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April 30, 2005
I guess you can't outsource union staff?
The AFL-CIO could be forced to lay off a lot of staff.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:14 PM
Saving the Earth
Do you read Circulation Dropping regularly? He's most informative about the numbers behind the decline of the Newspaper. Remember - as the circulation drops, fewer trees will die.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:00 PM
Why I WANT Hillary! to Run for President
If Hillary! runs for president all of this will be reviewed. The woman is deeply embedded in a political culture in which it seems that people around her -- and maybe she herself -- believe that the ends (her election) justify all means.
Further: Not that we should be surprised! I have a bad opinion of all politicians, really; anyone who would do that for a living is probably not a nice person. But you see, whoever is the first female nominee of a party (whether Hillary! or someone else) will benefit enormously from the stooopid commonplace that women are somehow nicer, better, more nuturing than men and should be rewarded in politics for that. More women are nuturing than men, but far from all -- and I think that to get where Hillary! is she had either to be or become what she is today. Nothing I've seen in the early life as lavishly massaged and presented during the WJC presidency convinced me that it wasn't be rather than become. So far I'm reasonably pleased with her behavior as my senator; when she's not engaging in a roll-call partisan activity she's smart and engaged. Because she has ambitions beyond Chappaqua she's executing a move to the right (and it wouldn't be hard to move to the right of Schumer), which means that I would tend to like her more as the march to the right goes on, even if I see it as strategic rather than "growth".
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:09 PM
Harmonica Parts for HYMNS?
I have seldom been so grateful to have been raised Presbyterian as when reading the Amy Welborn guilty sung pleasures thread.
I will admit that when I was 14 I thought "Lord of the Dance" was pretty cool. It's not a pleasure for me now, though. My pleasure nowadays runs more toward bawling "a wretch like me" when we sing "Amazing Grace" in the Oregon-altered-form. My guilty pleasure is actually singing the hymns when no one else will sing. After all, I was raised Protestant. I sometimes even sing along to the communion hymns.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:43 PM
Caffeine
Yet another metastudy tells us that it hurts to stop taking caffeine. I see the promised inclusion of caffeine-withdrawal in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as part of the coming great assault on our mood-altering drug (and liquid delivery system!) of choice.
further: Here's my idea of where they're headed -- they're going to use the waitresses approach, just like they did for cigarettes in New York State. After all, as the billboards pleaded, don't waitresses deserve a smoke-free work place? Next they'll blame carpal tunnel syndrome on the poor wait staff having to carry TWO carafes around to serve caff and decaf. That'll be our fault, and so we'll have to give up our caffeine. Sound delusional? Would you have believed 10 years ago that smoking would be banned in bars in New York? They're coming for your cup, people! Heed me!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:35 AM
Marriage Abduction
Would you like an example of an evil that canon law succeeded in stamping out in the West during the middle ages? Bride-kidnapping. The consent rules of canon law make this one very difficult. "Secret marriages" took longer, but eventually the rules that the giving of consent had to be public (in front of a witness) took hold. The carrying-over-the-threshhold part of our wedding customary may be the last signs of abduction left in America (the "so she doesn't trip" explanation doesn't ring nearly as true as "bringing her to the marital home forcibly." Yes, it could be both.)
The article is about Kyrgyz marriage abductions and begins: "When Ainur Tairova realized she was on her way to her wedding, she started choking the driver.
It's technically illegal in Kyrgyz law, too, but no one's enforcing it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:26 AM
The Fish Tank adds salt
I never cease to be amazed by the Tennessee Aquarium; it has driven the redevelopment of my hometown's downtown almost exactly the way its founders said it would -- if not more so. They exceeded their predicted number of visitors the first year and have continued to do so. Now they've added a large saltwater section (they always had one large saltwater tank, but this is a whole wing).
One of the neat things about the Tennessee Aquarium is that it has a narrative. You start by riding a very tall escalator to the top of the building to a "mountain cove" setting where it mists, real birds fly around chirping, and the otters play (my father still swears he's never seen an otter and that they are just a marketing tool). As you wend your way down through the building to the exit you are following the course of the water from the Appalachias to the Gulf of Mexico, with the displays reflecting that. When they do "rivers of the world" it's in the same area as the main channel of the Tennessee River. It's a very cleverly designed building. I'm looking forward to seeing how they integrate a new wing with a salt water setting, or if they simply declare "heeeeere's the Ocean!"
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 AM
April 29, 2005
Parisians Nothing - I, myself, had no idea Lévi-Strauss is still alive.
There's a big show up in Paris of Brazilian Indian material (part of France's Year of Brazil). It sounds like an interesting show, but this caught my eye. "The final room in this show is a homage to Mr. Lévi-Strauss and serves to remind many French who long ago read his 1955 classic, "Tristes Tropiques," that, at 97, he is still alive and kicking." The French, nothing - I had no idea.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:25 PM
And quite a nice student show it was, too . . . .
One of the neat things about being on leave is that I haven't been around the Art Department 6 days a week; that means I haven't already seen most of the student work -- I saw almost everything fresh!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:09 PM
That Time of Year
Honors defenses, the student art show, full library -- and I go around cackling at everyone because I'm still on leave and I don't have any grading to do!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:51 PM
Gumpery.
Prof. Althouse calls us to the barricades! Another actor is attempting the "developmentally disabled" strategy for Oscar-pursuit! This time it's Rosie O'Donnell!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:45 AM
Museum Bizarro-World - National Gallery Suspends School Tours
I really don't get this. The National Gallery is going to suspend school tours while they re-evaluate their education programs. So, for 18 months they're going to study the problem. They're telling us that running the 100-odd volunteer docents takes up so much of their time that they have to shut it down in order to think about something new (best practices are involved, so we know things will get better).
Update: National Gallery gets a grip.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM
Another Cautionary Tale Extinct
First Lake Erie, then Thames, now the ivory billed woodpecker? Will Nature just stop being so much more damn resilient than we think she is? Another cautionary tale extinct.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:26 AM
April 28, 2005
What's the WORST Library Food?
Popcorn.
Food in the library is bad. NOISY food in the library is evil. Why am I not surprised when I stand up and walk over to glare to see exceptionally tan, exceptionally blonde people consuming said evil food product?
