January 5, 2009
Yes, 2010 races are beginning in earnest
Frist decides not to run for governor of Tennessee in 2010. Others jockey for position.
My parents' representative, Zach Wamp, has signs up all over East Tennessee already.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM | Comments (1)
Durbin too busy to meet Burris
Burris said he attempted to arrange a meeting with Durbin on Monday or Tuesday but learned he was too busy. He said the two made an appointment for Wednesday, the day after new senators are set to be sworn in.
Too busy until after the swearing-in. I wonder if they're going to swear in Burris?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:23 AM | Comments (1)
January 4, 2009
Journalists. What drives their analytical processes?
I really don't know sometimes.
The Washington Post has a front page story with the headline Jobless Rate Up for College Educated. Their poster-child? Well...
Having worked in residential construction for 20 years, she was used to finding work by flipping through her Rolodex."Usually it's three phone calls, three job offers, and off you go," she said.
Ummmm...could her 20 years of work in the residential construction field be holding her up more than her college degree - also more than 20 years old - is advancing her? Maybe?
The other two examples offered, a programmer (I guess - he started out that way), and a "veteran financial consultant." Somehow I don't think the Washington Post is looking hard enough.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
January 3, 2009
"This is fantastic. It took Margaret Thatcher 10 years before she had mobs of urban youth denouncing her."
Boris Johnson, the Great Tory Hope, on London.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 AM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2009
Bubbles, art market edition
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
Madoff and Art Theft
Instead of practicing crime against others, Madoff is on the receiving end of this one. It's a little arch, since the thieves didn't actually do anything with the art. Practical jokes. Eh.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM | Comments (0)
January 1, 2009
The problem with giving nephews board games for Christmas
Is that you have to be a graceful loser when one of them beats you fair and square. In my defense, I haven't played Stratego in decades.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)
December 31, 2008
This is why I don't want any 'professionals' thinking they have the training to decide to euthanize me or not
Because you know, they will. By neglect or by active murder. But that's the culture of death for you. Happy New Year.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:54 PM | Comments (1)
If they're fictitious paper gains, are they fictitious paper losses?
On the Yeshiva University front:
The university's chief financial officer, J. Michael Gower, said in an e-mail that the school's actual principal investment in a hedge fund linked to Madoff had been only $14.5 million.On paper, that stake had exploded in value over the past 15 years to $110 million, but Gower said all of those "profits" now appear to be entirely fictitious, meaning that the losses were mostly fictitious too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)
It's just not like it used to be . . .
Chattanooga, that is. And when former Chattanoogans say that they mean that it's so much nicer than when we were children. Mother and I got down to the river front for a long walk on Monday. Almost every visit there's something new and interesting in the mix - since I was here this summer they've opened up the connections between Coolidge Park (between the two bridges) and the new stretch of park downstream.
We're on the road now to NoVa for second Christmas with the nephews and nieces.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM | Comments (2)
December 30, 2008
Good enough for government work - disappearing British art collection
Works of art worth hundreds of thousands of pounds are missing from British embassies and other official buildings around the world.At least 50 paintings from the Government Art Collection are unaccounted for, according to the latest audit. None was insured. Some are known to have been stolen but more than half the total simply disappeared.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)
Top 10 Discoveries of 2008
Archaeology magazine lists its top 10 discoveries of 2008!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM | Comments (0)
December 29, 2008
Whatever happened to "don't put all your eggs in one basket"?
From an interesting Madoff article at Bloomberg.com:
U.S. foundations that invested with Bernard Madoff donated more than $73 million to nonprofit organizations in 2007, according to a tally based on foundation tax returns.The Dec. 11 arrest of the 70-year-old New Yorker has directly affected some 400 U.S. nonprofits, from Amnesty International to the Death Penalty Information Center to the Lymphoma Research Foundation. A precise accounting of Madoff-related losses isn't possible. Each week brings new disclosures, and several foundations that said they had money with Madoff haven't indicated how much. He is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme.
. . .
The JEHT Foundation -- which gave away $24.2 million last year, primarily toward criminal justice reform -- and the Picower Foundation -- which distributed $268 million since 1989 -- both recently announced that they've been forced to close.
I don't really understand the chart at the link - how the JEHT foundation had assets of $7.5 million but gave away $24.2 million, but still. Maybe they left out a zero or two? The Picower foundation, which seems to have lost everything, had $958,425,057.
