Let's see, Barbie is a threat to Islam, practicing witchcraft, what could come next? I shudder to think.
(I found Pink Magic Barbie via the ever-informative Ms. Kathy Shaidle)
(And my last post about cheerleaders as athletes generated more comments than anything ever? Maybe I should change my blog focus to Grrrrl Power issues?)
So can you even up your Title IX sex-sports-ratios by making cheerleading a varsity sport? The answer is "it's complicated, but yes."
Some cheerleaders question the standards, though:
"They're splitting us only so they can convince whoever the head of Title IX is that cheerleading can be considered a sport," said senior Erin Valenti, who opted to stay with the spirit squad. "To make it a sport, you're taking out the whole reason to do cheering to begin with."
You see, the Office for Civil Rights has one criterion for what makes an activity a Title IX eligible sport that seems aimed at cheering: "...whether the primary purpose of the activity is athletic competition and not the support or promotion of other athletes."
So the University of Maryland now has a Cheerleading Team and a Spirt Squad. One is scholarship funded, travels, etc. One goes to the NCAA championship -- but it's the Spirit Squad. Big problems for Terps!
Every year we strain ourselves after better students -- we hear at the last faculty meeting in May and the first faculty meeting of September about the excellencies of the newly admitted and newly entered class; they're better, smarter, faster, and have higher board scores than their predecessors (or in my four years here they have).
I can never tell an overwhelming difference, but then I usually teach mixed level small classes -- the sample size is too small and there aren't enough first year students to really make a judgement.
I can say that my Art 101 class did better on their first writing assignment than usual -- out of 24 papers there were only 2 run on sentences. That's something.
Fractures are up for American adolescent females -- part of the price of the shift from about 30,000 girls participating in high school sports in 1972 to about 3 million today. This has corresponded, luckily, with the introduction of fun cast colors so their lead interview subject can have a pink cast. When I was teaching high school the most popular color for casts was black -- but that was the 90s, I guess.
I'm in that "it's only week four but I feel so behind!" mode of professordom, though I'm not behind. The only pedagogically difficult part of this semester is that I'm teaching a course I always teach on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule on Tuesday-Thursdays. That keeps throwing me off, even though "one week" of MWF translates into "one week" of TTh with no remainder.
As though librarians didn't have enough to contend with from hundreds of productions of "The Music Man" annually, the organization that owns the Dewey Decimal System is suing a New York City hotel for "damages" for unauthorized use.
An Army chaplain who counselled people being held at Guantanamo is now being detained himself, but hasn't been charged. The New York Times doesn't report much, but it's an interesting story. More to come, I'm sure.
I grew up in Tennessee and went to graduate school in Atlanta. Schools closed whenever snow stuck -- a quarter of an inch was enough. Yankees who lived among us laughed.
I took a job in Upstate New York and thought that the tough Yankees (so tough they hadn't fled South, after all) would go to school through it all.
Actually, no. They close school here for "temperature" related reasons ("oh, those chirren can't wait for the busses" -- this on days when I walk the just-barely-a-mile to school). Snow is seldom given as the explicit reason, but there are certainly Snow Days (so-designated) built into the schedule.
Today the schools are closed for threatened high winds.
It hasn't even RAINED yet (11:23 A.M.).
Yes. This CNN.com article gets the issues right.
Parking is the biggest issue on American university campuses.
This article is funny but sad -- tales of students bringing multiple vehicles to campus probably sound unbelievable to older Americans, but it's true.
Here at these Colleges we dwell in small-town splendor and the only parking trouble for faculty or staff is having to walk across a lot on occasion. Students aren't much worse off. It's a great improvement for me from graduate school when if I didn't leave home before 8 a.m. and the vanishing of open spaces I walked; I only lived a mile from campus.
At my undergraduate institution there was exceptionally limited parking near any of the residences -- but there was a lot for the 40,000 seat stadium. The Stadium Lot was so open people came to race radio controlled cars there.
Every campus has its woes -- but selling 14,000 stickers when you know you have 8,300 spaces is pretty low.
CNN tells us that preferred sleeping position can reveal personality type. I can hear the arguments over the dinner table tonight -- "I'm a log!" "No, you're a starfish!"
