More musings by others

Topics/tags: Meta-musings, short

I recently wrote about the experience of seeing someone else use the term musing for a short, reflective, piece of writing. It turns out that I’ve perhaps been a little too restricted in what I read. This evening, as I ranted about the state of Grinnell’s Web, I experimented with searches for things like Grinnell course tags. While Google brings up my musings as the first two results, Bing doesn’t seem to show them at all.

That surprised me.

So I decided to see what Bing showed for SamR’s musings. While one of my indices shows up first, it’s not the site front door, and the second, fourth, and subsequent results have nothing to do with me and both using the term musings.

The second result? Something called Sammusings: Relationship musings & a few other miscellaneous items. It appears that (a) that Sam started musing long before I did, (b) that Sam self-identifies as a woman, (c) that Sam has a very different set of subject matter than I do; and (d) that Sam has only updated once in the past two years. I didn’t read enough to see if she both muses and rants.

The fourth result? A one-off musing on the SAMR model for technology in the classroom. No, the author did not invent the term. Unfortunately, a name I’ve been using for myself for three decades has become a stupid acronym for classroom technology.

The fifth result? Something titled "Sam’s musings. This Sam, Sam Aderibigbe to be precise, is an economist who appears to live in Nigeria. He seems to post about once a month, mostly about local political issues.

The sixth result? A Facebook page entitled The musings of Sam which appears to be BDSM photographs. This page seems to have started on July 12, 2016, a few months after I started musing.

After that, we have a few more things about the SAMR model.

And then there are way too many others.

• Blogging Sam: The musings of a guy… Oh please! Musings? Don’t make yourself sound so important, Sam.
• Sam’s Music and Musings
• Sam’s War Room - Historical and Political Musings
• Another Sam’s Musings
• And another Sam’s Musings
• Sam Fitzpatrick - Life hacks and technological musings

That’s all I can bear to record. By now, it’s clear that I’m not unique. Not only do many people use musing in their ’blogs (or other sites), many people who refer to themselves as Sam use musing in their ’blogs.

Oh well, at least I write more than they do. Plus, I add a capital R. And I rant.

Postscript: I am serious when I say that I hate that SAMR is an acronym related to classroom technology. Perhaps I should have trademarked my name.

Postscript: It’s okay to use SAMR as an acronmym for SamR’s Musings And Rants. I’ll admit that it’s not the most creative of acronyms and that recursive acronyms are annoying. Nonetheless, its an acronym with which I can identify.

Postscript: I am surprised to see that Grammarly is once again concerned about my use of the term musing. For example, when I write that Sam started musing long before I did, it wants me to write that Sam started using long before I did. I don’t appreciate the implication.

Version 1.0 of 2018-09-17.