By the way - look at the number of higher education recipients in the lists. Ripples.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)
December 28, 2008
The New York Times, differently edited audio and transcript, and journalistic ethics
The editing in question didn't change the sense of Ms. Kennedy's answer much; it just made the clip shorter by taking out a back-and-forth that the reporter used to guide her answer in the direction he wanted her to take. But once you allow omission of context and silent ellipsis as valid editing techniques, you've opened the door to making anyone seem to say almost anything. (And you force savvy interviewees into trying to defend themselves by repeating their talking points no matter what you ask them.)
. . .
But I do have a couple of minimal suggestion for news organizations that aspire to a reputation for honesty.First, we need a form of audio-visual punctuation to correspond to the three dots that are used to indicate ellipsis in text.
It's a long entry and well-worth reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)
Counterfeit Designer Goods, Viking Swords Edition
It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword; a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass.
Fascinating stuff - the real Ulfberht swords were made from high carbon steel imported from what is now Iran or Afghanistan; the fakes were made from locally-worked iron. When the trade routes down the Russian rivers closed the fakes took over.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2008
Poor little rich girl
"Voting is the minimum thing that you can do, and she hasn't done that. The next thing you can do is you could donate money, and she hasn't done that," said Doug Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch College.
That's Caroline Kennedy being asked to have done the minimum in the New York Daily News. Actually, I think that for a woman with something like $100 million, giving money would have been a lot more useful than voting.
via an article on the unserious candidate for Senate in these serious times at Commentary.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)
Where's a camera when you need one?
I went with my mother to a craft shop today to exchange a photo album and to get some other stuff (yes, we were doing our level best to jump start the economy). Did you know they sell little hammers covered with FLOWERS for scrapbookers to use to pound eyelets into things? I couldn't believe all the different colors of needle-nosed pliers available, either.
Whole folk arts developing and I don't even notice them! Mother assures me there was a scrapbooking CONVENTION in Chattanooga this year.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 PM | Comments (0)
A proper use for presidential clemency
I agree with Kathy Shaidle. President Bush should pardon this culture hero: Phila. man shot because family talked during movie.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 AM | Comments (1)
December 26, 2008
The CIA practices Chemical Warfare
They give Afghan warlords Viagra. Devious. Even though I think it's profoundly immoral, I'm glad they're bright enough to think of it. Little of my recent reading about the CIA has impressed me with their human intelligence skills so much as this.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)
The Americans with No Abilities Act in real life
Joanne Jacobs has a great story, LA builds arts palace for the untalented:
Los Angeles Unified's new arts school will have a very expensive "world-class" building -- but the school won't enroll the most talented students, reports the LA Times. In fact, students with artistic, musical and dramatic talent will be urged to go elsewhere.
You have to read it to believe it. My post title comes from an Onion story someone in the comments remembered - Congress passes Americans With No Abilities Act.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)
Little girl with a big future
One of my current daily reads is PassiveAgressiveNotes.com. Their December 24th entry shows that nanny-statism starts young!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas!
Many of the wrapped presents under the tree are destined for nieces and nephews next week - but there's some loot for us older folks under there anyway!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:15 AM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2008
Best headline: Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck
I'm home where the Aged Ps still subscribe to two analog newspapers. I saw this headline over my mother's shoulder - Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck. I assumed she was a FORMER beauty queen gone bad - you know, like the fevered Democratic imaginings of Sarah Palin - but no! She is the CURRENT Miss Sinaloa, and until this arrest was headed to the 2009 Miss International contest to represent Mexico (she was 2nd runner-up in the Nuestra Belleza Mexico pageant, which feeds Miss Universe).
Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.When the former preschool teacher won Miss Sinaloa in July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. In October, she won the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest in October against competitors from across Latin America.
I guess she was demonstrating that women could be empowered by gunrunning? Or maybe she was just going to go to Bolivia for the shopping?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
Paris and new architecture
Here's an interesting article about newness in architecture in Paris. A key paragraph:
"...France is so provocative in so many fields, so open to other cultures, yet in architecture it's seemed trapped. Its schools of architecture have been pretty conservative, inward looking." They've been dominated by the "soixant-huitards", the May 1968 generation.
From an interview with Jakob Macfarlane on the opening of the new Cité de la Mode et du Design - which you see a night view of on the right. The interview looks at ways the French state encourages and retards architecture by funding architects - and it explains some of what's going on in that exciting building.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:13 AM | Comments (1)
December 23, 2008
Yes, there's been a lot of snow already
Which is why I'm leaving for the sunny South! I know it's been cold in Chattanooga lately, but it hasn't been like what you see here!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
Big Coin Hoard found in Jerusalem
Neat - 264 gold coins, all of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, found in Jerusalem. The CNN story has pictures, but the Bloomberg.com story offers a probable reason for their deposit - the Persian invasion and sack of Jerusalem in 614. Remember, coin hoards always have a tinge of sadness; someone buried money, but never had a chance to collect it. Especially in circumstances like this we think of death.
