Tuesday, April 9, 2013

What Kind of Nut is Marty Green?

There are quite a few amateur psychologists out there who have been trying to diagnose my mental condition based on what I've been posting here and in my physics blog. Some of them have complained that despite having over three hundred posts to pore through, I'm still not giving them enough information to go on. Not that it's stopped any of them from concluding that my condition makes me unfit to be trusted with children.

Anyhow, it turns out that in the last year I've finally gotten around to a personal project that people have been urging me to do for almost twenty years, ever since my community access TV show went off the air. Yes, you can now check out clips from my old Math With Marty shows on YouTube. And it's true I look pretty crazy. If you need any more evidence as to why I don't belong in a classroom teaching kids, you should be able to find it here. It's funny how many of the tendencies noted by my professors and fellow students in their complaint documents are mirrored in the behavior recorded twenty hears ago. I've put up a few samples below.


 This one starts partway through the show, but I'm clearly all over the board and not making sense. Here's another one:

Here I display a childish obsession with excrement and my disdain for established climate science. Then I mess up the calculation which was supposedly the whole point of the show, and at the very end I appear to be condoning illegal drug use.

 Let's see what else I've got. Here's one where I express my disdain for the educational system and the teachers and professors:

One of the most serious allegations against me at the University was how I humiliated a guest who was invited to the classroom. In this next video clip you can see I've invited a guest, choir director and accompanist Barry Anderson. I think you'll agree that he seems to find the whole experience pretty embarrassing. (He never returned to the show after this episode):


And while we're at it,  if you think I'm crazy, then how crazy is was my high school math teacher, Mr. Barsby?

And here's one more just for fun:


15 comments:

  1. Hi, Marty:

    Never say never.

    Just to be clear-- during the past couple of months of reading your blog(s), I've moved from an inclination to be Anti-Marty to being Ambivalent-About-Marty. That's a huge success for you.
    I think it's entirely possible that you've been screwed over by the uofw, simply b/c there isn't any such thing as an institution that's 'above' malfeasance.
    On the other hand, I think it's also possible that-- like many other people-- you're the author of your own misfortune, simply b/c it's so incredibly difficult to be entirely objective about one's own conduct.
    It's impossible to determine, on the basis of your blog(s), who's 'right' and who's 'wrong' in this sit'n-- because there's no overriding reason for anyone to take your word for anything.
    Also, just to be clear: I don't think being eccentric disqualifies you from being a teacher. I've had some wonderful teachers who were wonderfully quirky. Nor do I think that having Aspergers (if indeed you do) should disqualify you from being a teacher if you otherwise possess the necessary, objectively determined, abilities to teach effectively.
    However, IMO, there *are* personality characteristics that would disqualify *anyone* from being a teacher; for example, being incorrigibly confrontative, disputatious, insulting or rude. *Anyone* who wants to be a teacher *must* be able to establish & sustain productive working relationships with students & colleagues. If you have that ability-- go for it. If (objectively) you don't-- teaching is probably the wrong career for you.
    The last (& possibly the most important) point I'd like to make is this: I honestly don't think you're going to be able to avoid addressing your own conduct if & when your lawsuit winds up in court. For one thing, you've put your conduct-- frankly, your entire academic & employment history-- at issue by alleging damage to your reputation. For another, I don't think the court is going to want to hear your procedural arguments in the absence of context. If I were a trial-- or even a pretrial-- judge hearing your case (and thank heaven, I'm not) & you appeared before me fulminating about the uofw treating you w/o due process-- the 1st thing I'd do wld be to ask you to back up 10 steps & tell me *why* you were expelled.
    If it were up to me-- and it isn't-- I'd say you shld be approaching your case this way:
    (1) You didn't do anything terrible enough to warrant expulsion; but alternatively
    (2) If you did, the uofw/your faculty advisor shld've given you verbal/written warnings wrt specific incidents/behaviours & given you an opportunity to mend your ways before it resorted to drastic measures (I hope your exams for discovery have been directed at finding out what, if anything, the uofw thinks it did wrt these matters. NB that providing you with verbal feedback *does* count as warning, esp if profs made notes that they did so).
    (3) It didn't, so the uofw failed in its duty to you as a student & damaged your ability to make a career out of teaching.
    Which leads to the issue of damages & who knows how you'll make out there.
    But then, I'm just some chick on the internet, slinging opinions around. No particular need to listen to me.
    I haven't watched your video clips, btw. Just don't have the time/inclination to sit around watching nearly 3 hrs of 20-yr-old public-access-cable footage. If anyone else does, well, whatever floats yr boat!




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  2. I think you ought to watch one of the videos.

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  3. Marty

    Don't let the comments throughout this blog throw you off track. This blog is about due process, and the antithesis of that concept is getting effectively kicked out of a school program because one or more individuals don't like you. Due process is not about who likes you and who doesn't, and it sure as hell isn't about mob lynching or mob sympathies.