Oh, well - such is the library in the last full week of classes, full of people who otherwise never trouble the studious.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:27 PM
Cousin marriage
Fr. Jim Tucker is blogging about cousin marriage (based on a Washington Post story about first cousins who want to marry). The laws of consanguinuity grow out of canon law; one of the things Don Jim doesn't consider (it's not really on point here) is how much the Latin Church's enforcement of laws requiring marriage outside of family lines (sometimes less successful than others, but always present after 1100) forced Europe to see families in a different way. To put it bluntly, the unintended consequence was a weakening of patriarchy. Cousin-marriage, especially arranged cousin-marriage, seems to reinforce inheritance patterns in a way that reduce the rights of women inside families.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:36 PM
Tigerlicious?
I'm waiting a week or two for Tiger -- let other people find what's what. But then I'm looking forward to Spotlight!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 AM
School Discipline Meltdown Gets to Newspapers
When a school discipline disaster involving marijuana use on a school field trip (to a foreign country -- I'm shuddering to think of a Costa Rican jail!) gets written up in the local papers it's a very bad thing for the school. And it's not just a local paper -- the Key School is in Annapolis and the paper is the Washington Post. Of course there are the "let them finish the year (or their education)" parents and the "back the administration" parents. And if one of them had gotten arrested? I bet no one would have backed the administration, then. Also, there's no mention in the story of previous offenses.
A friend of mine taught for a year at a school in North Georgia. Another teacher who came in the same year stayed at the school; he has led an annual field trip to the Gulf Coast for kayaking. This year one of the students drowned. I don't want to know how it's turned out.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM
April 27, 2005
Play List, 4/27/05
The AirportExpress is helping me play this tonight:
West End Girls -- Pet Shop Boys -- Discography
Wap Bam Boogie -- Matt Bianco -- Indigo, 1988
This Is the Right Time -- Lisa Stansfield -- Affection, 1990
Situation -- Yaz -- Upstairs at Eric's, 1982
Say It's Not Too Late -- Matt Bianco -- Indigo, 1988
R & B -- Matt Bianco -- Indigo, 1988
Ode to Boy -- Yaz -- You and me both, 1983
Indigo -- Matt Bianco -- Indigo, 1988
How To Be A Millionaire -- ABC -- Absolutely, 1990
Everyone Everywhere -- New Order -- Republic
Don't Stand So Close to Me -- The Police -- Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980
Cloud 8 -- Frazier Chorus -- Ray, 1991
Chains Of Love -- Erasure -- The Innocents, 1988
But Is It Commercial? -- Jon Astley -- The Compleat Angler, 1988
All Around the World -- Lisa Stansfield -- Affection, 1990
Accidents Will Happen -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions -- Armed Forces, 1979
(We Don't Need) Fascist Groove Thang* -- Heaven 17 -- Best Of Heaven 17, orig. 1982
It's a Brit Pop Post Supper Extravaganza!
*This song helped me realize that great art and great dance music can be made by idiots and still be worth looking at or dancing to. What can I say -- I'm no South Park Republican; I'm an 80s Dance Music Republican. For instance, Miss Tushnet uses "The Politics of Dancing" as the title of an ongoing essay series for reflection on the pop. Me, I just groove to Re-Flex and flash back to when it was a new song. It's a Dionysian moment for me, though 80s dance music did help me avoid taking either Englishmen or people who use the word "Fascist" seriously in grad school. That was a lesson worth learning in 1982.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:01 PM
Neo-Modernism
Among the architects I love to hate I count Richard Meier -- and here we have a note about how bad his buildings are. And the High Museum in Atlanta had him expand their building, known to echt Southerners as "The Krystal of Art" after its surface finish in white porcelainized steel panels.
via the 2 Blowhards
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 PM
Eduwonk
Remember - for all your not-Republican-education-person-but-pro-NCLB-needs go to Eduwonk. Click, scroll, as the angel said to St. Augustine.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 PM
Opening to Charters
The Washington, DC, Board of Education agrees to lease some underused (or unused) buildings to charter schools! Yay! They have an incentive:
A few hours before the board's vote, D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) introduced legislation that would provide the school system with an extra $100 million to repair and modernize buildings -- doubling the amount it was to receive next year -- if school officials make additional progress on using space more efficiently.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:23 PM
Outsider Authenticity
Here's a good review of a serious book on Outsider Art -- what makes it work? The reviewer thinks the book does a good job of treding the line between the aesthetic and the biographical - the hunt for authenticity:
Then there is the intriguing case of "Clyde Angel," who had the correct pedigree for an Outsider Artist -- a backwoods recluse who had been hospitalized for schizophrenia. His work is delivered to a Chicago gallery by his "authorized agent." The trouble is, nobody's ever met Clyde Angel, and efforts by an enterprising journalist to track him down failed. There's speculation, says Mr. Fine, that Clyde Angel may not exist, that his "Outsider" work is really being produced by a trained artist in hiding. If that ever turned out to be true, a lucrative market would collapse overnight.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM
Stop the Presses - Advertising Works.
Science triumphs by answering the burning question "why do major corporations go on employing advertising agencies?"
And for a different important way of thinking about people getting drugs they might not need, go read Dr. Smith on number needed to treat. She's wondering about statins.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM
Educationeer Gossip
Oh, my! Jay Mathews in an article that sounds more like the kind of thing I imagine is in Variety -- Chester Finn won't lecture at George Mason if Gerald Bracey is in the room! Nasty statements! Fireing! Oh, my!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 AM
Newspaper Production People! Argh!
I hate headlines. The only thing less useful than headlines are subheads. I know not to blame authors for their headlines (nor more than one can rationally hold back-cover blurbs against authors) but it does prejudice one against the article.
This morning I read on the Washington Post webpage:Love of Languages Transcends All Ages / Linguists say that age is not a factor in tackling new languages. Yeah, right. So I click and see: Love of Learning Language Transcends All Ages / Linguists Say Youth Isn't a Requirement to Master New Tongues. Better -- "isn't a requirement" is better than "is not a factor."
The article isn't bad -- you know, retirees learning Latin and such -- and it has some positively useful things to say about the overemphasis on starting early (which leads some people never to start at all). The author never really puts together the oddity of most modern language instruction in America, which is that they try to teach post-pubescents using the same method that would work like a charm for the younger (de-emphasizing the analytical abilities that we older types have), but it's not a bad article. The headline writer should be beaten with a Lewis and Short, though.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:00 AM
April 26, 2005
Nomenclature
Dr. Weevil asks a naive question - if you're going to refer to Pope Benedict's former identity as "Grand Inquisitor," shouldn't you think about new names for the occupants of some other judicial positions?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 AM
Oh, my - tales of storage room finds!
