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June 30, 2005
Verbal PC Games
I'd say this beggars the imagination, but that would offend someone:
David Brent would never approve. 'Brainstorming', the buzzword used by executives to generate ideas among their staff, has been deemed politically incorrect by civil servants because it is thought to be offensive to people with brain disorders.Instead staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast will use the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively. A spokeswoman said: 'The DETI does not use the term brainstorming on its training courses on the grounds that it may be deemed pejorative.'
Sources inside the department said there was concern that the term would cause offence to people with epilepsy as well those with brain tumours or brain injuries.
via Radley Balko
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:28 PM
June 29, 2005
Poor guy!
Brian Tiemann's blog was the 22nd google hit for "Bob Lewis Volkswagen." If you add "service" to the search he's #16.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 AM
June 28, 2005
Time travel - who knew it only took a press pass?
I understand the pressure of deadlines, but the ongoing notices of Laphamisms are just too funny. Can't the news services bear to wait to post their reports of speeches until after they happen? Can't they at least restrain themselves from using direct quotation? The "excerpts released ahead of time" are not "excerpts" from a speech - they are excerpts from a script. Oh, well. I expect no better from the world of journalism, and the ongoing record at Circulation Dropping implies that no one else does, either.
Please don't think I hold much for my profession, by the way.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 PM
Managed Decline
Mark Steyn on Euroshrinkage:
Every day you get ever more poignant glimpses of the Euro-future, such as it is. In East Germany, whose rural communities are dying, village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically that there are too few people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving. Traditionally, government infrastructure expenditure arises from increased demand. In this case, the sewer lines are having to be narrowed at great cost in order to cope with dramatically decreased demand.
I've got to find the source for that -- not that I don't believe it, but I haven't seen it in print, myself. Steyn is writing about the need for managed decline in Europe. I wonder how long it will take for the reality of population shrinkage to settle into Conventional Wisdom? I was amused to see that these Colleges' library has the latest Ehrlich prognostication on the new book browsing shelves. Russia has already shifted from "not growing" to "shrinking," and it won't be long for Italy and Spain (though Italy, at least, is beggining to have real immigration -- yay, Chinese food in Italy! There will someday be some interesting fusion opportunities there).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:53 AM
Seasonal Advice
I'm sure you avoided rereading the Mary Schmich "wear sunscreen" graduation speech, and if you're as lucky as me you managed not to hear the Baz Luhrmann version (charming 2 or 3 times, but then audio-death). Here's an update showing how useless that sententious advice is: sunscreen is doing only half the job!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM
June 26, 2005
The State is All.
The left once dismissed the "you care more about spotted owls than you do about people" line of argument as a caricature of its position.That's Radley Balko on recent Supreme Court decisions, the Left, Washington Post editorials, and bedfellows that some of us don't find all that strange -- statism is statism.No more. Eighht-of-an-inch cave bugs get to live. Cancer patients who rely on medical marijuana to keep their medicine down can suffer and die, for all the Post cares.
Actually, it's worse than that. The cancer patients must suffer, so that the federal government can adequately protect the bugs.(Balko's emphases)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:04 AM
Class differences and post-WWII stories
This in an interesting article about a resistance group in Nazi Germany. They think one of the reasons we've heard of the tiny (5 or 6 member) White Rose group is that they were university students while the Edelweiss Pirates (they're claiming 5,000 members) were working class. Their Communist background probably didn't help in late 1940s West Germany either, though it doesn't explain why the group wouldn't have been lionezed in East Germany. Here's the Wikipedia article, which is rather more interesting than the news story.
This comes immediately after the opening of the Paris police files that make it clearer (not perfectly clear - the police managed to destroy a bunch of documents) how collaborative the French state was with the Occupiers, undercutting yet another myth of the Resistance. There's still a lot to learn here.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 AM
June 25, 2005
The Horror of Movie "Marriages"
So I'm watching Outbreak (It's a sick day - leave me alone -- it's too hot to do anything else) and I'm once again weirded out by the idea that Dustin Hoffman is married to Rene Russo. Dustin Hoffman graduated from high school when Rene Russo was 1 year old (thanks, imdb!).
Michael Blowhard noted this list of actresses who are now older than Anne Bancroft was when she played Mrs. Robinson (she was 35 -- and Hoffman was 29 then).
Jennifer Aniston
Christy Turlington
Debra Messing
Catherine Bell
Lucy Liu
Olivia Williams
Jill Hennessy
Parker Posey
Naomi Watts
Chastity Bono (Chastity Bono is over 35?)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:59 PM
June 24, 2005
Bleh.
There is NOTHING less fair than a summer cold. On the other hand, because I was feeling so useless today I took advantage of living on what ought to be a bigger vacation spot lake I went down to the Colleges' dock (or here, lay in the sun, read a little of a Charles Portis novel, and took a plunge. Refreshingly cool! Made me feel somewhat better.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:16 PM
Make yourself useful! Go fill it out!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:53 AM
June 23, 2005
Virginia drops PRAXIS I requirement for teachers
This Washington Post story talks about the changing requirements for teachers in Virginia -- including dropping a math requirement for non-math teachers.
What's not at all clear from the article is what the 'Instead, they will have to pass a new "literacy and communications skills" exam that will be introduced in January' is. Will it be a product of the ETS people, like Praxis? Will it be home-grown, in which case I dread the first 3 or 4 years of results and controversies.
I took the Praxis I a long time ago, by the way, and it really IS at the 8th-10th grade level (I was half-heartedly pursuing certification to teach high school Latin). If people can't pass it (the Post's anecdote has a PE teacher passing on her 6th attempt) they probably aren't capable of figuring their own grades.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:51 PM
June 22, 2005
Wandering Around England
Are you keeping up with Anne at Creating Text? She's wandering around England and blogging the process -- and even offers cheap lunch recommendations! Who'd have thought -- an Eckerd's with a deli counter?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:41 PM
So much to learn . . .
Dr. Lowe gives us an example of our current knowledge about an interesting aspect of the brain. It turns into a cautionary tale about the difficulty of lots of current research directions.
The problem is, no one has the faintest idea what brain cells are up to when they make morphine. I should start out by saying that we don't know which brain cells, of the insane number of different types, actually make it in vivo, what parts of the brain they're located in, or what factors cause them to increase or decrease its production. And once it's made, we don't know what it does or why.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 AM
"Why is my report card lying?"
Go read this. The college remediation industry is the biggest waste of money and time in America; everything it does was supposed to have been done earlier. My father always referred to these classes as "high school" when he taught them, and that's what they are. 8 out of 10 of the entering students at the "University" in question need remediation in English, 7 out of 10 in math. 80% are unprepared.
The students have been defrauded. They have been required to attend institutions (lets stop calling them "schools") which have wasted their time and taught them much less than they need.
via Joanne Jacobs and Eduwonk.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM
Revoking a Charter
The DC School Board revokes a school charter. As hopeful as charter schools are, they are experiments. Some experiments will fail. This one had 3 management companies (in 5 years, I think).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 AM
Anti-auto Suburban Design
Talk about quixotic! The Washington Post reports on an effort to compel people to live with fewer cars -- and they're going to try to do it in the heart of NOVA suburbia, the Vienna Metro station.
Somehow the location of this effort makes it all the more untenable. If they were serious about re-densification of settlement patterns why are they doing it at the end of the Metro line? I'm sure that's the only place the developers can afford to put up this many tall buildings (closer in would be prohibitive), but it seems that the folks at the end of the line have already chosen to live in a more suburban environment (well, as much as anyone choses anything in that real estate market other than what they can get in the scramble.
The article ends on what I believei s a suitably sceptical note.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 AM
June 21, 2005
I have come to understand that . . . .
Durbin said in his apology: "I made reference to Nazis, to Soviets, and other repressive regimes. Mr. President, I've come to understand that's a very poor choice of words."