Textbooks have never been cheap, but they're worse than ever. The New York Times is right about it, though they underestimate the rising expense of humanities text. The problem isn't the $8 Madame Bovary. it's the secondary material, which is as pricey as anything in the Social Sciences.
The big fat art history textbook isn't quite as expensive as the chemistry books the article mentions (and we can and I do refuse the "bundled" resources of workbooks and cds and such), but it's getting there.
It was explained to me that things had changed in the pricing of classics books during the Carter Administration as an unintended consequence of the so-called Windfall Profits Tax. Remember that? Evil oil companies were hoarding oil and reselling it, and virtuous Democrats were going to tax them into distributing it at a lower price.
Rather than being able to make large print run of a low-but-steady demand book (like the volumes of the Oxford Classical Texts or the Loeb Classical Library) and sell it for several years, warehousing the unsold portions at a lower tax rate, publishers were taxed on some higher value (disclaimer: I have no idea if this is exactly what happened, but this is what faculty members at Rice told me in the early 1980s).
You see, most textbooks in the humanities don't date so quickly as textbooks in some critical sciences (and I wonder if Chemistry 101 really changes quickly enough to justify their prices, but that's another subject). However, the textbook companies certainly put out strikingly different editions so that I can't let my students buy the 10th edition of Gardner's Art Through the Ages if I'm teaching out of the 11th -- not if they want to study the same pictures.
Sometimes the differences are slight, but usually the publishers have made enough changes that the new edition is essential.
My experience as a faculty member is that books for higher level courses have tracked inflation much more closely than the big textbooks -- for instance the Thames and Hudson World of Art series, several volumes of which I use in 200 level classes, haven't gone up nearly as much in proportion as even paperback "textbooks" like Marilyn Stokstad's Medieval Art. The list prices on Amazon for the World of Art series are all around $17. I think when I bought my first one (in 1984 or '85) they were around $10. Stokstad, on the other hand, runs $55 now. There have been no shocking changes since the book was first published in 1986 when I think I bought it for under $20. I don't even think about James Snyder's Medieval Art -- it's hardback and has great photographs. The last time I looked it was over $100.
What's the difference? Stokstad and Snyder's books are textbooks and the World of Art series is a trade series. People not on college campuses buy those books and their price remains competitive. Luckily for people in my field the new Oxford History of Art series is being brought out as a trade series at about $20 a volume, so there are up-to-date books available at a reasonable price.
Difficult problem -- but unlike the tuition problem it's one that I can work on directly. Faculty members owe it to their students to put some effort into checking the cost of their books and, when editions don't matter, choosing the least expensive versions. Last year I managed to choose a few Dover Publications editions -- the Marcus Aurelius cost $2. Nope, not a typo. Two. That kind of choosing is possible on occasion in the humanities. I don't know what the sciences can do.
Further: I had reason to go by the bookstore this afternoon. At new prices my Art 101 would run about $140; used, $100. The seminar, used, $85 (two of the books weren't even available new, so I'll leave it at that. My Art 101 books also include three books designed for Art, Art HIstory, and Architectural Studies majors or minors (about half of the usual enrollment) to buy once but use in other classes; one of those three books is a style manual used in courses in the Economics and Political Science department, too. The overall prices make me feel at least not as bad as I could if I'd ordered just everything.
This is an interesting story from the Washington Post that runs against expert testimony and common knowledge -- doctors are not being driven out of practice by malpractice lawsuits. For instance, "In Pennsylvania and West Virginia, for example, two of 19 states designated by the AMA as being in a "full-blown liability crisis," the number of doctors per capita has actually increased in the past six years, according to the GAO. "
I don't think the tort system is particularly healthy (perhaps it's due for some sort of reform) but I don't think that the medical sector is doing as badly as they make out, either.
Two professors (one emeritus -- good idea, retire before the boosters get you! Here's a link to the less-wise-one's info.) from the University of Arkansas have published a study purporting to prove that NCAA Division IA schools with better basketball teams have worse graduation rates.
Before you shout "how simplistic!" let me say that I am simplifying because I don't much like basketball. So there. Let me also point out that my sister went to Duke.* Hmmmm. Wonder how they did compared to, say, less basketball-centric splendiferous Southern good universities like Emory.
I have seldom seen a press release for a social science article I so much wanted to read! Unfortunately our access here is only electronic and only up to 1997. Do I want to read it enough to go to the trouble of Inter Library Loan?
Successful football programs are actually linked with slightly improved graduation rates.
Here's an excerpt from the press releasey sort of thing**:
"Current student retention theories tell us that a strong athletic program brings students together, that it fosters school spirit, pride and solidarity in the institution and that this leads to greater retention and higher graduation rates. That's not what our results showed," Adams said.While football appeared to have a slight positive impact on overall graduation rates, the data showed a much stronger negative correlation to successful basketball programs. As teams scored more and more victories, net graduation rates dropped.
The finding calls common practices into question at universities across the nation. Each year, universities pour massive amounts of resources into their athletic programs, in part because sporting events promote campus cohesion and institutional identity - two factors that have been linked to higher retention rates. But Adams and Mangold believe the benefits may hold only to a certain point.
"There's no question that a good sports program can enhance the campus social environment," Adams said. "But in the case of basketball, this study suggests that once a team excels above a certain level of success, it becomes a distraction to students - ultimately detrimental to the goals of the institution."
Via Mr. Paul Nelson, who pointed out the link and a Parapundit blog of last week. The Parapundit mentions that "If some school wanted to get more serious about academics (the supposed reason that institutions of higher education exist) they'd drop their basketball program. But it seems pretty safe to bet against that happening." I tend to agree with his conclusion because I have already accepted that "academics" are not the reason for the continued existence of many institutions of higher education. Not all, but many.
*my brother-in-law went to Syracuse. I try to avoid visiting them for my spring break -- March is not a great time to be around their house. Their children will probably grow up to be rebels and go to UNLV.
**one might ask "didn't you decry science-by-press-release recently?" Why, yes, I did. But I agree with this science, which seems to make my behavior consistent with that of professional journalists. What's more, deciding to pass laws about drugs based on really careless science seems more important to me than debate about sports in education in America, important as I think that debate would be.
Here's an interesting journalism question -- how do you report wealth?
There are 22 Republican senators who are millionaires.
There are 18 Democrats.
The Democrat total is $527,724,842 (click here for a graphic)
The Republican total is $99,055,563
This CNN story provides names and numbers but no party total. I think a 5:1 ratio is a news worthy item.
So which one is the rich man's party? Well, it's tricky to say, but the Democrats may be the rich woman's party -- 4 of the 6 female millionaires are Ds, at $29,894,125 to $4,468,083.
Tom Daschle, by the way, gets a mention in the CNN article as being of more modest wealth. The last article I read about Tom Daschle and money was about a $2 million house he's bought in Washington -- despite maintaining his legal residence in income tax free South Dakota!
I know it would be unconstitutional and it's and un-liberty-loving of me but I always feel like an amendment prohibiting residence in the District or within 100 miles after leaving the office of Senator or Represenative would be in order.
On the other hand, I think it's scandalous that a man whose family has brought so much happiness to so many, Mark Dayton, only has about $4 million. Help fuel Mark Dayton's reelection campaign! Buy a Michael Graves kitchen implement!
Uhh - I can't not link here and pretend that I never saw the MOST HORRIBLE JESUS OF THE WEEK EVER. Ever. I promise.
The artist's careful adherence to traditional renaissance iconography of putting Judas on the viewer's side of the table and dressing him in a red cloak is especially admirable.
Here's an article quoting someone not far from me -- a Rochester Institute of Technology professor says the paperless office is inching into sight.
Neither my students nor I are paperless yet. I post web versions of almost everything I hand out (save as webpage, upload to the Blackboard course delivery system -- not much trouble at all) but I still feel the need to hand a copy to each student and go over it with them rather than saying "you can find your paper assignment on the web." Last year I tried emailing an assignment to them before the class meeting at which I would be discussing it. Everyone wanted a hard copy.
When Professor Romano's prediction of the inexpensive tablet wireless computer comes true I could stand in front of my class and do the same thing that I do with a hard copy. That will happen soon enough at pricey schools like ours, where a majority of the entering class for the last two years has ordered the laptop package deal. It's not 100%, but it's not far.
I cheerfully accept papers by email but very few of my students offer me digital sketches (I got one jpeg version of a sketch with the assignment that was due yesterday). So, for instance, just under half of the class emailed me their papers but dropped off a sketch-on-paper later in the day.
I am capable of grading on screen but I don't much like it -- I prefer to print the document and work from there. The marking portion of word processing software (strike through, underline, change color of fonts) is not really sophisticated enough for my needs. I need to be able to write in the margin. There's software which will do that, more or less, but I've never done the work to find it and no one has ever offered it to me. If it came from my campus IT folks it would, I expect, also come with a WinTel desktop.
All in all I still live in a papered world and don't mind much. We'll see how things change.
More. The lead sentence is ironic, but the real poignancy comes here: "'We definitely want people to apply this one,' said Jeff Jones, Microsoft's senior director for trustworthy computing."
"Director for Trustworthy Computing"
Pray for the dead. Pray in thanksgiving for the survivors. Pray for victory over those determined to stop us from being able to live and worship in any way other than their particularist interpretation of Islam. Pray for peace.
If a foundation named after Albert Shanker, longtime president (some would say "comissar") of the American Federation of Teachers can come out with a report whose press release starts off:
The typical American high school student has neither an understanding of nor appreciation for the basic democratic principles that make the United States different from most other nations.
Perhaps there's hope for change. These people are NOT rightists. They are NOT Republicans. On the other hand, they will probably be labelled "foundationalists" or "essentialists" by the "Critical Thinking" wing of American educational reform.
The best thing that I've seen is the Core Knowledge curriculum. One of the reasons I, as a former classroom teacher, admired the plan was that it didn't try to plan the content of the whole curriculum -- the Core Knowledge people provide a background list in a graduated manner. I would be delighted to teach a college students someday who had gone to school on the plan. Take a look -- it's interestingly broad and deep.
They teach about religion -- world religions -- in history and geography. They teach about world cultures from the past as well as the present (including Canada! really!)
Of all the back-to-basics crowd (I categorize them that way, though I'm not certain they deserve such a reductionist label), they're working the hardest -- the books aimed at parents are coming out in Spanish and are available on the web at no cost.
It strikes me that the headlines about the cash settlement in Boston are unduly optimistic. CNN.com gives us Boston church settles abuse cases with $85 million
The New York Times has Church in Boston to Pay $85 Million in Abuse Lawsuits
The St. Petersburg Times has Sex abuse costs church $85-million
And so forth. When I looked at news.google.com and the 283 related headlines there were very few expressions of tentativeness, attempt, offering or so forth. The amount is unimportant at the moment (I'm sure it could be more or less and still satisfy lawyers but not significantly addressing the healing of those wounded) but the run of headlines suggests a finality I really don't believe.
. . . and when I feel that way I all too frequently click on the bookmark for Jesus of the Week. And then I hit reload until I'm rolling -- like with this dramatic sculptural group. When I see things like this I'm reminded of the bumper sticker "Jesus is coming. . . and boy is he mad!"
You do read the Invisible Adjunct every day, don't you? Well, if you're here for something other than academic politics, feel free not to. Otherwise, you really have no choice. Today's topic -- the ethical dilemma of the hiring process with "inside candidates" involved.
The commenters at the Invisible Adjunct make some interesting points about how diversity figures into these decisions -- and is a category not mentioned in the example given. Rana, a recovering adjunct, comments:
It's interesting that these questions of diversity and national search often only apply when looking for tenure-line hires, isn't it? Adjunct positions, meanwhile, can often be filled by a call to a colleague -- do you know anyone who can teach this course at short notice? -- at least in my own experience.
To be fair at These Colleges the faculty is delighted to hire a diverse adjunct faculty -- but the hiring for semester-to-semester positions is mainly done with the telephone call rather than the search. That's the truth about most adjunctery.
In July I accepted the offer (to begin next July -- I'm adjunct until then) of "conversion" of the position I'm in from "ongoing" to "tenure track." There was no second national search -- one of the conditions for conversion was my departement demonstrating that I had been identified initially in a legitimate, EEOC-compliant, national search. I was.
So, my position will be converted at the beginning of next contract year, July 2004. The tenure track period will be shortened to reflect some time served.
I didn't have to be an inside candidate. I am grateful to everyone here who made that horror not happen.