Here's a story about a painting at the Cathedral in Seattle. So, 50 years ago someone found a painting packed away in a storage room in the Cathedral and set it up in a chapel. It's not clear from the article they knew exactly what it was until they sent it for conservation and learned that it's a 15th century Italian painting by Neri di Bicci. So after conservation it was paraded through the streets of Seattle from the Museum to the Cathedral.
Here's a Flickr stream of the actual reinstallation process, procession and all! The giant puppet is St. James, my patron saint and the patron of the cathedral, wearing his cockleshell. You can watch it as a slideshow! Coolness!
But since I have no idea how long this Flickr stream will stay up and since there's no picture with the story, here's a link to another work by Neri de Bicci. I don't understand why so few stories on webversions of newspapers aren't illustrated!
Lessons: Never throw away old art in churches without consulting experts. Sometimes that ugly, dark painting on the stairwell is a Caravaggio. More often it's not, but it never hurts to ask.
from my friend at Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 AM
E-ZPass and Big Brother
When will people figure out what they're giving up in exchange for convenience? In this instance:
The review compared E-ZPass records with payroll records, and found that some in the unit had made fraudulent overtime claims, coming to work late, leaving early and claiming to conduct surveillances of suspect officers that they never carried out, the officials said. The captain and some supervisors were accused of failing to properly oversee those under their command.Within 2 years of Georgia 400 installing something like the E-ZPass system there was a high-profile divorce case in which one side's attorney subpoenaed the other side's records and proved that the tale of how late he was leaving work wasn't true.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 AM
Reverse Carpetbaggery
Thank goodness, Eliot Spitzer might not run unopposed -- William Weld might run. Yeah, yeah, former governor of Massachusetts, but read the story. He's no Hillary!.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM
Judge Fines Himself When Cellphone Rings
In the interests of justice he doubled the fine.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:38 AM
April 25, 2005
Mike Davis and the Ecology of Just Making it Up
Thinking of the contemporary, I was sad to learn via Mickey Kaus that Mike Davis's Ecology of Fear isn't very well grounded. Pity. Don't you just love to loathe L.A.? Well, go read the exposure. Southern California might not be so loathesome after all.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:57 PM
Wendy Doniger - Yay!
It's nice when someone is invited to speak at These Colleges whose field of interest is something in the seriously past past. It doesn't happen very often, I hate to say. Our president was a Clinton White House employee who because Peace Corps Director, so all the participants in his sponsored lecture series are inside-the-Beltway folk. I mean, Dee Dee Myers is giving the talk at graduation. Dee Dee Myers? Then there's the almost-annually awarded Elizabeth Blackwell award. So far no winners are interested in anyone dead. There was an historian named Hanna Holborn Gray who was awarded the prize in 1984, but she got it for being the first woman president of a major American university (the University of Chicago) rather than for being a Ren-Ref specialist (I'll put it this way -- we gave her the award, but our library owns none of her books; Cornell's library owns 2, both of which are about contemporary American education, and JSTOR doesn't turn up much more; like many educational administrators she seems to be better known as an administrator than an educator). The best-advertised ongoing lecture series is all about the modern world. Our Genocide series gets further into the past than almost anything else, though there still hasn't been a speaker who talked about a genocide as early as the Armenians; given the local depopulation story I'm a little surprised not to see a speaker on Native American things in the list. It's not that there's never a lecture on the world before 1800, but that it's seldom in a forum widely advertised and particularly well-attended.
Well, this afternoon we had someone relevant AND talking about Sanskrit! What more could I ask? She was splendid, funny, and in the thick of para-academic controversy.
Prof. Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, wheeled across 3000 years of literature and movies -- from Sanskrit tales to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and dropped lines like "well of course I read French, I'm an adult." I hope our students were impressed; I certainly was.
She also has had an egg thrown at her during a lecture at the University of London for having written about Hinduism from the outside. She's a bête noire for certain folks who want only Hindus to talk about Hinduism, which was the point of discussion in the afternoon seminar.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 PM
Vestment Watch
Don Jim Tucker has an interesting suggestion about Pope Benedict's pallium. I'm not certain, but it's possible . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:08 AM
Historic Traffic Triangle Threatened
Honest. When I read stories like this I realize how interested Americans are in their history, even if historians aren't always much interested in general readers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
Polling the Papal Election
An overwhelming majority of American Catholics approves of the selection of Pope Benedict XVI and predicts that he will defend the traditional policies and beliefs of a church that many members say is out of touch with their views, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.Meaningless, but heartening. Meaningless because that's not how popes are elected or rule. Heartening, because 8 out of 10 approve. Of course, being America, they then had to ask questions about "what do YOU think should be done about . . . ."
No information in the article about what qualified as an "American Catholic." Was this poll conducted by telephone or on the church steps? They were "self-identified" -- that sounds like telephone to me.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM
Emanations of Penumbras of Vatican II
Father Silva said he believed that priests' views about Benedict generally divided on a generational line. The youngest priests, ordained in the last 20 years, seem most excited and pleased at the thought of a pope with a clear, structured, conservative approach to theology and firm boundaries and guidelines, Father Silva said. Some older priests - those ordained in the mid-1960's to mid-1980's, in the years after the Second Vatican Council and its promises of openness to modern times and to lay people - seem "not so enthused," he said.The New York Times publishes speculations on the clerical generation gap.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:41 AM
Father, Son, and Holy Toast
Go here before it goes away -- the BBC Gallery of Ecumenical "Visionary" Objects
via Miss Shaidle
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM
Traditional Medicine -- Give ME an Allopath
I have a decidedly unalternative approach to healing -- call me narrowminded and judgmental, but the basic qualification to step near me with a syringe is adherence to the germ theory. If the World Health Organization is to be credited (and they sound pretty tentative in this article) "traditional healers" are spreading the Marburg Virus. What's killing people in Angola, if WHO is right, isn't "traditional" as in "non-Western" or "pre-scientific" but untrained and unlicensed people using modern tools in deadly ways.
Further: more on Marburg
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM
April 24, 2005
The Cycle of Readings
Well, Catholic readers, was that something or what? How could one not preach about papal succession in light of current events and the readings today? The order of deacons, St. Peter on the Corner Stone/Stumbling Block, and the Apostles clueless about change (Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12). Very satisfying. We had a useful sermon on getting what we want and wanting what we get and the first call for prayers for students and faculty facing the end of the semester.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:05 PM
Walk Downstairs, Fella!
