So, um, I dunno how much I've been mentioning this of late, but sitting in on this math class--really basic shit, really: relations, set theory, propositional and quantificational logic, counting--for a nonspecialist, CS-student audience, taught by this somewhat overbearing, joke-wielding instructor who is heavy-handed and lame in his jokes (we differ in that I am not white, and I am much more technical and sharp in my jokes, and I am more well-rounded mathematically), has really thrown sharply into focus the frustration and futility of my chosen work. The simplest ideas are not communicated well enough, and training and expertise are for nothing, and there is no time to slow down, to really ground things carefully, there is only rush-rush-rush. It is a sad thing, to have an instructor who is fine with the material (a rarity, it is to be admitted at the public education level), but who still can't get through, wehther because of pedagogical shortcoming (which is true) or insurmountable substructural student deficiency, stuck on the most basic of facts, never making progress, and wasting hour after hour, where the most beautiful of proofs are duly noted like the year of the Treaty of Utrecht (1742; it ended the War of Spanish Succession). And this is what I do all year. Which isn't to say that I haven't made great progress. I'd like to think, that, aside from my obvious pandering to the Chinese (it's kinda hard to make jokes about reading order in Chinese, when your students actually don't know what you're talking about: left-right/top-bottom versus top-bottom/left-right? Hrmmm... but we don't read either language...), I have made good progress in coming up with useful explanations of basic mathematical facts and conventions. And this is grounded, philosophically useful, and perhaps demystifying and confidence building for my students. But is it enough? I guess next year I will go about things like the whole ass that I am.

Hrmmm... Lunch with Joephet. Quite pleasant Thai restaurant, though perhaps we should not have been discussing incidents of really needing to shit while miles away from an accessible bathroom quite as much before our food arrived. And then a pit stop at his house, where the fact that Asha had pissed on his bed (ummm.. Asha is his cat.. yeah...) meant we had to, um, improvise... Yeah.. We Asians are an ingenious lot... It is unclear, however, if this ingenuity will translate into our seeing Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle before it passes out of theaters.

Classes unremarkable. Patricia Williams refreshing. Now well-past half-done with the summer. Which is a little frightening. But the above frustrations with teaching math to non-brilliant people I think is helping. I will try and write some essays about method and philosophy soon.

Bessie, meanwhile, is back in full-force. I have somewhere around 8 emails from her today. This is a most welcome addition to my daily routine, I must say.