Both these stories say the coins are all of the same date or type - so someone had a lot of early Heraclius coins in one place. 264 gold coins was a lot of money!
The Israel Antiquities Authority has the most complete version of the story, as one might expect. The largest hoard discovered in Jerusalem before this had 5 gold coins.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 AM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2008
Why Dynasticism Happens and an Apologist for the Kennedy Dynasty
"Who wants to go into politics today except people who are born into it?" opines veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "It's not pleasant, it's full of incessant disclosure and oversight, you have no personal life. You don't meet the best class of people. If it isn't in the family, who would do it? The other alternative is the very rich, who can afford to go into it."
And why this dynasty would be a good thing for Progressives, from Al Giordano:
On a policy level, it would be an even more brilliant move from the perspective of liberalism and progressivism: Attorney Kennedy is underestimated by some only because she's lived by the "no drama" approach to politics long before Obama made it popular. Most people have little idea of her accomplishments because her style has been to seek results not credit for them. I know, because in the 1990s, as political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, I covered the Kennedy family and all its doings - including Ted Kennedys 1994 reelection battle against Mitt Romney - very closely. Caroline, at the helm of the Kennedy library, has served as the true executive director of the family and all its political and policy interests. She has also been the family's ambassador nationwide and around the world: the one that attended funerals and other matters of statesmanship on the family's behalf. That she generally avoided the spotlight in doing so, and always avoided personal scandal - a particularly difficult challenge for anybody named Kennedy - is testimony to her skill and finesse at the political game.The Kennedy policy machine is nothing to shake a stick at: Senator Ted Kennedy has, during 46 years in the Senate, installed a generation of policy wonks as lead staffers on almost all the key committees in the upper house of the Capitol dome, and no small number in the lower one. When Teddy nods his head subtly in a given policy direction that network marches as an army and has steamrolled over Republican and business interests time and time again. When progressive legislation has been passed - when reactionary legislation has been killed - on civil rights and liberties, health care, jobs and wages, education, and on other issues, the fingerprints of current and former Kennedy staffers have been on each and every one, even as Teddy shined the spotlight on other legislators who took the public lead. Joe Biden and John Kerry are among the Senate veterans that have benefited from Kennedy's generosity when it comes to sharing or assigning credit.
Paterson and New York, thus, would not just be getting a Senator. They would get, with Caroline, the driver with the keys to the most finely tuned and influential progressive national political network in American politics, reaching (in many cases invisibly) into levers of power in all branches of government and in many states far from Massachusetts, including among the networks planted by the Southern Civil Rights movement and among Hispanic-American political leaders and organizations from Texas to California for whom "Tio Ted" has been mentor and unflinching ally. (The Kennedys have long been central to the push for multi-racial movements in US politics, one that just became realized with Obama's election as never before: that will also serve Attorney Kennedy and so many of her constituents well in New York.)
I find this vision of the Kennedy machine terrifying - and the idea that Caroline is the quiet consigliere to take control of it an excellent reason to oppose her appointment.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:49 AM | Comments (1)
How much HAS Harvard Lost?
At the Huffington Post:
Harvard University's admission that it lost $8 billion from its $36 billion endowment fund, as staggering as it sounds, may grossly underestimate the true magnitude of the loss between from July 1 through Oct. 31 2008. According to a source close the Harvard Management Corporation (HMC), which runs the fund for Harvard, the loss is closer to $18 billion if the losses on the fund's illiquid investment are realistically appraised.
In other words, not a little less than a quarter, more like half. Yikes.
via Cliopatria. Though now that I look around, Prof. Soltan has a picture.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)
The FBI agent in charge of art theft and fraud retires
Artdaily.org has a story about the coming retirement of Special Agent Robert K. Wittman, who has been working for 20 years on art theft for the FBI. I expect there will be a memoir out soon - and a movie! It's a little bit of a tease that Artdaily.org puts the Isabella Stewart Gardner Vermeer, The Concert, at the top of the page to illustrate the story. After all, that's never been recovered. Here's the FBI page on the theft.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2008
My own little Christmas gift to myself . . .
Shaun of the Dead. It's even better than I remember it. Sacrificial love in the face of zombies!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:17 PM | Comments (4)
December 19, 2008
I'm always posting things about metal detector finds...ever wondered where the machines come from?
From retired rockers. Well, some of them from one of them:
So what do you do when you're too old to Rock 'n' Roll but too young for the carpet slippers and pipe?Well, you can try music management, the media or a respected career in academia.