Ah, the high-mindedness of criticizing museums for their lack of humor. Not that I don't agree, but the last show in the East wing of the National Gallery that I blogged about was funny - the Ed Ruscha drawings show. Indeed, if you want anything other than seriousness in major museums you might better stick to the works on paper -- the basement of the National Gallery, for instance.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:37 PM
Big University Retention
Here's a long New York Times piece on big state universities and their retention rates, which are horrible. Of course, small liberal arts colleges don't have perfect ones, either. Keeping students on track to first degree is a problem which, if studying produced results, we'd have solved by now.
It could, of course, be that 20% or more of people who start college shouldn't have started college, but that view won't do.
The former president of These Colleges and this other college says this:
Richard H. Hersh, former president of Trinity College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, refers to this situation as a "mutual nonaggression pact." Professors see teaching as a requirement they have to fulfill to do the research they prefer, he says, "so the professor goes into class and doesn't ask much of students, who in return don't ask much of the professor. The professor gives out reasonably high grades as a way of camouflaging that this bargain has been struck, his evaluations will be satisfactory, and students don't complain about grades or about whether they've learned much."In the view of Dr. Hersh, a proponent of accountability in higher education, students have to be held responsible for their own initiative, but low standards allow them to coast through their college years with minimal involvement. "That's the real disgrace," he says.
That finesses the question of whether the 'engagement' Hersh seeks is something that all students are (1) interested in making or (2) capable of making.
Then there's this person:
Mr. Kuh, who in addition to directing the student engagement survey is a professor of higher education at Indiana University, Bloomington, describes students like Mr. Bhalla as "maze smart" - they have figured out what they have to do to get through: buy the book, find out what's going to be on the exam and stay invisible. "They'll pick large classes," he says. "They'll go through the distribution of grades in different majors and pick the easiest one. Then they tend to hang together." He says these students miss the point of college: "These are people with enormous potential and talent. We just need to identify them." That colleges can't get such students more involved in their education is "inexcusable," he says.This begs the questions about the point of college. Mr. Bhalla has a very clear purpose:
"You go so you can get a job and make money when you're older. But at the same time you get life experiences that are priceless, like networking." He expects that to pay off: "I've made so many connections I never would have been able to make without it, and these are all my friends and people that I know from the bars and from classes and, you know, people that I've hung out with that later in life I'm going to be able to call on and be like: 'I know you have a job with this company. Do you know if they're hiring, or can you get me an application? Can I use you as a reference?' "Sounds like it's working - he drinks a lot, makes friends and enemies, and made the dean's list despite seldom working more than an hour outside of class a day. I'd agree with Pres. Hersh that no one has challenged him, but I'm not at all sure he's interested in one. He might well have been up to it, but maybe we'd all have been better off if Mr. Bhalla had gotten a job out of high school and gone for any further education later.
At the end of a three-hour interview, Mr. Bhalla is asked if he regrets anything he has done at Arizona. "These are the years that I'm not going to have back," he says. "And I don't want to be 30, 50, looking back and wishing I'd partied then because I can't do it now."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:11 AM
Adding a New Category: Future Law & Order Stories
Since this is at least the second time since the January re-design that I've blogged on the topic, I'm creating a new category -- Future Law & Order Stories.
Read it and wonder -- did he get away with it the first time, or is this a cruel coincidence?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:21 AM
On Andre Malraux
Here's a review from The Nation of a new biography of André Malraux. Malraux's enormous success tells us a lot about France (and the review is useful there).
I had two excellent professors in graduate school who were both impressed by Malraux. I read The Human Condition (which is in print under the title Man's Fate, which I think is silly) in a class for Arthur Evans, a professor of French and Comparative Literature; Tom Lyman, an art historian, was moved by an early reading of Museum without walls. They were both men who had spent time in France in the 50s and 60s (I suppose Arthur Evans had - I know Tom Lyman had) and were much more than Francophiles. On rereading The Human Condition a few years ago I wondered what I had seen in it at 24. The book is, above all, a paen to men of action. It's not that I don't like thrillers (though I don't like them as much as when I was myself of that thrilling age) and action movies, but the relentless gloire kept sneaking into Shanghai -- all ethnicity of the leading characters aside. I'm of the wrong generation to respect Malraux much. It doesn't change my appreciation for Arthur Evans or Tom Lyman -- they were men of a different generation and both of them taught me far more than Malraux, much that goes on exciting me every year. Maybe I'll reread Malraux, sometime alongside Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: the Early Years. The review suggests they may work together. Prof. Evans would like that.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 AM
Remember Magnet Schools?
Here's an interesting article about the history of magnet schools from Education Next.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM
April 23, 2005
Whininess, or what?
Oh, my. A dissatisfied customer.
Benedict finally came out of the apartment in the evening, smiled, waved a few times, got into his Mercedes and rode off. "At least he could have said something," said Amy Widnayer, 27, of Philadelphia, an English teacher here on vacation."I feel slighted, shortchanged, by this very small gesture," she said. "When I saw John Paul II, it was much more exciting. You need to connect with people. Even if you're inaccessible, you should have the aura of being accessible."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:21 PM
The NEA and NCLB
NCLB funding easily pays for the additional costs of testing. The lawsuit implies that educating poor and minority children is a new cost mandated by NCLB, not the ordinary business of the public schools.That's Joanne Jacobs on the NEA's attempt to portray No Child Left Behind as an unfunded mandate. Meanwhile, education spending is up (NOT a metric for good education, but it puts the lie to the NEA). As Ms. Jacobs points out, even the New York Times editorial board understand the NEA. The Times:
The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, made headlines this week when it engineered a lawsuit asserting that No Child Left Behind illegally requires states to spend their own money on enforcing new federal requirements. The N.E.A. has misrepresented the law to the public from the start, and the primary aim of its suit is to throw out the baby with the bath water. The union doesn't want a better No Child Left Behind Act; it wants to make the law disappear entirely.(my emphasis)
And here's Eduwonk on the same subject:
NCLB, though not without its flaws, is a law aimed at forcing states and school districts to do right by poor and minority kids. In the long run, does the NEA really want to be remembered for having gone to court to stop that?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:12 AM
Smart Cars! Yay!
Smart Cars come to America! Let me predict that these will be HUGE urban sellers; they will be useless for anything else, but they're great for that. This is a picture I took of one in Rome -- sorry I don't seem to have any of the leopard-skin ones.
Engadget says Daimler-Benz’s diminutive SMART car is coming to America. Specialty vehicle company ZAP (for Zero Air Pollution) has won approval from the U.S. government to distribute a version of the popular car that’s been modified to meet U.S. emissions and safety standards. Pricing is said to run from about $12,000 to $20,000.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM
Catlin's Indian Paintings and Nosiness
The New York Times is sensitive to George Catlin's insensitivity.
