In a couple days, I'm going to officially end my time volunteering with the Southern Nevada Health District. I've got a couple things I want to do before hitting my Spring 2021 prep mode, but I'm going to be there pretty quickly. I've gotten a little bit of a head start, which is great, but it will still be a bit of focused time to bring everything together.
But before worrying about that, I want to loop back to the Health District. The bottom line is that I learned a lot. I got introduced to some of the production cycle of a place like the health district, including getting some insights into some of the more technical issues that they run into, and thinking about the flow of data through multiple complex systems. I learned a bit more about how dockers work in Linux, got my hands dirty tinkering with Apache Nifi (ETL/data flow management system), expanded my knowledge and experience with R and R Shiny, and learned about some programs that are used for data collection for health services. I also believe I formed a positive relationship with an organization that we will hopefully be able to lean on for projects and other experiences for our students. So all in all, it was a good win to have these experiences. There's a part of me that wants to take some of what I've learend and do some data scraping of some type, but the problem is that I don't have any good ideas for what data to try to scrape. But I now have a more robust set of tools to do that whenever I finally figure out what I want to do with that.
The COVID numbers are going way up again. My time at the SNHD has brought me closer to the local numbers because I've been working on the dashboard for it. The national numbers are showing a third wave that's larger than anything that has come before. But while Clark Couty is rising up towards a second peak, we 're still below our previous highs. Some cities are back to using mobile morgues because the death count is so high. So it's really not a good time right now. We won't have a large family gatherings for Thanksgiving, and I'm doubtful that we'll do something for Christmas given the current trajectory. But I'm okay with it. Such decisions are how we take care of ourselves and each other. Most of the community spread at this point seems to be coming from small gatherings in homes rather than out in public spaces, and that's something that's much harder to get under control. It's been striking to me just how many people have chosen not to take things seriously, which is what has led us to where we are. I'm not really expecting us to start coming out of this until late next year at this point.
I've completed two out of the three chapters of mutivariable calculus videos. I've got them scheduled to come out three times a week rather than just dumping them all at once because I have time before the next semester, and I think it does better for the YouTube algorithms if I do it that way. The channel recently hit 500 subscribers, which I think is just kind of strange. I don't think it's ever going to be a thing for me to have a big YouTube channel raking in pennies and pennies of ad revenue, but it's fun to think that people are actually watching my videos. So that will just keep on doing its thing in the background.
I still have yet to get started on the notes for the Linear Algebra and Complex Analysis courses. So I really want to transition into looking into those pretty soon. I still have plenty of time to get those together, so I'm not quite under the gun. But as the time runs out, I'll have less time to try to do something more robust with the notes for those courses. I've still got a couple months, and so we'll just have to see how things play out.
I've completed a draft of a paper that I'm going to submit probably tomorrow or Friday. We've been gathering data on student attitudes towards mathematics over the last year (and are continuing to do so), and this is the first run at that data set to see what patterns can be found there. The unsurprising thing is that we were able to detect a gender gap (women have worse attitudes towards math than men), but we didn't see this gap reflected across racial categories. We also found that student attitudes were not affected by the switch to online courses. So we'll see how that goes.
At this point, that article is basically the last thing I really need to do to complete my portfolio for applying for full professor. I'm in good standing in all of the other categories, but professional publications are completely absent. Most of that is just because I'm not that interested in research. It's just not a thing that I really aspire for in my work, as I'd rather just focus more on teaching and supporting the college. But that's fine, because I'm okay with scraping by at the bare minimum in that category.
I also want to try to complete one of the programs with our Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, which will require me to do a teaching portfolio. But since that also serves the application for full professor, I get to kill two birds with one stone. I want to spend some time focusing on that one before the end of the calendar year. I've got most of the pieces of that already, and it's just a matter of putting it together.
I've been in a number of conversations and reflections about the election. I don't want this to turn into too long of a ramble, but while I'm not generally concerned with the US as a whole (I still basically trust the states, systems, and structures to protect against the total collapse of the country), I'm increasingly concerned with the apparent absence of truth behind many of the posts that I see conservative Christians spreading. For example, The growing strength of QAnon (particularly) among conservative Christians, which does not speak well to their ability to speak Truth to anyone about anything (there are a number of people who have unwittingly shared QAnon conspiracy theories because they just didn't bother to do any fact-checking). I'm concerned by the 76% of white evangelicals that supported Trump, not specifically because they supported Trump, but because the arguments put forward to support Trump (that I saw) were generally not based in truth. I'm thinking specifically of the abortion argument, which basically claims that Democrats want all abortions to be legal up to the moment of birth and other such nonsense. I don't believe that it behooves Christians to take such a narrow view of morality as to claim that this one issue outweighs all others. That reads to me like an argument of ignorance, rather than attmpting to stand firm on truth. (Paul Vischer, of Veggie Tales fame, put together a good video discussing the statistics of abortion. Basically, if you look beyond the rhetoric to look for the reality, Republicans haven't actually done that amazing of a job of reducing abortions, whether by installing Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade or by the actual abortion counts while Republican presidents are in office.)
I think that it's all become a distraction from core principles and core doctrine. Because being against socialism of all types isn't really something that Christians need to be fighting against. Christianity is not an economic doctrine. And if it is, then... well... Matthew 6:24. The core of Christianity is not the pursuit of power as a means of influence. It's a pursuit of relationship as a means of influence. And there are many disaffected younger Christians that are being driven further and further away from their faith as a result of the hardline political stances of those conservative (and often older) Christians. "Greatness" is service, not power (Mark 10:43, Matthew 20:26). And the American Christian witness appears to be generally stuck in the wrong place.
So as I continue to watch conservative Christians flounder in the world of arguing about supposed vote counting irregularities (though it's worth noting that no evidence of mass voter fraud has been presented to the courts, and the Trump administration has yet to win anything of substance in their filings), I think it's time for them to step back and reevaluate their theology of voting, and even their theology of what it means to be American. Pictures of people praying fervently in an attempt to regain political power by God intervening in the election somehow do not reflect well on a faith that's supposed to be about the dying to yourself. I hope that this does not go on for too much longer. I think American Christianity is in need of a "back to basics" movement where we strip away all of this other stuff ("the sin that so easily entangles" - Hebrews 12:1). I've had a number of good conversations with Christians that feel the same way, so I don't think I'm alone on this one. I think now is a good time to pivot.
Other stuff: Thor is doing well. Nothing in particular to report other than his interest in the hummingbirds that visit the feeder by the window. No piano playing has happened in the past couple weeks. I turned on my heater for the first time today. No effort has gone into a newer version of the alarm system. The indoor herb garden seems to be doing okay. Life is good.