Why was I identified in a national search if I'm an adjunct? The position in which I'm teaching has been for 17 years what is called here "ongoing" -- a position needed in the curriculum which is not filled by a tenure track person but by persons on a series of 1 or 2 year renewable contracts (the last tenured predecessor left in May of 1986).
What does renewable mean in the world of tenure? It means a term of 6 years with de facto tenure occurring in the 7th year under AAUP guidelines. I have had to waive any claim to "de facto tenure" in order to accept this offer.
So, I have had considerable security in comparison to my colleagues on semester-to-semester or year-to-year contracts. I shouldn't whine.
Or maybe not. Take a look at Magink, which I found via Gizmodo.
I tend to think that advertising is the most interesting contemporary visual art form (that's a professional but non-specialist opinion -- I'm an art historian but a medievalist) so innovation in medium like this is promising.
The technology page says that the display is essentially passive -- the image doesn't go away without a steady power supply nor does it demand internal lighting; you need to apply power only to change the image. The screens on the picture page I linked are all the same size and aspect -- I don't know (and don't care enough to download the white paper) if that is integral to the current version or not -- and I'd like to see one live.
I looked at some sample projections of images from our collection yesterday and the quick verdict was that our scanner is better than our projector. Much better. There were mild differences between the color quality of the scans but the pixillation was, from an art historians point of view, horrific on all of them.
We're still using and will for the immediate future use analog slides. The image quality is enormously better, and art folk need that.
IT being, of course, I.T. What a god!
I'm not sure what's more pitiful -- Wham-O suing Paramount over a terrible, terrible misuse of a Slip'N'Slide in a David Spade movie or the penultimate paragraph in which we learn that someone sued and won for drunken misuse of the toy leading to paralysis.
In a world with "Jackass: The Movie" going into theatrical distribution surely any court will throw the current lawsuit out.
Then again, I wouldn't have greenlighted a movie starring David Spade, so maybe I'm not a useful judge of popular culture or American mores.
Geographical Informations Systems are one of the great rages at the moment -- here's an example at Wheaton College supported by the glorious Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury. Me, I'd be delighted to do a class with a GIS component for our Rome program; hint, hint!
Here's the first really useful application for the humanities I've read about, though.
Typical for big journalism, the Guardian doesn't supply a link to the buildings in question:
Via Mirabilis.ca
I'm sorry to say that my previous substantive thinking on Early Decision/Early Action (hah - but why should I consider my punditing less useful than anyone else's? Is it the impostor complex rearing its ugly head?) was on Blogspot. I never got those archives to import correctly. I eventually cancelled the blog entirely because it annoyed me to have two sets of Cranky Professor hits. Oh, well. So I repeat myself.
The Washington Post has a followup story to last year's admission that Yale and Stanford were no longer playing by the same game as some of their comptetitors. They're not going to be censured, but there is going to be a serious discussion at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Early admissions is another complicated subject -- less complicated than tuition, but not simple.
The problem is for people who know they are likely to get into one or more excellent schools but also know they are absolutely dependent on aid to attend. The clear losers are low-income and low-middling income students of every race.
The Post ran an article on early admissions at UVa back in December that is as clear an explanation of how the process works and what its problems might be as any I've read. (I blogged about it).
Here at These Colleges we're in a different situation than the Harvards, Yales, and even UVas of this world. We couldn't fill our entering class with our early decision folks (I'm not certain the Ivies really get that many good applications at early decision time, but it wouldn't surprise me). We do need those people because they provide a core of academic excellence in each class -- they really ARE people we know are acceptable and whom we KNOW have chosen to attend.
Early decision people don't suffer from so much yield melt -- the number of students who are admitted and say they will attend but then don't show up. I was amazed to find out how many folks actually even pay the deposit and don't bother to come (at Emory when I was in graduate school I heard it was along the lines of 2-3% per entering class). Some of them don't bother to submit any notification of their change of mind, either.
As these articles suggest early decision people do also tend to have a certain number of full-payers -- that is to say that people applying early decision are sometimes sure they don't need much financial aid, though that is not universal.
Thus the core group who are admitted early are both reasonably sharp and reasonably lucrative -- two things that warm the heart of any higher education administrator.
The problem from the faculty point of view is not need-based aid -- here we mail the notification of need-based aid with the early admissions letter. However, the merit scholarships aren't decided until later in the spring term. Therefore the early admissions people are not necessarily our strongest applicants.
