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March 29, 2005
Cheaters Sometimes Lose
Oh, this is funny. Go read it all . . . . Mr. Nate Kushner is approached by a stranger over the internet who wants to pay him to write a paper about Hinduism.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 PM
Authenticity
Here's a very nice article on detecting fakes in collections of pre-Columbian art -- thinking about tooling, close comparison with authetic objects (with perfect provenance), and (of course) photographs. Didn't Bernard Berenson say "the one with the largest collection of photographs wins" or some such?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:57 AM
Bypass Surgery for your BRAIN! Cool.
Bypass surgery for your brain -- with neat pictures. "Over all, he said, a majority of patients, 95 percent or more, have no further strokes or related problems after the surgery."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 AM
March 28, 2005
New Jersey Tales - Departmental Refugees
This is dramatic - Seton Hall decides to close down its doctoral program in audiology. The audiology program and its students cast around and offer themselves, lock, stock, barrel, and departmental records, to Montclair State. Other than a suggested lawsuit, everyone seems happy enough. I'd like to read some other versions of this story!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM
Happy Easter, I think.
Sorry to whine, but my parochial loyalty meant that I subjected myself to a Dan Schutte/Suzanne Toolan songfest; there were tambourines. I had to read the Exsultet to myself (Schutte used much of the text but arbitrarily rearranged it) and then look up a sound file on Sunday. I'm really not particularly musical, but the Exsultet is a great, great thing, in English or Latin I found this version via, of all places, Samizdata.net - Adriana Cronin likes it, too.
This is two years in a row for the particular musical selections we had at the Vigil. I think that next year I may call around and find a parish singing something less objectionable.
There was one utterly odd and unrubrical experience - rather than asperging the congregation with the newly blessed water between the baptisms and the confirmations we were invited to come forward and "bless ourselves with the water." This, of course, took even longer than the communion; there was only one basin of water (well, plastic punch bowl, I think) in the front center. Without extraordinary ministers of the renewal of our baptism it took a LONG time. I think that innovations which make the Easter Vigil slower than it already is are not a good thing. Maybe someone thought it would give us a chance to stretch and move around in the middle of things?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:25 AM
March 25, 2005
Oh, my! Blogger Profiling, neo-neocon
The normblog profile today is of a blogger I recently bookmarked - neo-neocon. I've enjoyed reading her a good bit, especially her extended essay on changed minds. (part 1, part 2, and part 3, so far).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:25 AM
Speaking of Proofreading . . .
I commented about spelling a few days ago - the forth/fourth error is one I see occasionally - but seldom expect to see on the printed cover of a manual for FOURTH grade math teachers. The deputy chancellor for teaching and learning blames staff mistakes, the president of the United Federation of Teachers blames the evils of top-down administration (sharing and group work, of course, solves all errors). I blame poor reading skills and innumeracy. It only takes one person to proofread.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:13 AM
Cataloguing Woes
It may surprise some readers to know how much in museum and library storage rooms sits there uncatalogued. The New York Times has an article online about a grant for cataloguing the costume collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Much of the collection has never been photographed or described in detail.
It's an exaggeration (a pardonable one, perhaps) when museum folks say things like "we have no idea what's in storage." Long-time employees usually do have some idea, but often only an idea. A rigorous and thorough cataloguing always turns up things no one had ever noticed that have been sitting on a shelf for 30 years. Conservation also turns up surprises when people look very, very closely at objects and realize they have been misidentified all along.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:59 AM
March 24, 2005
Snow.
More of it. Again. sigh
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:37 AM
March 23, 2005
'Tis the Season to be Effusive
Yes, it's recommendation time for jobs. I've already gone through a few rounds of recommendations for graduate schools, and now we have the recommendation requests coming in for folks who've been out a year or two. Luckily I am kind of cranky, and the students who ask for recommendations in the first place are pretty good. Then, of course, I explain that I keep them on disk and all they have to do until they can ask several former employers for letters and don't need me any more (*sob*sob*) all they need to do is email me and I can revise a paragraph or two and drop the new and improved letter in the mail. The fun part is that I demand an updated resume, so it's an illuminating way to keep up with them.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:36 PM
Spelling Woes
This is an absolutely fascinating article about spelling and brain science from the Washington Post; it's the kind of article that makes me marginally more sympathetic about my students -- though why they can't seek out proofreaders I don't know. Steve Hendrix, a career journalist, can't spell to save his life. A lifelong friend of mine - one of the best-educated people I know - is in exactly this position, too. Of course, he's left-handed, to boot, and we all know about those people.