"A native person is challenged, I think, not to feel on some level a profound resentment toward Catlin; his obsession with depicting Indians has an extremely invasive undertone to it," Mr. West says.
Read some novelists about the process of making fiction out of family relationships. Read some photographers about pushing their lens into peoples' faces. These are not new phenomena -- the people who do this sort of think are appalling specimens of humanity, at least in this aspect of their lives. My favorite novel that combines the horror that is the mind of the novelist with the horror that is the painter is a Patrick White novel called The Vivisector. Useful.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:16 AM
April 22, 2005
First Lake Erie, now the Thames?
Yes, "biologically dead" is a misnomer.
More than 130 seals have been spotted in the Thames since last August, according to the Zoological Society of London. Bottlenose dolphins have been seen upstream of London Bridge. And last summer the first sea horse was recorded in the Thames estuary in 30 years.
via Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 PM
European Studies readings
My book selection window for European Studies 101 in the Fall is closing (well, if I want to maintain my perfect record of ordering before the utterly unenforced deadline and, hence, add to my collection of bookstore novelty items provided to the virtuous). I had a talk today with the professor who will be teaching the 102 next year; he intends to read some version of the Faustus (he's a Germanist, so it makes sense). I propose to read the Play of Theophilus (the Jeu de Théophile by Rutebeuf and to look at one or more of the art versions -- the north transept portal of Notre-Dame, Paris, for instance.* Here's a manuscript painting version.
Yay, thematic continuities! Pacts with the devil! Sin! Intercessors! Repentence! Should be fun.
Prof. Brannen should approve.
*My favorite place to find pictures for public linkery doesn't have anything up for Paris! I had forgotten that.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:27 PM
21st Century School Malfeasance
It says something about the enormous wealth of America that a county school chief executive* can be accused of giving a ONE MILLION DOLLAR contract to his live-in girlfriend's employer.
The board hired the Chicago firm in response to controversy stemming from a $1 million purchase last year of educational software and equipment. Hornsby failed to disclose at the time of the purchase that he was living with a saleswoman for the vendor, LeapFrog SchoolHouse of Emeryville, Calif. He later denied wrongdoing.*he's a chief executive, not a superintendant. That says something, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:54 AM
Headline: "Older Riders Add to Rise In Motorcycle Fatalities"
Older Riders Add to Rise In Motorcycle Fatalities says the Washington Post. "No fool like an ol' fool," says my mother. Just think, the resurgence of Harley-Davidson might help save Social Security! Let's lobby against helmet laws and see what the data tells us.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:49 AM
To Educate the Poor
Maybe private university scholarships are making a difference:
. . . several lawmakers say they were stunned to learn that 16 percent of New York students at private colleges came from families that earned $20,000 or less in 2002, compared with 13 percent at the four-year colleges of the State University of New York. On the upper end of the income scale, 46 percent of those attending private colleges came from homes that earned $80,000 or more, while the rate at SUNY was higher, at 52 percent. These statistics are based on state data analyzed by the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, a trade and lobbying group for private colleges.This was embedded in an article about state funding to private institutions in New York. Hope we get some of it!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM
April 21, 2005
Why Public Transport Doesn't Work
If the densest population in America has this to live with it's no wonder public transportation is such a joke elsewhere. By the way, a colleague of mine is quoted - Cliff Hood, whose 722 Miles: The Building Of The Subways And How They Transformed New York is evidently a really good thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 PM
Spring in the Finger Lakes
One of the things that grows REALLY WELL up here is grass. In the lawn sense. I think we have the right combination of rainfall and cool weather -- life is just so much damn hotter at home in Tennessee, and I don't want to think about the shudder St. Augustine grass I walked on in Houston for 4 years. Up here everyone has scattered grass seed in the margins of the sidewalks scraped bare by snowplowing. By graduation everything will be green and beautiful beyond endurance.
I do miss the camellias that blossom in Atlanta in May.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 PM
Schadenfreude zentral
Zorak has your Schadenfreude needs filled. My favorite is her suggestion of what BXVI could have said from the balcony: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
I am much more eirenic, but who can resist the Mantis?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:18 PM
Don't Steal the Professor's Laptop - Prison Rape Version
Here's a piece of advice -- don't steal the professor's laptop. Click, choose your viewing format, forward to 48:50 and watch the scariest threat ever made in front of a classroom. If you don't want the video version, here's a transcript. The video version is better, though!
via Engadget.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:58 AM
It's all about me, me, me!
The New York Times wallows in narcissism -- everything is about US! U.S.! ME! Of course, my opinion of the article isn't improved when it closes with an incredibly parochial little statement from the inexhaustible Fr. McBrien*:
But the Rev. Richard McBrien, a liberal theologian at Notre Dame, said in an interview conducted by e-mail that he wondered how much the new pope understood the more liberal strain of American Catholicism represented by leaders like Mr. Kerry or Mr. Cuomo. "I doubt if he understands it as well as he should, but then, whom does he speak with who might enlighten him, without giving a conservative spin to the explanation?" Father McBrien asked.
McBrien, who actually lived in Rome for a while** seems unaware that European politics are strikingly more "liberal" than American ones. I don't know a single Italian who thinks that American Democrats are at all left. The American center seems quite "right" to them and the American "right" really does frighten them. Similarly, even the Euro-right is full of people who are so statist that no American right would recognize them.
Believe me, Benedict XVI is aware of the "liberal strain" of American Catholicism, because it's not particularly different (other than thinking itself exceptional in that annoying American way) from Catholicism as unpracticed by, say, European politicians who are nominally Catholic. The divorce and annulment records of leading Christian Democrat politicians in Italy didn't seem better than the average Kennedy, for instance.
Oh, well - far be it from McBrien to challenge American Exceptionalism.
*The article actually identified McBrien as a "liberal theologian"! Perhaps that's improvement?**He has one Roman degree -- but he did get it in 1967, back when the Christian Democrats were still the Christian Democrats and when they pretended a little harder in public to be, you know, Christian.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM
False Consciousness
Tales of the Weird from Prof. Soltan.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:44 AM
Core Knowledge
Joanne Jacobs linked to a story of success today that's worth reading. City Journal reports on a charter school in New Haven that has a 6 year record now of success. There are lots of ingredients, but I'd like to single out the Core Knowledge curriculum. I would be delighted to teach students who had gone to school under that model. A great deal of my time is spent remediating for ignorance -- not reading ability, not poor writing skills, but ignorance. Core Knowledge would solve that problem. Go look; start with the "About Core Knowledge page - I think you'll be impressed.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
April 20, 2005
The Things I Do for Love
Well, sort of. I don't think many people just luv reading things like The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, hard as Fr. John Baldovin, S.J., must have worked on it.* Good stuff, though, for people who have questions about liturgical processions and want to know exactly which churches people walked to in which order during Lent in, say, the 9th century. Not an everyday question, but there you have it.
*Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 228 (Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, Rome, 1987).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:23 PM
On Benedict XVI and Program
Joseph Ratzinger reproposed it in his last homily before the conclave: “being adults in the faith,” and not “children in a state of guardianship, tossed about by the waves and carried here and there by every wind of doctrine.”An article by someone who actually seems to have read Ratzinger, Sandro Magister at www.chiesa
All this pope-bloggery at least led to me Sandro Magister, for which I am grateful. I first found him via Amy Welborn. For instance, you have to read his story on the St. Egidio Community -- who knew? He has a lot of dietrologia* on the "movements."
*Dietrologia, Italian, "conspiracy theory," literally, "the science of the back way." Italians are past masters of this -- I can't wait to read what the REAL truths of the Pope's Banker Murder was. You do know about the Swiss Guard, don't you?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:21 PM
Best Benedict XVI Coverage
Go read the Anchoress. Here're a few excerpts:
I have one thing to say to all of this - to all of the breathless ranting from the left and the grim, woe-is-us prognostications of SOME members of the press. It is this:
Fer cryin’ out loud, CHILL OUT.
God, through the Holy Spirit, is NOT DONE WORKING ON THIS MAN - OR FOR THAT MATTER, ANY OF US.
Take a pill, take a breather, take a belt of tequila and consider that maybe, just maybe, the same people who thought they knew everything about John XXIII and were wrong, will think they know everything about Benedict XVI, and they will be wrong, again.
. . .
And maybe consider giving Benedict XVI at LEAST the same benefit of a doubt you would want for yourself, were you put into a job for which others thought you unsuited.
. . .
Jesus did say the path was a narrow one, but we’ll put that aside for now.
. . .
I don’t know what they actually expected. It has always seemed very odd to me that people would think the Catholic church will suddenly put a finger to the chin and say, “you know, we’ve been all wrong about this stuff, all this time! Abortion is okay! Jesus didn’t really mean it about divorce! That whole thing about marriage being between a man and a woman, why that was just written in by some homophobe or other!”
. . .
I must say, they really, really HATE him, and they’re not even trying to hide it. No honeymoon for Benedict XVI. I just heard someone on CNN call him a “Catholic NEOCON.”
You KNOW how much they hate neocons! Basically the press seems to be saying, “Oh, no! They elected a CATHOLIC! Liberals are doomed! DOOMED!”
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
The Principal, the School Secretary, and the Lunch Ladies?
How many non-teachers worked in your elementary school? More than you thought, of course, but more than 50%? Joanne Jacobs tells us (I'd link directly to her source, but it's a link to a "communique" rather than a hard link) that 18 states and the District of Columbia (of course) employ more non-teachers than teachers in K-12 education. The highest percentage of teachers is 65%.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:02 AM
Concrete Responses to a New Papacy -- ORDER BOOKS!
O.K. - I teach at a small-liberal-arts-college which doesn't actually teach any modern Catholicism -- after all, we're semi-Episcopal in background (I mean that quite literally; while the men's college is Episcopal, the women's college was founded by a Spiritualist and is by charter non-religious). The library is underserved in Benedict XVI and John Paul II. I suppose there will now be a single-volume "documents of the papacy of JPII" volume out pretty soon, but I've got to order some of the Ignatius back-catalog of Ratzinger books. By the way, since there are no books in the library NOR a subscription to Communio it means that I get to look askance at any moaning about BXVI other than from the genuinely well-informed on Catholic theology and the church (who I can count on one hand; indeed, I'm only certain about one digit, but sometimes people's hobby reading surprises you). Everyone else is reacting to the popular press.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM
April 19, 2005
Reactions.
Poor Andrew Sullivan is truly about to explode -- and the reader's notes he's posting are similar. Of course, I don't think he would have liked any of the front runners, but its much easier to hate Ratzinger publically than the others. Pray for them. Further -- actually, Sullivan is going to pray, too. That's a start.
The Anchoress is worth reading (as per usual, but you know what I mean). Click and scroll (the tolle, lege of our time).
When the furore has stilled I'll go read what's up at Ratzinger Fan Club, but don't click yet. They've crashed.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:16 PM
Greeley on Ratzinger (i.e., before the election)
This is a quite interesting article by Fr. Greeley about the things to like about a Ratzinger pontificate - published before the election.
via Miss Welborn.
Further: Someone I read yesterday had blogged that Ratzinger would be an interesting pope in part because of the number, length, and thoroughness of interviews he's given, going back at least as far as the Ratzinger Report. Interesting point.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:46 PM
Gregory XVI and Brainy Catholic Trends
Oh, dear. In parallel to the rise we saw in reading St. John of the Cross and phenomenology in the wake of John Paul II, we're about to see people try to crack von Balthasar and de Lubac! Good luck, folks. Me, if I want background I'll stick to Augustine. We now have a pope whose background follows the rather different tradition of Plato->Augustine->Bonaventure.
You know, you could fit all the Bonaventure I've read into about 20 pages, and evidently BXVI's Habilitationsschrift was on Bonaventure. I've always liked the prayer after communion attributed to Bonaventure (though it's too gushing and liquid for me to have used regularly).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:31 PM
Benedict? Benedict?
Benedict? I was hoping that if Ratzinger were elected he'd take the name of the last man whose papal name never really takes -- Pope St. Gregory the VII, cheerfully known as Hildebrand despite 15 years operating under the name Gregory. Medievalists, discuss among yourselves -- are there any other popes who are as commonly thought of under their previous names?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:02 PM
Habemus Papam!
Habemus Papam!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:02 PM
These are items that have been added most often to Wish Lists. Updated daily.
The kind of people who shop on Amazon wish someone would buy them:
1. a silver iPod mini
2. a 20 gb iPod
3. some camera
4. Apple proprietary earbuds
5. wireless FM transmitter for iPod
6. 40 gb iPod
7. arm band for running with iPod mini
8. external speakers for iPods
9. one of those silly looking steering wheels to play a game on your television
10. a 5 gb Creative Zen iPod. Whoops! I meant "mp3 player."
The "most wished for items" as registered 4/19/2005.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM
April 18, 2005
Other Conference Benefits
AND I got to meet Dottoressa Cronaca!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:52 PM
So - how did it go, you might ask?
Well, the liminal space opened up in front of me and I performed the carnivalesque explication of dismembered body parts -- and the audience (including the big gun Englishman*) seem to have bought it -- yay! Want a quick summary?
1. Relics are dismembered body parts.
2. Relics are positive (even when satirized, they are funny because real ones are good and satirically fake ones are merely ineffective -- that's a point I didn't make in the paper). OUR modern sensibility sees relics as horrific or morbid.
3. Pilgrimage badges purchased at shrines very frequently depicted the scene of martyrdom (dismemberment) or the reliquary. Reliquaries, especially body part reliquaries of the high middle ages, often made visible the separated nature relics; the badges of the bust of St. Denis or the bust of St. Thomas Becket both show the reliquary the pilgrim would have seen AND remind the pilgrim of the dismemberment (which stories, both o0f the of the original martyrdom and of having seen the reliquary, the pilgrim would have told, having reached home, pointing to the badges affixed to breast or turned-up hat brim).**
4. The genitalia-themed badges are of autonomous body parts.
5. They are not "dismembered" -- and, anyway, dismemberment is not such a terrifying thing in a world which assumes the bodily resurrection is true (see Caroline Walker Bynum, most of the 1990s work, though Last Things was published in 2000 -- she's working on the Precious Blood, lately.)
6. So! Are these badges in any way comparable to pilgrimage badges? I think so. I think they are indeed parodies, but happy, happy parodies. The world turned upside down in order to re-right it later. To remind us that sex and sexuality are all part of it, too. You know. I hope. Put the conclusion down to my sunny disposition and trust me that not everyone after 1347 was grim as all get out.
*a kind of sine qua non for nice, regional medieval conferences. Sewanee asks an occasional Frenchman (I shook Duby's hand there, once!), but not very often. This year they seem to have settled for an American and a Canadian, though the Canadian has 4 initials, which at least sounds British.**here's a very nice image of a shrine badge, showing in this case the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in action, as it were -- the cover has been lifted off the effigy of the saint. This one is an example of what the pilgrim would have seen and narrated on return home -- "I saw them hoist the gemmed cover off and THERE was St. Thomas!"
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:36 PM
Back to the Hunnic Hegemony - Cranial Deformation Comes Back
Back to the Hunnic Hegemony! In an entirely predicatble development, obsessive parenting has led to selective cranial deformation, or, as I'm sure they see it, "making sure the baby looks right." The Huns (and people who wanted their children to grow up "advantaged" -- that is, to look like Huns) did that too -- only "right" for a Hunnic baby was more like a cone head than a basketball. Unfortunately, there's not a lot on the web about it -- any handy references, ADM? Here's a better one.
The graduate students at Emory once suggested to one of our colleagues that she dump her dissertation topic and just bind her soon-to-be-born first child's head and write it up.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:22 PM
April 14, 2005
En route to talk about disjecta membra
Off conferring in New Hampshire, no sign of free internet in my hotel, probably not back until Sunday. The paper currenlty ends with my N.Z.Davis-confirmed "it doesn't matter so much if Misrule results in social change - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't -- but these are sure examples of topsy-turvydom." My general feeling is that the Middle Ages was much less neurotic than the self-styled Renaissance and Enlightenments, but I don't want to get all Merrie England all over the place, so we'll leave it at that for now. Maybe I don't find anxiety and repression everywhere because I myself didn't worry about nuclear destruction as a child?
I do wish I were less neurotic about posting photographs for which I don't have permission from copyright holders. Then i could show you what I'm talking about more immediately.
Here's a link to the collection from which I chose my examples. The fifth badge from the top is one that I'm talking about. It shows a vagina dressed in a pilgrim's cap carrying a rosary and a staff (which is probably a phallus, but is in pretty bad shape). The walking phallus at the top of the page isn't one that I have a slide of, but it's similar.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:48 AM
April 13, 2005
Death from Above!
Avian flu got you worried? Go to avianflu.typepad.com -- Prof. Tyler Cowen is pulling together a group blog to watch this particular sign of the Apocalypse for us.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 AM
It's all a matter of opinion -- and I am of Natalie Zemon Davis's
That previous post is a cri de coeur -- I'm buffeted by the theories of what goes on when people are having fun. There's nothing harder to deal with than theories of "funny" -- believe me on that one or I'll make you start with the reading list for my graduate seminar on the Comedic (not comedy, please!). I learned piles and piles from Prof. Bracht Branham, under whose direction I first cracked Bakhtin* (and Freud on Wit -- a little book that proves in one quick read that jokes don't translate well).
So here I am today stuck with trying to decide how in the 5 minutes remaining in my 20 minute talk I use the people who think that Carnival is revolutionary and the people who think that Carnival is (like Pilgrimage and) restorative and the cynics who think that its a combination of the two in which the wicked, wicked powers above use Carnival as a safety valve. Luckily there are voices of moderation -- Natalie Zemon Davis reminds us that Misrule can do all of 'em -- sometimes real change breaks out. Sometimes Misrule represents the reassertion of order (carried out by an age-group often associated with disorder, the adolescents**). Sometimes a parade may even be just a parade.
The problem is that one wishes to inform, to amaze, AND to show that one has done all this reading. The last consideration is why academic presentation in speech and writing is so often dull.
*Sadly, "Bakhtin" seems to be more recognizable to audiences, even medievalist audiences, than "Gurevich." Aron Gurevich has the double advantage of moderating Bakhtin's belief in the efficacy of the Carnivalesque to drive social change AND being an actual medievalist. Bakhtin has the lamentable habit of waving his hand at much of what came before Rabelais and saying "medieval" and "popular" without a whole lot of nuance. Gurevich is nuanced.**Yes, dear reader, there was such a thing as childhood and adolescence before the 18th century. Philippe Aries was wrong.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM
April 12, 2005
Sorry, liminal grotesquerie has me down . . . .
Sorry for the spotty posting, but I'm trying to finish a paper I have to read in public this weekend and I'm having trouble finding the liminal space to stage the carnival for dismembered genitals that await the resurrection. That's actually a better summary of my paper than the abstract I submitted, all in all.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:47 PM
Good News for Fidgetters
This is the first popular education news I've read in a while that raised my self-esteem -- Fidgeting Children Learn More.
via Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:21 PM
April 11, 2005
Knock on Wood - Abundant Sunshine
About this time of year everyone starts reminding each other and nodding "You know, it snowed on Mother's Day in 1998 . . . . " Still and all, the weather channel prediction for today begins "Abundant sunshine . . ." and I can't tell you how good that sounds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:22 AM
April 9, 2005
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Saturday fun - Spamusement.com. This somewhat twisty genius takes the subject lines from spam email and uses them as the titles for cartoons (usually - there are occasional photos, too). Chortle.
via Brian Tiemann
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 AM
April 7, 2005
Please don't use critical thinking.
I am very, very, very tired of people who "use critical thinking." I prefer students who "think."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:05 PM
Duke iPod Experiment Fails. Well. Sorta.
Via Engadget I read that Duke will not hand out "free"8 iPods to all first year students next year. Now people will have to register for a class that actually intends to USE recorded material. The story claims that sixteen classes fit that criterion for the spring semester. I take it that number excludes music and foreign language classes (course which, after all, have been using recorded materials for as long as those have been available).
"Some faculty are enthused about using iPods in courses, and others don't see any real purpose for them," O'Brien said in a statement. "But without the iPods experiment, we wouldn't be having such active discussions about what value new technologies have in teaching."Welcome to technology adoption on campus, though $500,000 seems like a kind of expensive ice-breaker exercise. We still don't have 100% penetration for email, after all.
So were they free? Well, the distribution of 1,600 iPods doesn't appear to have been grant supported, though it was an initiative in concert with Apple. Sooooo . . . the money came out of someone's budget. Duke's in the $40,000 per year bracket. Even if it was grant supported, the time and effort spent on getting THAT grant could have been spent on getting ANOTHER grant (this is something cranky faculty members often say in response to an administrator saying "but the [whatever] is grant-funded and we wouldn't have gotten money from them for a different kind of project!").
further: In answer to a comment below I started wondering about the fallout on campus -- then I wondered what the phone lines at the Duke admissions office might be like today: how many cranky members of the next Duke entering class will be calling the to shout "damn it! my parents told me that since I was applying to Duke early admission that they weren't going to buy me an iPod for Christmas because I'd get a free one in August anyway!"
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 AM
April 6, 2005
Still More Anti-Cheating Devices!
My friend at Mirabilis.ca points out yet another anti-cheating device -- this explained at Teresa Nielsen Hayden'sMaking Light. Free term paper!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 AM
April 5, 2005
Going on the Offense Against Plagiarism
Anne at Creating Text(iles) has taken the anti-plagiarism step I pointed to on A Week of Kindness a lot further. A lot. Oh, my.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:17 AM
April 4, 2005
Talk about a middle class nightmare . . .
If you are a nice, normal, decent mom and dad*, and your son claims he assassinated a police officer in a revolt against multinational corporations -- what do you do?Here's the story in the Washington Post. Is he a McVeigh of the Left or another Kaczynski? The article is very disturbing.
*his parents are professors at Wittenberg and Dayton!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:41 AM
Dante, Beatrice, Tristan, Isolde, Johnny, June
The young are often such optimists that sometimes its hard to teach literature. I find it hard to convince them that love hurts, despite the evidence all around them. It's particularly hard to teach the big, great, burning loves - Dante and Beatrice, Tristan and Isolde. Do you think they'd get Johnny and June Carter Cash?
I just listened to an amazing 10 minute This American Life reflection on their 40 year passion - complete with three different versions of "Ring of Fire." The episode was first broadcast 9/19/03 and is called "What is this Thing?" Good stuff. Maybe worth making them listen to next time I try to teach 'em the lesson. I'm thinking of a whole-year course on Dante next year, so little contemporary resources like this may help.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:22 AM
April 3, 2005
A Papal Transition FAQ
Here're lots of answers to things people are asking from Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J., editor in chief of America and author of one of my favorite recommendations for understanding the Church in America, Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church. Reese includes information from John Allen AND links to bookies - your full service stop.
And if you want the undigested instructions, here they are - UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS - on the Vacancy of the Apostolic See and the election of the Roman Pontiff, February 22, 1996.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:54 AM
April 2, 2005
Pray for the Cardinals
If what you need to do is read about him, go read about him at the Anchoress's - live blogging the Lion's last breath.
I want to go into a media blackout until 2 weeks after the next conclave, by the way - we're in for an avalanche of unhelpful statements about conservatives and liberals in the Church (tell me, quick, which one John Paul II was, and justify with examples). I'll let the Holy Spirit handle things, not CNN or Fox or the BBC or bloggers. Meanwhile I'm praying for the cardinals -- they'll need it.
further: and if you want to know what happens next and would rather hear someone better informed than a CNN host, Prof. Thomas F. X. Noble has recorded a pair of lectures on papal elections for the Teaching Company and the Teaching Company is offering them for free. Noble (now at Notre Dame) is the most impressive historian of the early medieval papacy in America* -- his Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825 is a fine book (for the professionally inclined - I don't know that I'd recommend it for the general reader). I haven't listened to the lectures, but I've heard him give a number of conference papers; he's a good speaker and he's certainly well-informed.*For instance, Eamon Duffy (at Cambridge) is neither American, a historian of the papacy, nor a specialist in the early middle ages. He's British, a historian of medieval England who happens to have written a popular history of the Papacy, and a specialist (initially, at least) in the very late middle ages. He's good, but I hope he doesn't get a lot of media attention in America over this.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:09 PM
April 1, 2005
We Are Mature
Yes, my friends and compeers, we are mature. Fidelity is now using Call Me to sell mutual funds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:53 PM
April Fool's? More-disabled-than-thouism? Who can tell.
So is this an April Fool's Day item? While checking on JPII via CNN I see Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing up. Who can tell anymore?
Candidates for the crown have to "mostly be seen in the public using their wheelchairs or scooters," said Judy Hoit, Ms. Wheelchair America's treasurer. "Otherwise you've got women who are in their wheelchairs all the time and they get offended if they see someone standing up. We can't have title holders out there walking when they're seen in the public."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:09 PM
Sandy Berger, Bad Man
Mr. Berger shredded the documents? And he gets a 3-year suspension of his national security clearance? I suppose he agreed to that becaause by the time a Democrat is in power again he can be rehabilitated. He's only 60, after all.
The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business. [my emphasis]The only good news here? He says he put the documents in his suit jacket, so stop with the stuffed pants statements.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM
On Jokes.
Pfffft. I just finished reading through my regular morning blogs and spotted nary an April Fool's joke. Google, on the other hand, is offering a nicely crafted one - down to the privacy statement. Can I hope for more at the Faculty lunch talk on Values Added Assessment?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM