I have too big of a class for summer school – 35 – and Monday the new distance students in-residence orientation Bootcamp begins. So I haven’t really had any vacation yet, aside for going to the Prairie Home Companion 40th celebration – which was really fun, but I think was kind of more of a mini-break than a real vacation. We are going to Washington Island in Door County from August 27 to September 1, but before that I have to get through:
- Bootcamp;
- Reading 35 papers and grading the 35 students;
- Giving a talk in Minneapolis;
- Writing two syllabi, that are due the same day as the talk;
- Getting three online courses set up;
- Attending the faculty retreat ….
Hmm sounding kind of whiny there.
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Well, I just made it through the first day of Bootcamp, and turns out that today, August 4th, is John Venn’s 180th birthday. At least, according to the Google Doodle. That seems like a good omen – my course for the upcoming semester with these new students is online searching. Well, one of my courses. The other is web design, and I’ll have another 6 students in internships.
There’s this cool stained glass window that commemorates Venn, at Gonville & Caius College, his college at Cambrdge. Most of the pictures are pretty bad, though – there’s text, and panes for another mathematician, Ronald Aylmer Fisher, who did squares – but I can’t find any shots where you can really see everything.
This is about the best pic I could find, can’t read the words, but Venn circles above, and Fisher squares below.