Hendrix does seem to think that spelling education as practiced in his daughter's school is better than it was in his day, but is afraid that it's too late for him.
I came across this via Chris Nolan, who says she can't spell either.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
March 22, 2005
Wireless Living
Gosh, an Airport Express is a good thing - I'm sitting here reading blogs and playing DJ - currently playing, from the Girls in Trouble playlist, "Is you is or is you ain't my baby," Dinah Washington, the VerveRemixed version. Next, I think, "No me llores más," Omara Portundo. Anyone know how to do a hard link to the Apple iTunes music store? Hmmm - "Sunbeam," by Submarine after that . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 PM
Yeah, yeah, "Stranger than Fiction"
People, that is. Here's a New York Times article about people who WANT to have limbs amputated. The article talks about the attempts of psychiatrists to come up with a good name for the situation and the pros and cons of getting it included in the D.S.M. The main doctor interviewed compares this to gender identity disorder -- and the rationalization of a Scottish surgeon who is "helping" people with the problem sounds analogous to early surgical sex changes:
"The Hippocratic oath says first do your patients no harm," he said in the film "Whole." But maybe the real harm, he said, is to refuse to treat such a patient, "leaving him in a state of permanent mental torment," when all it would take for him "to live a satisfied and happy life" would be to amputate.
The Columbia university psychiatrist, after all, suggests that the surgery doesn't cure the underlying problem. He doesn't seem to have proved that it doesn't, but nothing the surgeon says suggests that he has anything other than anecdotal amputation satisfaction to prove his point.
Oh, well. It'll be a while before insurance covers this one, I think.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 AM
March 19, 2005
The Long Road to Islamic Liberalization
Amina Wadud has set off another firestorm - she led Friday prayers in a mixed-sex assembly. Note that she had to do so "at the heavily-guarded Synod House at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, after several mosques refused to host it."
Prof. Wadud spoke at these Colleges a couple of years ago on the subject of her book Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective.
If today's event is any indication, change is going to be very, very slow. It's worth following the links from the first link above to see some reaction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:34 PM
March 18, 2005
Shoddy Work
Stories like this one about the K-State English professor who killed his wife suggest to me that we need to stress more exacting research skills.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 AM
March 15, 2005
Lord, How the Money Won't Roll In
The good news is that if Summers is forced out fundraising should be better for everyone else - no one's going to give money to the Harvard faculty of Arts & Sciences for a while. The better news is that if Summers stays we may see tenure reform in our time.
Further: Attempting to address reporters after the meeting, Summers was shouted down by a few dozen students waving a large sign that proclaimed "End Sexism" and chanting "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Larry Summers has got to go!" Even better. For every "hey, hey" chant they lose a million dollars. Shouting down your own president (especially a moderate Dem like Summers) is a great way to alienate alums.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 PM
Chronic Pain in Children
This is an interesting personal story of chronic pain in children.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:15 AM
Church Year and seasonal prayer intentions
There are different prayers for different seasons of the year; because I attend Mass on campus (and a big thanks to the priests of the Roman Catholic Community of Geneva, NY for continuing to provide us with this mass!) I hear regular intercessions offered for students and professors at beginnings of semesters, midterms, and finals. Now is a time to move prayers for parish priests up into high rotation -- they are starting that exhausting push to Easter. If you want to do something besides pray for them, take an appropriately sized, microwavable meal (having first determined if Father gave up meat this year) in disposable containers with a note saying "don't bother to return these plastic boxes, Fr.!" Sometime during the next 2 weeks he'll find it, zap it, eat, and pray for your intentions.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:22 AM
The Chicken Business Behind Flu Vaccines
Oh, my goodness. I had NO idea:
Because of the nature of flu vaccine production, vaccine companies must place their egg orders six months or more before they begin producing vaccines. Further, approximately three eggs are required per vaccine dose, so this process consumes hundreds of millions of eggs (270 million or more for the United States alone) to produce a sufficient supply of vaccine for the United States. Additionally, when a pandemic is looming, vaccine companies must manufacture as much as ten times more vaccine than they would normally produce.Actually, GrrlScientist is writing about the science of flu vaccines, but the egg numbers caught my eye. Little things like 270 million eggs in a normal year must do interesting things to market prices of eggs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM
March 14, 2005
"we know just slightly more than jack"
I always like reading things like this reflection on just how do antidepressant drugs work by Dr. Derek Lowe of Pipeline.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:31 PM
March 13, 2005
Geese
On the other hand, there were geese flying north and west this afternoon. Hope springs eternal - usually to be buried, in Upstate New York, under a snow drift.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 PM
Catholic Musical Tradition
One of the advantages of having school out of session is that there's no mass on campus, so I can go to the gorgeous parish church. One of the disadvantages of having school out of session is that I have to hear banal 20th century religious music with organ accompaniment when I go to mass in the parish. On the other hand, I get a vivid taste of Catholic tradition - you know, singing the last refrain to I am the bread of life a capella. I also had to sit behind one of those children who make you wonder about ex opere operato -- I'm not sure her baptism took.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:16 AM
March 12, 2005
Oh look! It's snowing. Again.
