It used to be that whenever I said something in class that I wasn’t 100% sure about, I immediately started to wonder if someone was fact-checking me online. Not anymore. Now I just wonder how long it will take.

HT JohnMark via Facebook

My wife is out of town this week. And whenever that happens, I establish some lofty goal that I want to accomplish before she gets back. This week, I attempted the impossible: an empty inbox.

After some research and experimentation, I discovered that it really wasn’t as difficult as I’d first thought. To accomplish the empty inbox, you just need to follow a few easy steps. Here they are.

1. Delete any email beginning with a consonant.

This should take care of all those emails beginning with hey, hello, and howdy, which you probably shouldn’t respond to anyway. And they’ll also eliminate emails that start off with Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr, Sir, or Madam. I figure that anyone who doesn’t know me well enough to call me by name probably doesn’t need a response. (And, as an added bonus, if your name also happens to start with a consonant you’ll come out way ahead on this one.)

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For those times when you get really excited in the middle of a thought.

I heard that cat pictures are popular on the internet. So I thought I’d go ahead and post my favorite. I hope you like it.

via imgur

(I don’t actually know that this is a cat. But it makes me happy to think so.)

I think I’ll start including this in all my syllabi.

I have to admit that when I get into the third and fourth hours of a long class, I wonder if this is what my students are doing.

HT Trevin Wax

I’m not usually this jaded, but I’m feeling a little cranky this morning.

This made my day.