But if you once played bass in the Rolling Stones, there really is only one obvious career choice: designing and marketing your own-brand metal detector.
In the roster of strange career moves for ex-rockers, Bill Wyman is out there in a field of his own, digging it up.
The man who quit the Stones in 1993 is now a leading light in the metal detectorist movement, designing and selling his own machines.
The Bill Wyman Signature Detector is a 'lightweight and adjustable implement and comes with a free informational DVD', according to the press release for this unlikely piece of rock 'n' roll merchandise.
"Metal detecting is not just for anoraks or eccentrics," says Bill.
"It's probably the best and the most enjoyable way of learning about our history.
"On any garden, country field, footpath, woodlands, beach or moorland, you can find a huge variety of historical objects, all easily located with this high quality metal detector."
And don't worry, the Bill Wyman Signature Detector comes with a money-back guarantee, just in case you can't get no satisfaction.
Follow the link to find out who's designing gardens, serving as chaplain to the Royal Academy of Music, breeding fishery fish, and more. Not everyone needs a reunion tour to stay busy.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:57 AM
December 18, 2008
UK schools and league tables
So what my colleagues here have built here (for I am just a relatively recent arrival) is not just a program that is top of the league table, but one that is stunningly good. Really, I'm a naturally shy and retiring guy (you know that), but facts must be faced.The way the RAE worked involved a national panel which put out a call to all UK universities to pick out for each department or subject area those of their academic staff who were judged to be productive in research, and to submit four publications by each of those, plus various other data. In each subject a national panel worked for a year or so reading and grading everything submitted. They mixed in a score for the research environment and a small percentage for esteem indicators like major prizes and awards, and then presented the results as a vector of five integers: first, a rounded percentage corresponding to work of a quality that leads the world in originality, significance, and rigour (4*); then another corresponding to quality of international excellence but not at the very highest level (3*); another corresponding to internationally recognized quality (2*); another corresponding to nationally but perhaps not internationally recognized quality (1*); and a fifth corresponding to work falling below nationally recognized standards for research work (Unclassified).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)
Picture Buying for the Nation
50 million pounds is a lot to raise, even for a Titian. And when they succeed, they get four years to raise the purchase price for the companion piece.
The Scottish government will this week announce that it will donate about £10m, while the National Gallery in London will pledge about £12m and the National Galleries of Scotland a further £2m.Money will also come from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Until now, £11m had been publicly pledged. Another £8m is coming from private donors.
This weekend sources close to the campaign said they were confident that the £50m total would be reached before the December 31 deadline.
The Titian and its companion piece, Diana and Callisto, belong to the seventh Duke of Sutherland and form part of his Bridgewater collection, which has been on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland since 1945.
If the galleries secure Diana and Actaeon, they will have a further four years to buy the sister work.
Once saved, Diana and Actaeon, which is regarded as one of the finest Renaissance works in private hands, will be shared by the national galleries in Edinburgh and London, with each taking it for five years at a time.
(My emphases.)
That in private hands is a little odd, coupled with the on loan...since 1945. Oh, well - I'm happy the folks of Edinburgh will get to see this Titian whenever they like, though this plea seems a little over the top. The sale of a picture doesn't destroy its beauty. Was it ever likely to go off public display? I doubt it - but it would have left Edinburgh. Indeed, even now that it has been saved, it will be in London half of the time.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)
Caroline!
The Caroline! campaign has got big momentum! An anointing is in the offing! This is a great story about her trip to Central and Western New York - perhaps for the first time.
She declined any questions in Syracuse, grudgingly answered a few in Rochester, and then gave what almost felt like -- but was not -- a full-fledged news conference in Buffalo, joined by the mayor there, Byron W. Brown."I know that I'm fortunate to be in a position where people know who I am," Ms. Kennedy said. "And I want to put that to work."
. . .
"I think, in the last year I've spent a lot of time campaigning across this country in a lot of communities that are struggling with the same kind of issues," said Ms. Kennedy, who spent weeks campaigning for Mr. Obama's presidential effort. "And obviously New York State has been hit harder than most. And I saw, really, the need for people who are strong advocates and have relationships in Washington. And I would do everything I can."
Then she was asked how many times she had been to Buffalo.
"Three or four?" Ms. Kennedy said, and walked away.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM | Comments (2)
December 17, 2008
Advice for academic job candidates, II
Candidates - don't settle for portfolio services. Develop enough of a relationship with your recommenders that they at least tailor something to different types of schools. The all-purpose to whom it may concern recommendation really isn't inspiring me to want to interview you.