ADM - run! Since we talked it's started snowing again. When you called the sun was shining and it was 40 something outside -- there was hope for spring. Now that hope is dead. Again. Well, I will admit that things are improving -- the Weather Channel only lists snow for 3 out of the next 7 days.
Sorry for the lack of attention, readers, but I've got a sinus infection and am crankier even than usual; it's always a bad sign when I don't feel like reading a novel, but I've started 2 and put them down in disgust.
Back tomorrow. Maybe. If it's not snowing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM
March 11, 2005
I felt the earth - move - under my feet
Seismic monitor - clickable and cool.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:19 AM
March 10, 2005
The Qutbdex at Ideofact
Hurrah! Apparatus! Let me point you to the Qutbdex, "a slightly annotated index to all Sayyid Qutb posts on paleo Ideofact and ideofact." If you don't know Bill Allison's ideofact you're not reading all the blogs you should. Mr. Allison has been reading his way through the works of Sayyid Qutb (starting with Social Justice in Islam and currently dealing with The Islamic Concept and Its Characteristics). Here's Mr. Allison's summary of why this is worth doing:
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian author, literary critic, bureaucrat, and one time American student who went on to become the most prominent of the radical fundamentalist thinkers of the post-Colonial period; his political thinking has become the platform of some of the more radical terrorist groups; numerous articles note that both Osama bin Laden and Ayam al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number one and two, have been influenced by Qutb.
From the Wikipedia entry on Qutb(as of 7:42 AM EST 3/10/2005 - you know how Wikipedia is):
One of Qutb's main ideas was applying the term Jahiliyya, which originally referred to humanity's state of ignorance before the revelation of Islam, to modern-day Muslim societies. In his view, turning away from Islamic law and Islamic values under the influence of European imperialism had left the Muslim world in a condition of debased ignorance, similar to that of the pre-Islamic era (or Jahiliyya).I've read all the entries and think they're going to make a fine free-standing webiste of their own someday.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 AM
March 8, 2005
Dynamic Models
This is an interesting essay on an interesting blog I read on occasion - Department of Defense, a new business school?:
The military organization was once a lot like Hobbes’ Leviathan. Decision making was resident on high—in the senior officer’s corps. The ordinary soldier was a limb operated at a distance—by someone else’s intelligence.The blog post is about the change and what it might mean for the MBA school. Among the reasons I found it interesting is that we're having the military-recruitment-on-campus debate right now -- this at an institution whose president is the former director of the Peace Corps. Maybe the Progressive Student Union representatives also spoke against soft imperialism, but I was out of town the night of the debate.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM
Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?
Take the quiz - can you tell 'em apart? I got an 80 - but I recognized one of the serial killers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:45 PM
Marsh Arabs and Gothic Architecture
I'm always interested to read the articles about restoration of the marshes in Iraq, more so when there are photos. This New York Times story has a nice photo essay. Photo six shows the interior of one of the amazing reed buildings of the Marsh Arabs. Some is praying inside it, but the building is decorated as something other than a mosque; the photos I've seen of local mosques from the 1940s and 1960s are much starker -- this looks like domestic space to me (pictures, even of Shiite Imams, are not the thing inside dedicated prayer space).
The lure of organic building material is always present for architectural historians -- I'll look and find Laugier's version of the origins of the primitive hut and some of the imaginative reconstructions of Teutonic-huts-as-primitive-Gothic for you sometime later today. These buildings of reed are beautiful. Go look.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM
March 6, 2005
March of Dimes and Abortion, Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund and Embryos?
