So I’m sitting in the arm-chair with the computer in my lap, grading students’ homeworks, and writing down the grades in the grade book. I’m old-fashioned, so my grade book is made of paper, and I enter the grades with a pen. This is a lot more convenient than any automated grade-entering system because even after moving from one university to another, then to another, then to one more, etc., I still have all the grades from all the courses I ever taught. When, for instance, a student from back at Cornell asked me for a recommendation letter to Law School, I looked at the grade book and immediately remembered who he was.

Besides, pen and paper feel more sturdy and comforting. I know, I’m so last century, but it is how it is.

So as I’m writing down the grades, my pens keep disappearing. I have to put a pen down to tap on the keys, but when I try to pick it up, it is not there. I get another pen, but it also disappears. And I’m too lost in work to investigate what happened to the pens.

Then, the doorbell rings. I open the door and discover the postman with a package. He brings me packages every two or three days, so I know him well. Usually, he is a very normal person but today he is staring at my chest in a very obvious way.

“What’s wrong with him?” I wonder. “Why this sudden interest in my chest?”

Then I look down and realize that there is at least a dozen pens of different colors sticking from my cleavage. This is where I was placing the pens as I was working. The look on my face when I see the pens is probably very startled because the postman looks uncomfortable and tries to get away faster than usual.

The 80-hour meme is this currently fashionable insistence that college profs work 80-hour weeks. People defend the meme by saying that it puts paid to the supposedly existing belief that academics don’t work.

The reason why the 80-hour meme bothers me so much is that it normalizes 80-hour work weeks (with no overtime, by the way.) Suddenly, it is as if everybody were supposed to work 80 hours a week and needed to prove that they were, indeed, doing it.

But, folks, that is patently cuckoo. If people work this insane amount of hours, they will get depressed and flip out. This is not normal. Let’s stop pretending like it is. Let’s instead change our approach to “No, I don’t work more than the 40 hours per week that I get paid for, and this is the only healthy way of living. And if you do work 80 hours without even getting paid overtime, you should stop.”

If the popularity of the meme keeps growing, I can easily imagine an administrator demanding to know why we are not on campus 80 hours a week.

A new study reveals that babies who share a bed with a parent are up to five times more likely to die of SIDS – even if mom and dad follow all other infant safe sleep recommendations.

Led by Dr. Robert Carpenter at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the research team concluded that even when parents aim to co-sleep responsibly, eliminating unsafe practices such as smoking and alcohol or drug use, the risk of SIDS soars.

Calling this the “largest study of SIDS risk factors ever reported,” the researchers presented some very startling statistics:

• Babies younger than 3 months old are 5 times more likely to die of SIDS if they co-sleep

• Nine out of 10 SIDS deaths that involved sleeping with a parent or caregiver would not have occurred in the absence of bed-sharing

• 22.2% of babies who died from SIDS had been sleeping with a parent or caregiver at the time of their death

I know this won’t convince anybody to kick the habit, but I’m posting the link as a form of public service.

Please kindly spare me any defense of this practice. I’m not interested. I’m sure there are tons of spaces where it can be celebrated at length. I have never in my life visited any of your blogs and left any comments. Please give me the same consideration and leave your Spiel off my blog. Thank you!