I am appalled by how few recommendations mention our name(s) or even that magic phrase "at a liberal arts college." Do the recommenders not care enough to use mail-merge? Admittedly, I'm only half of the way through the files and one poor distinguished named chair kinda guy has already recommended five (5) candidates to us in glowing terms, so how much worse it would be with personalization I don't know. Maybe I could make some decisions between them? Perhaps he might indicate that he thinks one of the five people (among the 45 files I've read so far) would be better here than the others?
My previous advice to candidates is here.
Further:
Well, don't say that all professors are too burdened to write individual letters - that I can't get what I want. I spent much of today (Thursday) reading folders (and more! more files being completed by late arriving items!) and came across a nice example of what I would like to have seen more of. Distinguished professor of this'n'that has written recs for 4 out of the 63 candidates I've reviewed; the most recent folder from one of that professor's students had two letters via Interfolio (both boilerplated with greatness). Then came a letter from a department person where the candidate is currently teaching; the recommender visited every class taught there (ooh - we're a teaching-centered liberal arts college, too!). Finally, one letter came from the distinguished professor of this'n'that on stationary with colored letterhead. Colored ink signature. Aimed not just at the liberal arts market as opposed to R1s, but actually mentions our name twice (second occurrence in a locally acceptable short version). Does the candidate make the cut for a conference interview? Well, I have to say that if the candidate makes the cut, it is because the candidate is answering the advertisement (see earlier advice), meets the stated criteria, AND has 2 excellent recommendations pointed to our needs, not just the needs of every active search committee on the market. By the way, the distinguished professor of this'n'that's other 3 letters? Via Interfolio. So ask - perhaps you will receive.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:33 PM | Comments (5)
Sometimes a Medievalist has to take consolation where he finds it
I am grateful that up to now none of the quadrennial articles about the Electoral College refer to the institution designed by the wise Founders to protect us from the vagaries of the People as medieval. Here's an example of archaic. I wouldn't be surprised to see a byzantine.
How do I know? Well, my google news search for medieval hasn't turned any up yet.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM | Comments (1)
December 16, 2008
Creepy lines in great movies
Why don't you get yourself a drink, or a tranquilzer, or something?
Angela Lansbury to Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 PM | Comments (2)
The Imperial Pint is safe!
An indefinite opt-out has been agreed by European MPs in Strasbourg to allow the continued use of the mile for roads, the pint for draught beer, cider and bottled milk, and the ounce for precious metals.Other items, such as fruit and vegetables, can also be sold using imperial measures, as long as traders use "dual labelling" by supplying metric units alongside traditional pounds and ounces.
The move draws a line under decades of wrangling between London and Brussels, and marks a triumph for the "metric martyrs" - food sellers and campaigners who were prosecuted by local councils for refusing to stop using imperial measures.
Steve Thoburn, a Sunderland market trader, achieved hero status in 2001 after being convicted of selling bananas by the pound without providing customers with a metric equivalent. He died suddenly three years later.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:02 PM | Comments (1)
Spamification
I checked my school email first thing this morning and then again a few minutes ago. Between 6 a.m. and 8:45 I received over 100 spam emails! About a third of them were in Cyrillic. Another third were the ones that purport to be from my own email address purporting to tell me about delivery status. Crazy!
I guess I'm noticing my junk mail more frequently because I've switched to Apple's Mail Ap and the junk folder shows me the number of unread junk mails more prominently than the campus webmail ever did, which encourages me to glance into the folder.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)
Korean treasures
Koreans get involved (there doesn't seem to be anything official about the delegation, so I don't think we should say "Korea gets involved") in asking museums to return shadily-collected objects.
A Seoul Metropolitan Council member and Buddhist monks will fly to the United States to seek to retrieve a cultural art piece that was stolen during Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945).Council member Boo Doo-wan, Ven. Hyemun, and Lee Sang-geun, secretary of the Buddhists Jogye Order, will visit the U.S. from Jan. 7 to 8 to ask the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to return a reliquary that contains relics of Buddha and other high ranking monks.
The 22.5 centimeter-high "Silver-plated Lamaist Stupa" has the shape of a Lamaist pagoda and is assumed to have been made during the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392) and kept at Hoiam Temple until it was seized by Japanese colonial authorities in 1939. The Boston Museum has allegedly bought the piece from Japan.
Here's the MFA's page for the object, the Sarira Reliquary. The text there implies that the relics are no longer inside the reliquary (past tense, "held minute relics of the Historica Buddha Shakyamuni, two other Buddhas and two eminent priests").