Here. I remain very fond of this apologetic formulation.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 PM
Pulteney Park Statue
Here she is from the front, the statue in Pulteney Park.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 PM
A Lesson for procrastinators everywhere
Here's one of the 152 photos I took yesterday - the inscription says PEREUNT ET IMPUTEANTUR, a tag from Martial (I'm told) that means something along the lines of "Get to work!" It says "they perish and they are added up," that is to say "the moments perish and they count against you."
A useful lesson. Did I take it? Pfffft!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:19 AM
Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:15 AM
Try Doing THAT with film
Yesterday I shot 152 pictures before noon, came home for lunch, and sorted and labelled them all into folders. The Nikon D70 is a great camera!! Of course the hardest thing I ever do is try to get decent photos of stained glass (the exposure is not easy - either you overexpose to go for the architectural surround or you underexpose to go for the glass and lose the architecture), but luckily I have the chapel and 3 churches withing walking distance worth practicing on -- and I've already got permission from St. Stephen's RC and Trinity Episcopal but I need to call the Methodists.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM
June 20, 2005
Illegal Immigrants and Financial Aid
Another example of how the the tuition/financial aid cycle is insane (though I have another question).
This is a tear-jerker college admissions story from the New York Times which I fear will not resonate entirely with its readership. Whatever their politics, they're probably delighted to find out that at least their children aren't competing with bright, atheltically talented, illegal immigrants for Princeton admission. Nevertheless, this is an interesting problem -- what should be done about it? Should illegal immigrants be allowed to receive financial aid from the federal government (which is where most of the loans come from)? If so, what does citizenship mean? Should universities be able to give scholarships out to these students without endangering their position on the federal teat?
My further question is this -- if Princeton wants a student can't they afford him? With $9.6 billion in the endowment as of March 31, 2004? Are they telling us that they can't find a group of alumni willing to fund a "but it's not Princeton money" scholarship so that they can present a happy face to federal regulators? Please. Let's not be as disingenuous as that. "[A]ccording to several people with knowledge of his situation" colleges didn't process his application? What, did he write at the top of the first page "Warning! I am an illegal immigrant!!" I thought the NYT was trying to get away from anonymous sources.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM
So what IS the Dropout Rate in Washington, D.C.?
The story is about discovering that flexibility can help some students finish high school (big duh!), but the hidden nugget of Educational Administration Truth is here:
School officials also acknowledge that their graduation, dropout and attendance statistics are unreliable and that they need to generate more accurate numbers so they can estimate how many youths would benefit from a five-year program.All that money and so little accountability with the numbers used to beg for more.One D.C. school system report showed that though 4,207 students enrolled as ninth-graders in 2000, only 2,740 graduated four years later. But the study did not account for students transferring into or out of the D.C. system.
The school system's official dropout rate is 6.9 percent. But that is based on the number of students in grades seven through 12 who dropped out during a school year. Most experts said they believe it is far better to calculate the dropout rate by following a ninth-grade class for four years and determining how many from that group quit school.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:28 AM
June 19, 2005
Omigosh! The new Anglican Archbishop of York
Uganda-born Anglican bishop of Brimingham appointed archbishop of York. That's something -- he sounds like a very interesting man. I wonder just off hand when the last non-native archibishop of York ruled? The Wikipedia list of Archbishops of York is full of English-sounding names all the way back to the Normans.
via Kathy Shaidle, who noted the "thank you for sharing" part.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 PM
Stop the ribbon magnet madness! JPII RIP white ribbon
Click to be horrified.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:59 PM
New Priest!
Well, at least there's one this year for the diocese of Rochester, which is better than none. And he sounds interesting . . . .
Pray for Fr. John Loncle.
Please pray also for the four permanent deacons ordained for the diocese of Rochester. One of them grew up a Baptist!
The Rochester Catholic Courier has two priestly ordination stories about vocations that got away -- two natives of the diocese ordained this week for other New York dioceses: widower to be ordained for Buffalo and 26 year old ordained for New York City. The first applied to a number of dioceses -- I wonder if Rochester rejected him?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:14 AM
Typos as lasting as bronze. Corrections.