Is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation more interested in promoting embryonic stem cell research than it is in finding a cure for diabetes? Read this and wonder. And read this from the Diabetesblog.
As someone who has had a second parent diagnosed with diabetes this week I'd like to know where not to send my contributions.
via Medpundit
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:08 PM
The Sadness that is my life
I bought a new pair of shoes in late January. But I live in the frozen North. I've worn them twice -- once when I was at College Art Association and today; if you live in the world of ice and, worse, salt you wait until you get somewhere without snow and ice to wear nice shoes. Not that my usual shoes aren't nice, but they have a kind of sturdiness about them that occasionally makes me look wistfully at job listings. Especially when I'm heading back there after a week somewhere warmer. Oh, well. Thursday I'll go skiing and winter won't seem like such a bad idea.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 PM
March 5, 2005
Oh, my. The old neighborhood just ain't what it was.
A note for my Southern readers:
My parents next door neighbors' children are having a benefit concert in their back yard tonight. One of 'em is in a Phish-like jam band - but they very politely asked permission of the neighbors and left a cell phone number to call and complain if they got too loud. My parents and their immediate across the street neighbors are now very much the oldest people on the street; several of the neighbors are contemporaries (and one is a grammarschool classmate) of mine. There are two houses at the foot of the hill with Tibetan prayer flags on their porches. North Chattanooga is really something, lately.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 PM
And if Mr. Bender's Motto isn't enough for you, try Kirstie Alley
"I think it's tragic what women are doing to their faces, trying to look like dolls," Ms. Alley said. "It doesn't make women look younger; it makes them look weird. When you hit a point when you're looking at yourself like a doll, you're gone. As a spiritual being, you're dead."Really, that's Kirstie Alley, who can laugh at herself. I'm not sure I've always believed in her lips -- though Awful Plastic Surgery doesn't turn up any hits.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:42 PM
The Trials of the Rich
"People who really want prewar Park and Fifth are considering these $3 million or $4 million condo apartments starter apartments," Ms. Kleier said.
Snarkiness aside, the requirement of having liquid assets to match the purchase price seems a bit stiff. On the third page someone makes the obvious comparison to highly selective college admissions. It all sounds like a reason to live in Jersey City to me, but then I actually live in Geneva, NY.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM
Wichita Serial Killer
Here's a long article in the New York Times about the Wichita killer. Lots of human interest quotations assembled, and the author looks at some of the questions about why Rader wasn't caught before this, since he "was hardly hiding away."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM
A Motto to live by
I don't like music I only like, I only like music I love . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM
March 4, 2005
The Tragedy of the Poncho
While Martha was serving time, Manolo came into our lives - and now we all know that the poncho it is indeed over. Perhaps he will forgive her -- country club prison or not, I'm sure it didn't have a decent wireless network.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:57 PM
How much paper do they use?
Thinking of blogs worth reading on occasion - do you have Circulation Dropping bookmarked? Mr. Moynihan has a most interesting take on the end of the newspaper (with glances at other forms of media). His most recent post notes that newsprint consumption is down 8.8%. Hmmm.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM
The French used to a scooch more militaristic . . . .
I had forgotten the horror of revolutionary propaganda until Dave at North Sea Diaries reminded me of the complete words to the Marseillaise. I once had to sing all the verses, though my professor didn't make us memorize them, at least.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:59 AM
March 3, 2005
12th Cycle of (sorta) 7 years. Hmmm.
Oh, my. Sorry - I can't resist this.
The new cycle, the 12th, begins today and ends on 2 August 2012.The primary category for this entry is "Signs of the Apocalypse" -- write it off as something from someone with a strong professional interest in medieval apocalyptic.
I was reading this at Mirabilis.ca and then I went over and read this at Baraita and then I went back and read the linked article where I found that paragraph with the number 12. I followed up a few of Professor Naomi Chana's links and thought this one was quite helpful.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 PM
Blogs I Read
I find it instructive to check who my sitemeter installation thinks is referrerring readers to my maunderings -- sometimes one finds a blog and follows a trail of other blogs and ends up bookmarking someone. The Joy of Knitting is all about -- hmmm -- living in Italy? Italian cinema (very instructive posts about things like why theater in Italy is useless but Italian voiceover is so amazing -- I've never been in a big city with less live theater than Rome).