I'm not certain how this piece got from Korea to Japan to Boston; the MFA leaves us with the cryptic "Weld Collection, by Exchange, June 8, 1939. See Registration folder No. 57." Charles Goddard Weld bought the Fenollosa collection and loaned it to the MFA (and it eventually ended up permanently there). I have no idea why I half-knew that, but wikipedia came to the rescue. I wonder if in 1939 the MFA exchanged some nice bits of the Japanese art in the Weld collection for the Korean reliquary?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2008
Because if there's a name that screams "too pure for the grubbiness of politics," it's definitely Kennedy ...
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 PM | Comments (0)
Living in your head
Have you ever been accused of living in your head? Well, take Susan Sontag as a cautionary tale - take a bath every day as an antidote.
And yet the innumerable tiny details that preoccupy Sontag over the years, the moments when she does describe her relation to the physical world, are revealing. There are a surprising number of entries in which she resolves to bathe more frequently. "Take a bath every day," she writes over and over, which somehow one doesn't imagine reading in the journals of an adult. But bathing is difficult for her; it involves a confrontation with the physical body she finds distressing. She tells us she sometimes falls asleep in her clothes. There is something endearing in this self portrait: the arrogant command of her authorial voice somehow belied by a sweet image of the unworldly woman writer, so uncomfortable with the basic physical demands of life, so flustered by soap and water.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)
Czar Harmonization?
Mickey Kaus points out that:
We need a Czar Czar, to crack the whip on all the czars.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 AM | Comments (0)
Why does higher education cost so much?
The Chronicle of Higher Education tries to answer that important question by looking at the University of Kansas.
I'm going on hearsay, folks, because I don't subscribe and the Chronicle has a lock-down policy on content that's worse than the Wall Street Journal. Here's what Erin O'Connor's gleans:
CHE points out that in the past twenty years, Kansas has tripled its operating budget, while maintaining a steady enrollment of 26,000 students. During that time, state support has doubled--but while state funding in 1988 covered 40 percent of the operating budget, it now covers only 22 percent. Grants and contracts cover some of the difference, but not all of it. Meanwhile, tuition for in-state students has quintupled. Kansas is still very affordable, at around $7,000/year -- and is much less expensive than rival flagships. Still, the tuition rate has increased at three times the rate of inflation over the past two decades.Where is all the money going? To various things aimed broadly at enhancing student experience and so improving retention: new facilities (two science buildings, a fitness center replete with climbing wall, renovated dorms, a multicultural resource center, a performing arts center, a writing center, revamped high-tech classrooms, increased library services, IT), more professors, and more bureaucracy to administer all the new student services, to publicize them, and to study them. Energy and health care premiums also add to the total.
She also points out the thing that frightens us; is all the money making any difference?
All that aside, there is one thing that the article does not cover. With all its attention to how much money Kansas has pumped into the thesis that the spending will improve educational outcomes, no attention is paid to whether educational outcomes are any different than they were before Kansas began its spending spree.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)
December 14, 2008
Venetian and the Venetians
Here's an interesting article about the Venetian language - which begins by making it clear that 'dialect' is not really all that helpful. The article was occasioned by the publication of A Linguistic History of Venice, not yet available on Amazon!
I took the photograph back in March at the bookstore in the Rome train station, showing dictionaries for communicating between Italian-speakers and all those other people in Italy.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)
The finest private collection of Pooh-stuff hits the market soon
This is a neat story - and with a lovely illustration. That's a collecting obsession I can understand.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2008
The birthday from hell
"The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles," says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. "There's a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there."
What restaurant is the captain comparing unfavorably to a biker bar? Chuck E. Cheese!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:00 PM | Comments (2)
December 12, 2008
Hope. Change. Unicorns!
The New York Times -- which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box -- created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin's background, all the while treating Obama's Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls' bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That's a Pegasus. That's a pink unicorn. And that's a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.
It is beautiful, hunh?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 PM | Comments (0)
Order a lot of stuff from Amazon?
Live somewhere like me? Order a lot of stuff from Amazon? Amazon prime is on sale for $59 per year. Let me tell you - I got my $79 per year value out of it in the 8 months of 2008 I was in America. For instance, gift shipping. Still 2nd day delivery for free. Click. Buy. You are NOT contributing to me.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 PM | Comments (0)
You know how the presidency ages men?
Here's an example of why. Anti-smoking groups hope Obama will be role model.
Poor guy.
Oh - I'm certain serving as president will age women, too, but let's not pretend that we've had that happen yet.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:03 PM | Comments (0)
Who says all the economic news is bad news?
Madonna Skips Australia as Currency Slump Crushes Concert Talks
The Australian dollar's drop may add about A$100,000 to the average cost of a single, mid-level concert in front of 5,000 people, said Michael Chugg, founder of Sydney-based Chugg Entertainment and a 33-year industry veteran. Some promoters lost as much as A$7 million on tours they contracted when the Aussie was at 90 U.S. cents, he said.Neil Diamond, too!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:15 AM | Comments (0)
"Popular science reporting on neuro issues is very often not to be trusted."
That's Tyler Cowen's summary of a recent article on brain differences between rich and poor children. Not that there's not real brain science out there, but that we need to be careful.
Someone else (but I can't remember who) said "if you print a picture of a brain scan next to it, people will believe anything." Sounds like something from Language Log. Here's an example, but not what I was thinking of.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2008
Crime Stoppers, British style
I guess this is like advertising for most wanted NYC mobsters in Miami or Las Vegas?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)
"if you're stuck for what to slip in your favourite lover of totalitarian kitsch's Christmas stocking, then your problems have been solved."
Now here's an entry for Christmas shopping guides, "if you're stuck for what to slip in your favourite lover of totalitarian kitsch's Christmas stocking, then your problems have been solved." I found that in a review of Love me Turkmenistan, a coffee table book about the late dictator of Turkmenistan and his cult of personality.
For ordering information - and pictures! - Love me Turkmenistan.
The Amazon page is much duller.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM | Comments (1)
December 10, 2008
So is it bad that university endowments are doing so badly?
Harvard freezes faculty salaries and halts most searches. Their endowment dropped 30%.
The Bard College president has for years been telling anyone who would listen that endowment growth in higher education was irresponsible and encouraged all the wrong strategies. He has called for colleges to spend the money they raise, rather than stocking it away. With the economy crashing, and tuition-dependent colleges like Bard worried about enrollment and wishing they had larger endowments, is Botstein sticking to his views? How does higher education look to the person who warned that endowment dependence was a terrible thing?Botstein wants you to know that it's not Schadenfreude he's feeling. "I don't wish any of these institutions ill."
But to Botstein, what is happening now is proof that the endowment strategy doesn't work. "Institutions should not be banks. They are not good at it, and they are no better than anybody else. It should come as no surprise that as investing vehicles, there was a certain amount of arrogance and hubris," he said. "There was much too much time and money spent on getting richer and richer without being clear about why."
via Professor Soltan
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:39 PM | Comments (1)
Museum sponsorship dries up in London?
This is a bad sign for museum shows in the UK - the Royal Academy couldn't find corporate sponsorship for an exhibition celebrating the 500th birthday of Palladio, certainly one of the greatest of all architects. They had to ask actual architects to subsidize the show.
Lord Rogers of Riverside and Lord Foster of Thames Bank are among a group of Royal Academicians who stepped in to save the show about Andrea Palladio, the "first professional architect", which opens next month.
Their action is the first clear evidence that the financial crisis in the City is threatening cultural institutions. The bubble around contemporary art prices has already burst.
Charles Saumarez Smith, chief executive of the Royal Academy, said: "It is going to bite into corporate sponsorship because the traditional sponsors were the big City institutions."
Last month Mark Jones, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and chairman of the National Museum Directors' Conference, said that businesses were spending perceptibly less on culture, making it harder for museums to find sponsorship and costing them thousands of pounds in lost corporate entertainment revenue.
Ah - it's not just sponsorship, it's also the catering fees for letting them host corporate parties in your space. Hmm - perhaps the whole late 20th Century business model of museums - build a big atrium and fill it with folding tables instead of art - is failing?
The show should be worth seeing, though, and opens next month.
Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy will be the first London exhibition devoted to the Venetian architect in 30 years and celebrates the 500th anniversary of his birth. According to MaryAnne Stevens, the co-curator of the exhibition: "He matters because he is really the first professional architect and still one consistently revered by those contemporary architects who pay attention to the past." In the early 18th century the 3rd Earl of Burlington remodelled the Piccadilly building that now houses the Royal Academy in the "Palladian" style.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
Bow down before the power of SANTA!
via, of all places, Camille Paglia.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2008
End of year giving suggestions
I know that some of you are busy buying Christmas gifts from various crafty monks and nuns. I've ordered some stuff myself. However, if you want to just plain give some money away here at the end of the year, please consider these two excellent causes with convenient, online giving options! Would I steer you to anything unorthodox or inconvenient? No!
Vanderbilt Catholic, the Roman Catholic chaplaincy at Vanderbilt University. Vanderbilt is kind of residually Protestant, a little more like Duke than like Emory in that way. Catholics, though, are probably the largest registered denomination. Go see what they're up to and send them some money to do more!
Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia (the Nashville Dominicans). This order of excellent women is going and growing - they've set up shop in Australia recently! If you've never heard of them, try the video here.
Why are both giving opportunities in Nashville? Well, that's because I'm from Tennessee and both are hallowed for me by personal associations.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:53 PM | Comments (0)
Chicago politics at its best.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama's election as president.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:15 AM | Comments (1)
The Mayor of Boston looks hard at payment in lieu of taxes - and wants more.
The mayor of Boston wants to renegotiate and standardize the payments in lieu of taxes currently in place between non-profits and the city. The article claims that non-profits of one kind or another own 50% of the property, but are paying $32 million in taxes. Here are two paragraphs you need to read:
Combined, tax-exempt institutions give the city $32.4 million annually in payments in lieu of taxes, a drop in the bucket when compared with what the city spends on police, fire, and other services. If their properties were taxable, the institutions would be writing checks for 10 times that amount - between $350 and $400 million each year, city officials estimated yesterday.. . .
For example, Boston University contributes $4.6 million each year, the highest of any institution, while Harvard University - which owns twice as much land in Boston - pays $1.9 million. Northeastern University contributes only $30,600.
What a mess. I wish him luck.
via Inside Higher Ed
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM | Comments (1)
Big Science - a malaria vaccine?
Talk about a world-changer - a working malaria vaccine! There's still a round of trials to go, so add this to your prayer list.
Malaria kills nearly 1 million people each year and sickens about 2 million others, according to estimates from the World Health Organization. Most of the deaths are among children younger than 5 in sub-Saharan Africa, the population that the vaccine targets.. . .
In the first study, conducted in Kenya and Tanzania, 894 children ages 5 months to 17 months were inoculated either with the three-dose experimental malaria vaccine or a rabies vaccine as a control group. In the eight-month follow-up period, researchers found that children receiving RTS,S had 53% fewer diagnosed cases of malaria -- 38 episodes compared with 86 among recipients of the control rabies vaccine.
In the other study, conducted in Tanzania, the vaccine was given to 340 infants at 8, 12 and 16 weeks old, along with vaccines against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and Haemophilus influenzae B without lessening the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines. The ability to administer the vaccine as part of already established immunization programs is important for countries where health workers, clinics and roads are in such shortage that delivering a drug can be almost as challenging as developing one, researchers say.
Again, the trial was randomized and double-blinded -- considered the scientific gold standard -- with half the infants receiving the malaria vaccine and the other half receiving a hepatitis B vaccine as a control. Although it was not the main object of the study, the researchers found that infants who received the malaria vaccine had 65% fewer infections, as measured by the presence of parasite in the bloodstream, over a six-month period than those who did not, confirming the findings from an earlier, smaller study.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM | Comments (0)
December 8, 2008
The Academic Job Search - hints for the Candidate I
I'm on sabbatical, but I feel the duty to serve on one of our searches this year. I read a bunch of the completed folders this afternoon.
Candidates: please, please, read the advertisement. Apply for the job advertised. I marked a bunch of NO columns on rubrics sheets because the candidates were not applying for the job we're offering. That's different from the people whose folders you have read and reread to see which parts they do and don't seem to have; no, some people are missing the basics. Some people's folders make you wonder if they read the advertisement other than to get the mailing address.
Another quick hint - if you're going to write a single cover letter for all jobs on the market, don't mention your eagerness to teach graduate-level courses. Just say you are eager to teach. That way you'll cover both graduate institutions and places like this. Two people I've already read got the NO mark because once I read that line in the cover letter I looked for any evidence of actual interest in teaching undergraduates at a small liberal arts college and didn't find a lot. I might have read more generously at this stage if you hadn't annoyed me on page 1 of your file.
Finally, be sure to use the correct name for the institution. We're Hobart and William Smith Colleges, not Hobart Smith College. There's no need for you to learn about the complicated history of the coordinate colleges unless we hire you, but don't make the committee wonder about your reading skills. That leads to a NO on the ol' rubric sheet.
All that said, good luck! Because luck is a lot of what it takes.
Here's the second piece of advice.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)
I guess I have something to talk about with the doctor next week...
One of those signs of middle age - one of your maintenance medications gets written up as perhaps causing excessive deaths. Oh, well - my annual physical is next week. Gives me something to talk about.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM | Comments (0)
December 7, 2008
So when you were voting for change, did you think it meant light bulbs?
Light bulbs first. They're supremely important! They will save us all! Light bulbs!
And bear in mind, the linked blogger voted for change. And hope.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)