    This latest post of yours is defensive, and is playing right into the hands of people that for some reason want to rationalize the university staff's actions, after the fact, by implying that your personality or whatever is not suitable for teaching and thus the result was acceptable even if the process wasn't. If you really believe in due process, you have no reason to go down the path of having to defend yourself from baseless accusations.

    As for some of you commenters, get a clue. The concepts of due process and procedural fairness are designed to ensure a consistent and just administration of rules. I assure you that education program students unsuitable for teaching can be fully evaluated and kicked out within the program's rules and regulations. What happened here is that a few people at the University of Winnipeg appear to have caused this person to fail his program in an indirect way because they personally didn't like him. This is of course assuming that Marty didn't outright lie on this blog, but I urge you to consider that he stands to gain little by lying and if lying he would have a lot of legal liability especially given the court case.

    Marty, focus on the facts. And I urge you to temper your desire to share your story with the world so that you can give yourself the best chance in court. We can wait to hear how this story ends, don't cause yourself harm by revealing too much too soon or getting defensive because a few nerds on the Internet feel they know you because they read a handful of blog posts.

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  4. Thanks, Anonymous. But did you watch any of the videos?

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    1. I watched one of them. Your personality seemed warm and intelligent. I still maintain that it has nothing to do with the subject of this blog or the events it describes. I like to keep things objective.

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    2. But you can see why people say I'm crazy, right?

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    3. Crazy.... like a fox!

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  5. One of the things I continue to find entertaining about his blog is how posters' comments follow their obvious biases: there are the "anti-establishment" commentors who assume that anyone who takes on a collection of people who have 'jobs for life' *must* be right. Then there are the posters who assume that anyone who comes across as an oddball (and admittedly, I started out as one of the latter) has to be in the wrong.

    "Anonymous", you're entitled to your biases. *But* despite the title of this blog, it's *not* about due process. It's about Marty's conviction that he's been victimized by powerful people who "dislike" him for no real reason.
    The university's slant is that it kicked Marty out of its program for "non-academic misconduct," & they've provided some examples as to what they believe grounds that charge.
    Two opposing accounts, nobody but the people personally involved know what the facts are, everybody's presenting the selected facts that make him/herself look best, nobody's got a lock on the truth, and it's anybody's guess what's going to happen if this mess ever actually winds up in front of a judge.

    Marty's certainly entitled to his crack at the judicial system, if that's what he wants. On the other hand, I think it would benefit him to keep his expectations low & to acknowledge (at least, to himself) the possibility that the *evidence* won't go his way.

    "Anonymous," if you have actual *evidence*-- as opposed to opinion-- that contradicts the university's version of the facts, I'd suggest that you contact Marty directly & offer to appear as a witness on his behalf. If you don't-- well, you're not really bringing anything to the table.

    I agree that Marty needs to temper his desire to share his story with the world. At this stage of the process, there's nothing to gain & much to lose.

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    1. I wrote a lengthy and well thought out reply to you and just before posting changed my mind and deleted. You're either
      1. trolling, or
      2. your intelligence is insufficient for having a civilized discussion on the topic of the blog (hint, read the title of the website), or
      3. your worldview differs drastically from that of the general Canadian population

      I will no longer be replying to you, troll elsewhere. Marty has nothing to prove to anybody here, least of all you. Like I said before, due process is not about mob lynching or sympathies. He's not asking us to go bust him out of jail or something. He's telling a story and it seems lately I have to skip the comments if I want the signal to noise ratio to remain reasonable.

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    2. No, don't say that: she's not a troll. There are certain annoying things about her but when it comes right down to it I like having her around. It's like the woman who writes Miss Lonelyhearts asking if she should walk out on an abusive relationship, and Miss Lonelyhearts tells her to ask herself: is your life better off with him or without him? I guess I'm that woman, and Ms. Redboots is my abusive husband. And what would I do without her?

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    3. "Anonymous" (which one are you, anyway?)I'd be angry with you if I wasn't laughing so hard. On what basis do you claim to be privy to the worldview of the rest of the Canadian population? They're certainly not posting on this site.
      As for preferring to keep things objective-- seems to me that this involves seeing & acknowledging the strengths & weaknesses of multiple aspects of an issue. If not being a sycophant = being incapable of having a civilized discussion, I willingly plead guilty to being uncivilized.
      Marty-- Talk about being praised with faint damns!

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    4. Just don't faint from the damn praise.

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  6. Did you check out any of the vidoes yet?

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  7. Nope, I've chosen to "invest" my time in reading the entire blog archive (a day of my life I'll never get back!). This confirms that, aside from a couple of digressions, this blog is basically a blow-by-blow account of your personal dispute with the UofW, and only incidentally about the larger issues of natural justice & due process.
    You've chosen to put this issue before the courts, so further comment is really superfluous.
    I'll leave you with this thought: On this blog, you're in charge & you control the narrative. That will not be the case when you appear in court.
    Whichever way this ends, I wish you well.

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  8. There's been no post for quite a while. I'm guess he's in jail? Here's hoping.

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