Temptations

• For the first time in many years, there are actually jobs in my field. I don't want to move, and I probably won't apply, but a lot of them seem to read like this "Wanted: Undine Specialty 1 with possible subfield in Undine Specialties 2 and 3." It's tempting.
• Some day, I am going to stand up in a faculty meeting and say, "This is not a karaoke bar. You cannot just stand up and hold forth to no particular purpose with all of us as your captive audience. If you're going to do that, at least buy us a round."
• A few months ago, I was talking with someone (let's call hir Fatuous Fool) in Undine Specialty 2 who'd been in the field for, oh, 20 minutes or so, and FF said, "Of course X isn't really a Specialty 2 project at all." "Really? Why?" I asked. "How would you define Specialty 2?" "Um, er, um," replied FF, after which I dropped it. I wish now that I had pursued it a little further and been a little less gracious, because really, who made FF the deity of Specialty 2? Well, maybe taking the high road was all for the best.
• I am tempted to rant further about reinventing the educratic wheel--"No more dreary lectures with our new ed-u-matic professor software!"--but fortunately Historiann has done it for me.