It would be interesting to know the percentage of early applicants at ueber-competitive institutions who are legacy candidates who strongly wish to attend but aren't so certain of their admission in these competitive times.
Hell. Some Republicans advocating the worst kind of populist price controls -- and for college tuitions. State and private. Gosh! The article says:
"... a tuition increase would be deemed troublesome if tuition over three years grew at more than twice the rate of increase in the price index."
After a department of Education intervention offenders would be put on a "cost affordability alert" status. Yow!
I believe that we have done a miserable job justifying to payers and funders the way tuitions have risen. Worse than that, we have done a really bad job of explaining something that higher education professionals understand -- the disconnect between tuition and final budget. Without grant money, annual fund, and endowment even places like this that charge $36,000 for the full ride would close down tomorrow.
After all, our quoted figure for endowment is about $120,000,000. That helps a lot. The Annual Fund here raised about $2.1 million in 2002. That helps a lot, too.
All in all there's no easy solution -- and simple Cost of Living increases aren't going to work, either.
Googling on our site I found an interesting pie chart showing the 1999-2000 sources of payment -- the relationship between money from families (cash, in other words) vs. loans and scholarships -- much of which comes directly from the endowment, after all. Only about 45% came in 1999-2000 directly from families.
I don't have any answers here -- it makes me glad to be a professor.
Further: The Inivisible Adjunct has a discussion thread going on the topic.
The Washington Post reports that the scientists (and how tempted I was to use scare quotes!) who reported on the possible Parkinsons consequences or even sudden death from even modest Ecstasy use had the wrong vial. They were injecting animals with methamphetamine.
They are retracting their conclusions, but, wait for it:
But she and Ricaurte emphasized last night that the retraction had not changed their feelings about the danger of taking ecstasy."I still wouldn't recommend it to anybody," McCann said.
Now they're down to "feelings". She wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but the follow up tests (using actual Ecstasy, one hopes) have given 'conflicting results." That is to say they must not have shown sudden death or dopamine level dropping.
How much of this story was actually caused by science-by-press-release? I remember the big splash this made when it was released last year. Their haste to publicize has certainly given the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies ammunition it didn't have before.
Further: In the New York Times story the lead investigator says "We're scientists, not politicians" and "We're not chemists. We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them." Someone get that man some media training!
Further yet: Dr. Derek Lowe weighs in at Corante: In the Pipeline. He has hard words for press-release oriented scientists.
The Dalai Lama is back on an American Tour (I wonder if he'll ever make a 'farewell tour' like Cher?). He spoke at the commencement exercises at Emory when I got my Ph.D.
Later that year I saw an S.U.V. in Buckhead that had two bumper stickers. I wish I had thought to take a picture, because they were as cognitively dissonant a pair as I can imagine -- on the left side one read "Stop Theocracy." On the right, under the old flag of Tibet, one read "Free Tibet." I wanted to leave the driver a little note about God-Kings, but went into the grocery store instead.
Read this if you think a few of my advisees are procrastinators. Their parents must be pulling out their hair! I had never heard of the Space Availability Survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, and I love the phrase "lively college admissions after-market!"
From the BBC -- Fans detained after Italian brawl
Fans took over the centre of Milan and in particular the historic city's famous Vittorio Emmanuele Gallery ahead of the match in the San Siro stadium.
From the Artchive, Umberto Boccioni's Riot in the Galleria.
Couldn't resist.
I had never read about Pancho Villa's use of the media!
Despite the bad omen I've already had two weblinks to email to my ART 101 students -- the lion-man below and now a Greek bronze.
One question that occasionally comes up (and since the number's in the headline on the link someone may ask) is why the restorations take so long. If the statue was discovered 4 years ago why is it just going on display? The answer is that the process is really exacting -- I once got to watch a restorer in the National Museum in Italy (back in the days when all the classical material was at the Terme Diocleziano) looking down into a detached bronze leg with a medical tool -- probably designed to look down into people's stomachs or some such. He was picking away at incrustation very very carefully through the tool. That's how it takes 4 years!
(Link via Cronaca.com.)
I implied the other day that my classes had begun well.
Actually, I've never had a bad omen in the technical sense for a semester, but it's hard to think of what happened Thursday in any other way.
Art 101 met in the cemetary adjacent to Houghton House, home of the Art Departement at These Colleges. They are writing a brief formal analysis of a grave marker -- treating the grave marker as an object to be described and analysed using technical terminology correctly.
So we walked around the cemetary and talked about a few gravestones. After we had started back to Houghton House there was a a scream from the back of the group -- everyone at the front turned around and saw a crow swoop very close to the heads of the people at the back and then FALL TO THE GROUND DEAD.
After thinking that this was the worst way to begin the semester ever I remembered West Nile Virus. Later in the day I called the county Health Department and they sent someone out from Animal Control within the hour to pick up the body for testing. Turns out someone died of West Nile at the south end of Seneca Lake and the county is taking dead crows very seriously.
Bet I never get this class to agree to an impromptu field trip again!
If animals have rights do we have a duty to protect those rights? An interesting suggestion that pursues the question to logical extremes.
The Invisible Adjunct has an interesting post (and follow up discussion) on a proposal by the president of NYU to create new categories of faculty.
I agree that what the new categories come down to are second class non-research faculty. Will these people have tenure? Will it be possible to move from one track to another? Is this the Mommy/Daddy Track for academe? Will these people get loan subventions for living in Manhattan?
All this and more at the daily-read Invisible Adjunct, link in left column.
There's a nice moment on Samizdata.net today in which Mr. David Carr calls the BBC on a bit of mislabelling:
In common with everybody else, the BBC always refers to the BNP [British National Party] as 'far-right'. Such nonsense. The BNP is not of the right, near or far. It is an old Labour-style socialist party with a bit of wog-bashing thrown in. They are, in the truest sense of the term, the Nationalist Left.
My friend at Mirabilis.ca blogged today about the earliest dated statue. Just this morning I showed my Art 101 class the statue referred to in this paragraph of the article she links:
Conard says he thinks that the figures are older than a previously discovered Lowenmensch [Lion-man], fragments of which were found by German archaeologists in 1939 near Vogelherd and dated to about the same time. Until now, those artefacts were accepted as the oldest examples of figurative art in the world. The newly discovered objects are older, Conard argues, as they were uncovered at a lower level in the cave floor's sediments.
For once the linked article has a reasonable picture -- that's probably because as a newly discovered artifact (more or less) there are fewer copyright claims.
The photograph copyright is held by an organzation called Showcaves.com which as a lot of interesting stuff. Here's a link to the cave where the lionman statue was found.
I tried to explain to my class today how interesting it is that the earliest (more or less) known statue is a composite animal-human -- a man's body (based on genitalia) and a lion head. The early cave paintings have remarkably few human figures.
I keep reading Mr. Gruber at Daring Fireball. He pointed me to an interesting comparison between Microsoft and Monoculture Farming.
Most instructive.
Me, I'm still waiting for my saved mail and address books 9 days after the enforced migration to Outlook 2001 for Mac.
Later: Via the invaluable Dr. Swygert, Psychometrician, I learn of Microsoft's attempt to keep 'em down on the farm.
Via Mr. Will Baude at Crescat Sententia I came across Just Another Rice Grad, an anonymous Owl Blogger.
I'm Hanszen, '84, by the way.
Those with messy offices will understand me when I admit that I don't always believe that objects are so inanimate as we think. They seem to move around sometimes -- even between the time I go upstairs for a cup of coffee and get back down to the computer.
I have had a copy of Kenneth Conant's Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture: 800-1200 since 1985 or so -- and I get an occasional examination copy without actually asking for one (as opposed to the books I can't get desk copies of even when I've ordered them for my class mutter mutter mutter).
My current copy has walked off. Left me in the lurch. Hidden under a carpet. I don't know -- but it's not where it belongs. I'm sure I haven't used it since November, so what is it doing out of place? Argh!
Can you tell from my mood that school has begun?
Both classes look good -- the survey was appropriately cowed by my "If your cellphone rings audibly during my class you lose a point off your semester grade" growl and the seminar group is almost all repeat students (always heart-warming).
But where is that book?
Here at These Colleges we started classes. Yes. On Monday. Read it and weep.
Of course I'm poormouthing -- I'm teaching a T-W-Th schedule this term. La la la la la!