That's DeLancey House -- you really can't see it in the summer for the trees. Geneva's Main Street is a pleasant, shady place. And below is the corrected bronze plaque -- sorry I didn't get a picture of the incorrect one (you can read my complaint about the mistake). For the alumna reader DeLancey House is the Temporary Admissions Office because an anonymous donor ponied up something like $850,000 to build an expansion (in the most tastefully imitative architecture possible) onto what used to be called William Smith Admissions. So the Admissions folk are partially displaced for the next few months.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 AM
June 18, 2005
Secret Rome
Click. See. Sigh.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 PM
Rainy weekends and web pages
Well, when someone downloads one's index page, writes 2 different css stylesheets for it, rewrites the page, does a number of other things, and posts the results for one's examination and downloading one would be a horrible person if one didn't try it. So I did. And I kind of get it now, the css thing. See here for what's up.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 PM
June 17, 2005
Geneva views
Here's a view from the 3rd floor balcony of my apartment building (click for larger view). You're looking east toward Seneca Lake (through the gap between the buildings) and the sun is setting behind the building after a long, rainy day.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:57 AM
June 16, 2005
Rainy Days and Web Pages.
It's a rainy, chilly summer afternoon and I'm link-checking.
The problem of having a reasonably link-rich set of web pages for students is that if you're the least bit responsible you'll check the links periodically (and post the date of said link-checkery). I checked the links last fall but quite a few of them have fallen by the wayside since and there are other similar out-datednesses. Still, it's a good way to spend a day inside.
We have been encouraged to use Blackboard for the last few years, but both the people most responsible for that have left for other pastures this summer so we may be back to HTML. I noted that Prof. Burke was struggling with CSS. I have decided that it is an exclusionary tool invented by a clerisy to keep the peasants incapable of distributing information for themselves. I learned to write simple HTML in 15 minutes (how much is there to a tag?) and my pages worked fine. The improvements driven by all this much more elaborate back-stage code are, I think, overrated. I'm even taking off the backgrounds as I go this time. Stark. Simple. Content-driven. That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it, for now.
Of course, if I could figure out how to get Tinderbox to do what I want it to do I'd probably try that, but given my time constraints I'm better off with HTML and as few colors as possible.
Further: O.K., o.k., I'm reading the webmonkey tutorials on CSS. Ugh. I'm also emailing the folks at Tinderbox; I can't get things to export very usefully.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:22 PM
Day care or Education - what's the important part?
Mandatory, state-funded pre-school movements cut to the quick of the question about government schools -- day-care or education? Yes, both are real, but which is more important? Joanne Jacobs has an interesting post today on the California situation (it's an ongoing issue on her blog).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:42 AM
June 15, 2005
And what I've been doing this week
And this is what I got to play with this week. The prices are dropping some, and there's still a rebate, so it FELT like a deal! This is where I eventually ordered it -- some individual might as well make a little money off the purchase, and goodness knows there's nowhere to buy locally.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:01 PM
June 14, 2005
It's not about money.
Ignorant voters insist more money pour into the schools, not knowing California spends more on schools than the entire operating budgets of each of the 49 other states, including New York.That's Jill Stewart, who I found via Mickey Kaus. Go read the article. Whatever should be done with lower education, and the suggestions are myriad, "more money" isn't the place to start. And the ignorance is bipartisan:
The PPIC poll shows how misconceptions are driven by partisanship in California. Democrats tend to believe (ridiculously) that California’s prisons get the most state money. Republicans tend to believe (absurdly) that social welfare gets the most state money.And this is the union that took a half-day last month to protest in Sacramento.People are ignorant in part because our crisis-driven media often lazily push the myth that California is near “the bottom” in school funding. That myth is a product of the education lobby, led by the California Teachers Association, which makes sure California teachers earn the highest salaries in the nation, yet constantly whines that schools are under-funded.
Joanne Jacobs commented on the Stewart piece, too, but I hadn't noticed it there (which is odd, since I read her every day and kausfiles only every once in a while).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
spam spam spam spam
After months of mt-blacklist working like a charm I'm getting 150 poker spams a day. Argh!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:34 AM
June 12, 2005
Middle Age
Go see what you buy if you're a really nice early-middle-aged man from Chattanooga, TN. It's enough to make me take up riding my bicycle faster just so I can justify one.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:35 PM
What I spent this afternoon doing
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 PM
That's not a sign of maturity, it's just a wrinkle
Talk about an unrelated technology driving medicine -- HDTV promotes plastic surgery because it -- ummm --- is TOO focused. News readers in their 30s are seeking "help." Actors will be cut from studio rosters because of minor blemishes that can no longer be disguised.
''It's almost too realistic, too digital and computery,'' complains Alexis Vogel, a veteran celebrity makeup artist who recently worked on ''Stacked,'' a high-def show starring Pamela Anderson. ''We'd all like to go back to the old days.'' Makeup artists are now engaged in an arms race with the new medium. But they face a paradox: while makeup is more necessary than ever, its artifice is more obvious. You can't slather on powder when every grain looks like a boulder on your client's face. And interestingly, many cosmeticians predict that high-def could actually reduce the amount of plastic surgery in Hollywood, because the tiny seams look Frankensteinian at such high resolution. High-def is, in essence, a medium peculiarly unsuited to dissembling. ''It's harder to change people from their natural form,'' Vogel adds.Perhaps HDTV will change the medium even more? The article mentions the talkie transition . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM
June 10, 2005
High Schol Policy - Yeesh!
This seems pretty indefensible -- refusing a graduation walk over a bolo tie.
Those readers who know me understand (and those who only know me from here may be able to intuit) that I am no fan of the bolo tie. However, the school seems not to have exercised any definition of the code beyond "tie." They allowed bad ties. I understand the county-wide policy that "they [graduating seniors] are not to wear any kind of additional accents". A bolo tie would not, however, be additional.
Allowing a child to wear an orange tie with that godawful purple robe and mortarboard was considerably worse than allowing Mr. Benya to wear a bolo.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:18 PM
Hogwarts, but with singing (and without the Reformation)
"I'd compare the Escolania with Hogwarts in 'Harry Potter,' " said Xavier Palá, a 14-year-old who is graduating. "There they teach you to make magic with wands, and here they teach us how to make magic with music."That's from an article about an 800 year old choir school (currently a boy choir, soon to be co-ed) in Catalonia, the Escolania of Montserrat, the Benedictine abbey that houses the Virign of Montserrat*, one of the great black virgins of Romanesque Europe.
*GREAT website of the Abbey, but tiny pictures. Sorry.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM
Malaria News
I'm always intrigued by news stories about malaria and think it one of the great shames of our time that we throw money at so many problems when this one might be solveable. I think that one benchmark of the developed world's seriousness about world misery is dedication to malaria treatment and eradication. Early days for this suggestion, but every bit helps. This solution seems particularly low tech, too, which is a very good thing.
I'm not someone who believes in single causes, but I do love to read "malaria ended the Roman empire" or "the stirrup created the western Middle Ages" kinds of arguments (I am, of course, convinced that malaria had a lot to do with settlement patterns in various parts of the world in various periods and that it's damned hard to fight on horseback without the stirrup).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM
June 9, 2005
A Bad Day for Newsprint
Because I can't find a way to link to a single entry I'll just quote the whole damn thing and let you scroll -- Mr. Mickey Kaus finds yet another reason the major media are headed for reorganization (caution - he hates the Los Angeles Times. He may be justified, but the feeling is quite palpable.):
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
A dramatic 75-mile car chase shuts down a major Southern California freeway for four hours and makes the national NBC Nightly News--but doesn't make the front page of the L.A. Times. It doesn't even make the front page of the local ("California") B-section of the L.A. Times. (There's a teaser for the story, which is on page B3.) The people who edit this paper have no clue. ... Massive layoffs--please! Update: The L.A. Daily News, the LAT's smaller, Valley-based rival, of course makes the freeway drama its lead story. That's because the Daily News is a newspaper. [As opposed to?--ed. A giant wet blanket smothering any spark of civic engagement in America's second-largest city! ... Sorry, that just sort of popped out.] Update 2: The story did make the front of the second section in the LAT's "Orange County Edition." (The chase was nowhere near Orange County. They must just have sharper editors than the main L.A. edition. But it should have been on A1, not B1, even in the O.C.)
4:02 A.M.
All emphases and typeface changes his.
I also recommend Circulation Dropping, for all your firing-of-major-news-corporation-executives-for-falsifying-circulation-records reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 PM
June 8, 2005
School Lunch Critic
I think I've asked recently if everyone who reads here reads Education Next regularly, but here's another fun article - What's for Lunch, by Mark Zanger, a professional food critic and author of a food history. Very interesting!
I always knew that the common school was a tool of homogenization in America, but I never really thought about the school lunch that way -- or the school lunch as a tool to improve cannon fodder. Click and read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:30 AM
More Amnesty Gulagery
Here's an honest admission of why people use bad historical analogies:
SCHULZ: Chris, I don't think I'd be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn't said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven't responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, "Chris, I'd like to go on FOX with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere," I suspect you wouldn't have given me an invitation.WALLACE: So you're saying if you make irresponsible charges, that's good for the cause?
SCHULZ: I don't believe that they're irresponsible.
Howard Kurtz asks:Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it's okay to unleash words like "gulag," even if it's not an "exact or literal analogy," because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball? Kurtz also notes that this has produced a minor miracle -- agreement between the Washington Post and Washington Times editorial pages!
This helps. Satire, of course, but it helps.
And even further . . . Amnesty tries to get a former prisoner of conscience to agree with their formulation. He not only refuses -- he writes a Washingont Post oped which concludes:
Words are important. When Amnesty spokesmen use the word "gulag" to describe U.S. human rights violations, they allow the Bush administration to dismiss justified criticism and undermine Amnesty's credibility. Amnesty International is too valuable to let it be hijacked by politically biased leaders.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM
The Prices for Health Care
An interesting Wall Street Journal story about health care in England and New York, compare and contrast. I have no idea how long the link lasts, so read it today.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM
Liberals and I.Q.; professors and grades
Steve Sailer has the best of the Kerry Transcript coverage, because he understands, as he likes to point out frequently:
First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.That's why the Kerry transcripts matter. Because Howell Rains said: "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead." Well, yes, Mr. Rains, some of us did doubt it then and now we know.Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.
Now as a college professor who just attended a college reunion weekend I can tell you that grades are not a particularly useful predictor of life performance -- something that irritates academics to NO end. That's part of why lots of academics were eager to believe that John Kerry had higher grades and a higher I.Q., because we not particularly secretly resent our C students who do well. Colleagues and other professors regularly allege that poor student who do well must have used family connections, family money, or well-planned marriages for advancement.
Good grades tell us something about raw ability, but they tell us a good bit about hard work and more about study skills (the last being why senior science majors with nary a humanities course often do so well in humanities electives if they get interested). What bothers me isn't that our C students (or, nowadays, our low B average students) do so much better than we might think they should, but that we have so failed to interest them.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 AM
Age - It's all Relative
I know this 50th anniversary edition DVD box set is making some people feel old.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:23 AM
June 7, 2005
Campus Bookstores
We're having some unrest about our 'College Store,' as we assiduous call it (to avoid 'Book Store,' I suppose). There is talk about moves to move all the books to the basement and cease to carry so many trade books. Insinuations of vile commerce in enlogoed sweatshirts intrude. Since I do all my book shopping on Amazon or at used bookstores in Ithaca, Rochester, or Syracuse, this doesn't cause me much pause.
A group of Faculty see our college bookstore's trade and children's sections as providing the closest thing to a commercial bookstore in Geneva -- and I suppose they're right. That's a kind of service to our local community, like the radio station.
I fear, though, that this is one part of online shopping that has utterly changed my life. If I want a book and it's not here I'm not willing to wait the weeks it takes local bookshops to get it for me. I never liked waiting and now I don't have to. Between Amazon and Abebooks I really don't have to put up with the lamentable ignorance of clerks; I haven't been in a serious new books bookstore where I met clerks who knew a lot more than me about a lot of subjects since Oxford closed in Atlanta. I've been in used bookstores with excellent staff, but given how few of the retail experiences in America that describes, I'll stick to online shopping. I don't know how much good the service has to do to make it necessary for our institution to provide it (an no one so far has made any claims about the amount of use the community makes of our bookstore).
Now what to do about textbooks? I would say close down the book section, sell more sweatshirts, and let students order THOSE online, too, but I haven't experimented with the online textbook suppliers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM
June 6, 2005
Assessment - ugh. More!
The Art History plan is turned in, I suppose (no further drafts have crossed my email desktop for about a week) so now I'm working on the assessment plan for European Studies. "Departments," however, are much clearer than what we (locally) call "programs." Everything is much murkier -- including what body of persons would actually approve such a plan. There's a steering committee (and that's my vote - let them see it)) and then there are the associated faculty, which includes more or less anyone who teaches about something vaguely European. I think. Ugh. Pray for me.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:13 PM
Amnesty.
'If you look globally today and want to talk about human rights, for the vast majority of the world's population they don't mean very much. To talk about freedom of expression to a man who can't read the newspaper, to talk about the right to work to someone who has no job; human rights means nothing to them unless it brings some change on these particular issues.'Nick Cohen comments in the Guardian. It's a interesting essay about priorities and poverty and human rights.This clunking and faintly sinister statement did not come from a colonial administrator explaining that liberty was all well and good for freeborn Englishmen but the half-savage natives needed order. Nor was it a communist apparatchik saying that there was no need for bourgeois freedoms in the proletarian paradise of the Soviet Union. Nor was it Edward Heath or Henry Kissinger announcing that the Chinese liked autocracy or Abu Musab Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden denouncing democracy as a Greek heresy.
Rather, it fell from the lips of Irene Khan, the new secretary general of Amnesty International, an organisation which used to believe that human rights meant everything.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:44 PM
June 4, 2005
Reunion Fundraising - a Kodak moment
I'm just back from the Reunion weekend picnic on the Quad. Two days of hearing from alumnae/i about how wonderful these Colleges are has been just the kind of boost I need to get over some recent disenchantment with what we do in the American "higher" education.* They love us - they really, really love us! Two of the 10 reunion classes (the 30th and the 50th) raised over $700,000 apiece for their class gift; the 5th year classes (the only one I taught -- Hobart and William Smith classes of 2000) got more than 25% participation and raised something like $5,000; that's pretty good for 26 year olds. When I thought about the fact that the 30th reunion folks - the classes of 1975 - are busy paying tuition or helpting to pay off loans that $700,000 made me very grateful
Disclaimer: yes, I tear up at Kodak commericals and the ends of Julia Roberts movies. I won't watch The Yearling again, despite the fact that since I watched it the first time I found out that Claude Jarman was in my parents' class at Vanderbilt.
*and I've never had strict grading policies so positively reinforced! One and all the table I ate supper with last night praised the hard-grading-with-clearly-stated-standards approach as having taught them something lastingly valuable.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:34 PM
Things that lead people to my blog.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yes professor stop calling me professor yes professor&spell=1.
Google searcher, feel free to call me "Professor."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:10 AM
And the award for disingenuity goes to . . .
Sometimes I really do wonder about the world of journalism. Do they really start out as disingenuous as this big article on publishers, bookstores, and pay-for-placement sounds? Does anyone really think the books on prominent display at Barnes and Noble are there because of their inherent excellences? Haven't we all noticed that all the Barnes and Nobles have the same displays (within reasonable constraints)? Haven't we all noticed the rack of "staff choices" that tell us what the local bookstore clerks really think?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:09 AM
June 3, 2005
What do you call a typo cast into bronze?
I should know the answer to my own question -- hell, I own books on epigraphy -- but in a new signage campaign on campus someone not only ordered but PUT UP a plaque that was off by a century. DeLancey House had 1926 instead of 1826 on it. Luckily, they ripped the plaque off the door jamb yesterday, just in time for alumnae/i to walk past undisturbed.
Well, the simple answer is "expensive," since it seems (according to an elevated administrator) to have been our error, not the foundry's.
Sorry there's no picture available -- DeLancey House is a lovely example of early 19th century plain architecture; it was built by William Heathcote DeLancey, the first Episcopal bishop of Western New York, who never had a cathedral or a see (his successor set up in Rochester). He lived in Geneva just down the street (as it was in those days) from Hobart College and was instrumental in the survival of the college. I'm glad we have something on campus named after him.
Note of the correction with photo here
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:55 AM
New Domain for "Code-abiding" Pr0n
Well, it'll be easy to write the spam-filters and library web-site blockers (if the librarians would stand for such fascistic tactics as shackling information!! Yeah!! Librarians want everything to be free!!) for anything coming from websites with this domain. Sorry not to spell it out, but you know, wouldn't want to artificially encourage Google.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 AM
June 2, 2005
Amnesty International defends "gulag" statement
Amnesty International insists on its analogy between the gulag and Guantanamo. I think this is a miserable use of historical analogy.
Please see my previous comment and disclaimer. Go here if you want photos. Professor Reynolds links to a number of responses.
I hope they come to their rhetorical senses before their next fundraising mission, because they've just burned a lot of bridges.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 PM
Reunion Weekend - Someone ELSE'S
Oh, my - I've been at these Colleges for a while, haven't I? The first graduating classes I taught, 2000, has their 5th Reunion this weekend! I taught a senior seminar that year and two of those students have already registered. This is a vivid demonstration for me of how we go from remembering people to being parts of their memories.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:59 AM
June 1, 2005
Polls may be useless the world over.
From Michael Silence I steal this helpful pairing:
"Late poll points to narrow Dutch EU vote."
"Sixty-three percent vetoed the EU constitution in the referendum."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM
Not Red Departement Blue Departement
North Sea Diaries has the most interesting ongoing coverage of the election in France, complete with a much more sophiticated break down of the vote by regions (with colors!).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:25 AM
Where DO all those little bracelets get made? In China. By Slaves.
In England a group of 400 charities launched a new entry into the horrific world of little rubber bracelets -- this time a white one to signify a desire to "Make Poverty History." Unfortunately, someone noticed that the little white bracelets were being made under conditions that violate Chinese law, let alone the elevated ethical standards indicated by wearing such tat.
Another audit at the Fuzhou Xing Chun Trade Company in Fujian province found workers were paid at below the local minimum hourly wage of 2.39 yuan (under 16p) and some as little as 1.39 yuan (9p).I always like the "We now see that . . . was a mistake" clauses in these public confessions of wickedness.The revelations have now caused infighting between the various charities, with Christian Aid claiming Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company.
A spokesman said: "If Oxfam had concerns about ethical standards it did not pass them on for a considerable time."
An Oxfam spokeswoman responded that they informed their coalition partners in January, but added: "We could have perhaps put it in writing to make it absolutely clear. We bought an initial 10,000 wrist bands from the Shenzhen company in November. We now see that purchasing this before we saw a full audit was a mistake."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM
Restaurant of Roman Food at Pompeii
What fun! I'll be dragging students here soon to eat recreated Roman food.
Pompeii's busiest restaurant reopened its doors on Saturday for the first time since it was buried in Mount Vesuvius' lava nearly 2,000 years ago.via mirabilis.ca, who has an abiding interest in Roman food.Frozen in time with the rest of the city in 79 A.D. by the most famous eruption in history, the restaurant is located in Via Nocera, not far from one of the city's gates.
"The volcanic ash has kept plants, radishes, pollens almost intact. We have been studying them for 10 years and learned a lot about what the inhabitants of Pompeii ate," biologist Anna Maria Ciarallo, who heads the project for Pompeii's archaeological office, told Discovery News.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM