ??? Definitely bring more than one towel, especially if it is likely that he'll be swimming in more than one session in a day. And unless you have a super-advanced model of 16 year old boy, you may need to remind him that the towels don't dry themselves, they need to be hung up every night... Enough places take Apple Pay nowadays that I might put your credit card into his phone, and tell him to only use that for emergencies.

How different are the expansions from each other or the base game? We've gotten a lot of plays out of the one game, but if the expansions are pretty samey, I'm thinking a different game would make a better gift -- what do you think?

Century: Golem Edition has been a big hit here in the last year. It is easy enough to teach to new players, but interesting enough that they want to play more than once, and it takes only 20 minutes to complete.

I feel like there's a lot of things that have been fully automated, and usually work, but if something unusual happens, you just get stuck with no way for a human to intervene, or to have some rational judgement apply. Because these things seem so easy in the usual case, organizations go hog wild, and deploy way too many of them. A small example -- a friend of my was complaining that her public high school freshman had to miss one of his cross country meets because his weekly grade report (!) showed that he was failing Spanish. Turns out the Spanish teacher was new, and filled out the weekly grade report incorrectly for all the students in all of her classes, and any of them in any sport had to skip competition that week, impacting dozens of kids. There was no way for any human to step in and fix the problem.

I agree with you that the plays are much, much better seen (and seen live) than read. However, I find that when we go to a performance, if I read outloud the first few scenes (stopping to explain some vocab), we all "warm up" our Elizabethan ears, and we can get into the play from the get go.

How long are you taking to cover each play? Most of them aren't very long. I was lucky enough to take a semester long Shakespeare elective in high school, and we covered one play a week + sonnets, so probably about a dozen plays, taking about one eighth of my high school English career. The lack of such classes in my current zoned school district may very well have played a part in my choice not to send my kids there.

Ignoring, for the moment, whether this is humane or effective, is there actually a problem of students never leaving their bedrooms in college dorms today? We live relatively close to a large state school, and when we drive by, we frequently see the students outside when the weather is nice, playing games, socializing, studying, going places in groups, etc. And if a student is introverted, and wants to spend the majority of their time in their room studying, is that so awful? Sure, sometimes study groups are effective and needed, but if you are taking a Russian lit class, and need to spend hours and hours reading the great Russian novels, why not read them in your room?

I can't imagine being quarantined in a windowless room for a week.

For the sake of discussion, assume that we could prove the person was the source of infection. In the case where we aren't talking about virus transmission, but just a business being shutdown for a few days because of potential exposure, I think it is always because of a well-known infected person. If that person had tested positive before coming to the business, are they liable? Will we see such lawsuits?

I'm curious about your opinion about the prevalence or success of lawsuits in the other direction? e.g. if someone tests positive for covid, and doesn't isolate, and spreads it to others, or causes business to shut down for a week for "cleaning", is there a case? Assuming, we can prove exactly where the transmission came from, as the kiwis appear to be able to do. (More and more, I'm starting to believe that the New Zealanders are some kind of post-human, superior life form, and above the rest of us).

I would humbly suggest that a minor thing we can all do is to not contribute to the increased demand for hospital services. Say, by getting vaccinated and encouraging others to do so.

I'm not a virologist, but I wonder if the UK, by spreading out the time between doses much longer than the US does, stumbled upon more effective protection than the 3 or 4 week schedule that the US administers? Perhaps this spacing means UK folks already have the equivalent of a third booster that we in the US will need?

There's probably, what? 1,000 professors of ethics and related subjects in North America? Isn't the real story here 999/1,000 ethics professor have no problem with vaccine mandates?

Maybe I lack imagination, but I'm having a hard time thinking about what action a nurse's union could do to help this situation?

I totally agree. I don't see how one can equate these two unions. First off, less than 20% of all nurses are unionized in the US, and the horrible working conditions for nurses (and HCW in general) are equally bad in unionized vs non-unionized hospitals. Second, what can the nurses' union really do to address overcrowded ICUs? Strike until the state passes mandatory vaccination laws? Refuse to treat un-vaccinated covid patients? And I will say this in favor of the national teacher's union, the AFT -- they did endorse mandatory vaccinations for all teachers. I don't see many districts requiring vaccinations, though some are.

I guess what I don't understand is if the above is true, why would the nasal spray be effective?