Then there's Hobby blog, where a man is documenting his collection of ancient coins. I've learned more about Greek and Roman coinage from this site than from reading any number of books (reading them on command, I will admit).
I recently found Chocolate and Zucchini when looking for cooking time for braised endives. Google triumphs over cooking confusion, and I bookmarked it, too. And since I'm speaking about blogs that make me happy, do you ever read Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools? I do. Via my RSS feed.
What blogs do you read that you don't think I do? I'm thinking about this because I just listed 10 blogs I read frequently on the blogads survey AND I saw Cacciaguida's list of 10 things he'd done that his interlocutors might not have.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 PM
The Sadness that is the E.U.
There are times one reads and realizes that the E.U. isn't much of a threat. North Sea Diaries offers an example (though I think they are really the "country reports" rather than "action plans"), and if one looks at the rest of the blog, more. Perhaps the best part? Each report is 30 pages long. No more. No less.
via Ideofact.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:22 AM
March 2, 2005
The Absence of Merit Pay
Here's an interesting article at Education Next on the decline in quality of those entering the teaching profession. From the conclusion:
Put another way, we cannot expect high-performing college graduates to continue to enter teaching if that is the one profession in which pay is decoupled from performance. Indeed, other professions have been raising the reward for performance over the past few decades. We suspect that this trend exacerbated the degree to which pay compression pushed high-aptitude people out of teaching. A push from one direction has more effect on someone who is being simultaneously pulled from the other direction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:10 PM
The Examined Life
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:40 PM
Modern Church Architecture in Bolivia. Sorta.
Oh, my goodness! Via Amy Welborn I learn of a surviving genius of Bavarian baroque! Go look at the slide show before it goes behind the New York Times archive-wall -- it's great! Fr. Sebastian Obermaier has built about 80 churches in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, and they all look like fun. You couldn't do this in America - building code would stop you - but it would be good to try.
A visiting friend said "It's like Ave Maria Grotto, only life size!" I do hope you know what Ave Maria Grotto is. If you don't, you've probably never been to Cullman, AL. Not that many people have been to Cullman . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 AM
March 1, 2005
On De-rediscovering Lost Authors
Here's a fascinating article from Inside Higher Ed on the re-relegation of an author to the junk heap of unread novels. The odd part is that for a brief, shining moment people thought she might have been African-American. Did that make the novels worth reading? And does finding out she wasn't make them not worth reading? Henry Louis Gates is involved -- this isn't a grad student rediscovering someone for dissertation purposes. Read and think.
Prof. Burke has an interesting essay on the subject.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:38 PM
Work to Rule in Berkeley
There's awork to rule action on the part of teachers in Berkeley. No homework, since they haven't had a raise. No volunteering time for science fairs. I suppose they don't have an "other duties" clause. One of the sad things about this is how many teachers probably want to actually do their jobs (they were never, after all, being "paid to grade" -- it was part of the expected duties) but have been convinced that they are workers.
via Joanne Jacobs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:29 PM
Wacky College Scholarships - any ZOLPS among my readership?
Some scholarships are open to all, such as one sponsored by Henkel Consumer Adhesives Inc. The company awards $5,000 to the couple who attend their school prom wearing the best outfit or accessories fashioned out of Duck brand duct tape.Others are more restrictive: Loyola University in Chicago provides full-tuition four-year scholarships to Catholics with the last name of "Zolp" on their birth and confirmation certificates.
Though some of these scholarships sound peculiar, the fact is that "they are not unusual," said Ann Wright, vice president for enrollment at Rice University in Houston. There are so many, she said, because many donors have specific ideas, relating to their own personal stories, of how they want their money spent.
"This is how we get into a bind, with very narrow geographic scholarships or with people who have specific religious backgrounds -- left-handed Lithuanians," Wright said. "That's why we do our very best to encourage people to say what they want but create some flexibility in the award."
This from a Washington Post article. I went to Rice. I benefitted from a diversity bait scholarship - I was an out of state (Rice was overwhelmingly Texan) humanities (Rice=engineering, right? Well, no, but that's one of their problems) smart (which didn't do me that much good at Rice) person. If I'd been female maybe it would have been multiyear. As is they threw out a few one-year-only-tuition scholarships as bait; my major advisor, who was a long-time faculty member of the admissions committee, told me that's how this particular scholarship worked.
Well, it worked for me. I had 4 happy years. Hanszen, '84.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM