The Cranky Professor

Argh. Halloween Costumes.

I'm at a loss. And it's my party. I woke up from this dream in which I was about to pay $16.75 for a tightly-packed block of plastic furniture (small-scale) for a doll house. In the dream these little sofas and arm chairs and dining room table were integral to my costume, as I was explaining to some students who were buying their trick-or-treat candy in the drugstore at the same time. Of course, like all of my waking-from-a-dream-with-a-great-idea moments, it's gone. I have no clue.

Via Mrs. DC at Brainstorming I found Forbes.com has posted print-'em-and-wear-'em masks of billionaires (Bill Gates as Frankenstein is an interesting thought), CEOs (would anyone in my social set recognize Bernie Ebbers? I didn't.), and Rich Dead People (like Tolkien, who's posthumous profitability I blogged about not long ago).

I may get that needy!

Further -- I googled "cheap halloween costumes" and went with "Cereal Killer" -- systematically mutilated individual packages of breakfast cereal pinned to my shirt. Feeble, hunh?

UN Diplomats Strike Unaccustomed Blow for Freedom

At least for themselves. But then that's how diplomats seem to behave by preference.

Qur'an, Aramaic vs. Arabic -- two negative reviews

Someone has provided Mr. Bill Allison of Ideofact two negative reviews of the pseudonymous book on the language of the Qur'an -- you know, "not 72 virgins, white raisins!" I haven't had time to read them carefully, but here's the link to Ideofact.

Based on a quick skim the review by Angelika Neuwirth is quite tendentious. Ahe characterizes Luxenberg's title as "pretentious" when it is an utterly normal academic title (pretty brief for a German title, actually). She also uses the term "popularity" in a strange way. The Luxenberg book has not become "popular" -- it hasn't been translated out of German into any other language yet, after all -- but its argument has been "popularized." Perhaps this review was originally written in German. The second review, by a Francois de Blois, meets Luxenberg on the philological battlefield and leaves me, a non-Arabist, in the dust. That's what's needed -- comment and critique by professional linguists.

Both of these reviews purport (they're both internet 'reprints' - a dangerous field) to be from the Journal of Qur'anic Studies, which is produced out of the Center for Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. That would be a legitimate venue for scholarly criticism. However, their website doesn't have the contents for the 2003 issues listed.

We'll see. Bombs in academe often turn out to be duds. I still wouldn't publish my name (de Blois says that he's heard the author isn't actually a German academic but a Lebanese Christian).

Andrew Sullivan and the Weakness of Punditry

Not that we don't all do it, but Andrew Sullivan commented yesterday so far outside his usual scope of topics that we all see he didn't do the background reading. A correspondent pointed out to him that lots of people who usually defend marriage were attacking Michael Schiavo's right to have his wife starved to death even though they are married. Andrew turns this into hypocrisy.

His update today makes it even more clear that he doesn't usually keep up with the end-of-life section of Catholic ethics arguments; he simply hasn't read about Michael Schiavo's girlfriend or their child. Anyone who wants to attack Michael's seriousness of intentions about his marriage has plenty of grounds.

Andrew had better hope that gay marriage means something more than Michael's marriage means to him.

His update today makes it clear that he either hasn't noticed that the Schindlers contend (honestly -- whether correctly or not, and with professional medical support) that their daughter is treatable. He's too busy blaming "Wojtila-adherents" for unbalance.

Misleading Headlines

Pet alligator gets loose aboard airliner.

The subhead admits that the reptile didn't make it out of the cargo hold. It's a week for horror movie flashbacks, so you know where MY mind went.... Of course they also had Eccentric millionaire can't recall details of cutting up friend tonight, so you can see that CNN is in full Halloween Week setting.

It's a Battle

People criticize pro-life folks for using "dangerous" language. This little nugget shows that the fight starts with language:

"They don't want them to go to Planned Parenthood, where they'll get their full range of options. They just want them to go to crisis pregnancy centers, where women will be exposed to this weapon at taxpayer's expense." [my emphasis]

Who's the speaker? NARAL Pro-Choice America's director of government relations. What's the weapon? Ultrasound.

These are the people who changed their name from the National Abortion Rights Action League to the NARAL Pro-Choice America, after all -- they know where the battle begins. Here's a Salon.com appreciation of the branding savvy in that change (read to the last question -- a real winner).

I read this at LifeNews.com and found it via Miss Welborn.

College Admissions Gears Up

Jay Matthews in the Washington Post offers a quick preview of this month's Atlantic; colleagues keep telling me it's a must read, but I keep forgetting to buy a copy when I go the grocery store.

The Connection Between Totalitarianism and Health?

Well, no. Just a weird link between the supposed existence of universal health care in a non-American nation and support for a totalitarian government.. Go read Professor Miller on the topic. (you've got to love "whey-faced he-Dane")

I've always wondered just how good the actual health care in Cuba is -- just as I wonder how good the literacy is. Universal literacy without anything but state-approved texts to read doesn't sound like much good to me. But then I'm an historian and understand that literacy in and of itself doesn't mean much -- it's quite a recent phenomenon.

Professor Miller, for some of my readers, is proof that a good reading knowledge of Arabic and a degree from an ivy-league institution does not go hand-in-hand with disapproval for George W. Bush and all his works. I haven't linked to him lately (he pretty much took the summer off), so I don't know if everyone who comes here goes there, too.

Off-Campus Politics

This is utterly bizarre!

The Washington Post reports about an intra-trustee disagreement over a new president for Boston University after he was named publically but before he's actually appointed. Here's the Boston Globe's version -- much fuller.

This seems to be about John Silber, but it's not entirely clear. Is this a rear-guard action of Silberophiles on the board? The Globe says it appears to be a majority of the board.

Pure hearsay -- the Globe quotes "a source close to trustees" saying:

''It's like the night before the wedding, you decide you don't want to get married to that person,'' the trustee said. ''Are you better off going through with it because you made all the preparations, or are you better off saying, `Whoops, we made a mistake?' ''

Now sometime in the 1970s Rice University (my alma mater) had an unpleasantness over a new president -- but he was a professor, department head, and (I think) dean chosen from within. The dissatisfaction came from the faculty, who coopted the student body (so far as I can tell from my reading).

Does anyone else know of an incident of this type?

Electronic Voting

There's a long and detailed series of comments at Mr. Nielsen Hayden's Electrolite on electronic voting machines, relational databases, non-Luddite opposition to electronic voting -- you name it. Count me as someone who has no technical background in the area and no particular interest in "voting theory" but feels very queasy about the proposal. Perhaps you could chalk it up to growing up in the Solid South -- I have an uncle whose first election was almost short-circuited by ballot boxes being tossed into a river (this was, of course, a Democrat vs. Democrat race).

I don't want to think my preference for paper ballots is "luddite," but it's certainly a pre-rational reaction to the mention of "Microsoft Access."

Run, it's the Coppers!

Not in the sense of organized corruption, but in terms of criminality the DC police seem out of line. The comical one is the officer who crashed his Jeep into a marked police car while impaired. The others are more frightening.

The police chief is grateful that this isn't organized corruption, just a bunch of bad eggs. Others aren't so encouraged:

"Are [D.C. police] competitive for getting the very best, the very brightest and the most stable individuals? No, we're not," he said.

Patterson and Hankins said the arrests could show flaws in the department's disciplinary process, in the way it teaches stress management and in the way it recruits and screens new officers.

Yes, stress management might have prevented the officer from shooting the 16-year old in what sounds like a road rage incident.

While I was in college Rice recruited a couple of new Campus Police officers (not so fondly known as "Campos") who had somehow not made the cut with the Houston P.D. By October they had roughed up a student (admittedly one that lots of people would've enjoyed hitting, but it was an absurd and frightening overreaction) and generally given evidence of WHY they had not lasted with the Houston P.D. -- which didn't have a great reputation anyway.

Recruitment and training is always a problem when you're dealing with people who get to carry guns and tell other folks what to do. It sounds like the District isn't doing a very good job.

I don't often post the results, but here you go...

Yes, I take those quizzes -- but the results are seldom so satisfying that I post them:

Congratulations!! You're a smart sophisticated and
beautiful martini!!


What Drink Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via Miss Tushnet.

Oh Puh-lease!

The march was thought to be smaller than the mass demonstrations before and during the war.

"Thought to be?" Of course it was! The best the Baghdad Broadcasting Network can summon for the headline is "thousands," after all. If it were even close to 20K they would say "tens of thousands."

But the BBC's Jon Leyne, who was at the Washington rally, said it was probably more in tune with the mood of Americans, who are increasingly concerned at the president's policy in Iraq.

But if no one shows up, Jon, how "in tune" is it?

Big hint -- the Washington Post had already demoted the story from the top of their webpage. I went over there to look for a Parks Service estimate of crowd size and there's no story -- just an 'audio link'.

Further: This morning the New York Times says "more than 10,000." That's pretty feeble, given last year and the incredibly beautiful weather. The question becomes "what does it mean." Me, I think it shows much more general approval for how things are going than the media understands, but I would entertain "the incredibly short attention span of the young." I would not entertain "despair because Amerikkka is already a fascist police-state." They got their national media coverage, no one stopped them from marching.

Of course, scheduling the march for a weekend that had to be midterm exams at lots of colleges didn't help. I can't help but be reminded that one of the great condemnations of socialists and revolutionary Communists like the A.N.S.W.E.R. people is that central planning fails because, well, planners aren't particularly good at what they do.

Perhaps midterms are part of the fascist police state? As someone currently grading a stack of them, I would suspect that they are a conspiracy to make ME miserable. Some of my commenters will find that egocentric, but let's see you not express self-pity when confronted with 25 (not 26, because someone had a medical excuse and won't take it until Monday) bluebooks scribbled by people raised with keyboarding.

Fun Facts to Know and Tell

The top-earning dead people are a nice boy from Mississippi, a sweet depressive, and a professor of Anglo-Saxon -- Elvis, Charles Schulz, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Interesting list of runners-up, too -- Elvis outearns both dead Beatles. Dr. Atkins made it in his first year.

Read All the Way to the END

Yes, if you don't read the last paragraph you think that CNN is interviewing mere eco-alarmists -- but they're eco-alarmists who expect someone else to pay for their next research trip.

You see, there's this bird no one has ever noticed -- or perhaps, given how population biology works, just never categorized as a separate species. Since the specialists took 2 years to decide it was one the casual reader tends to suspect that it's fairly similar to some known species.

So now this previously uncategorized bird is out of house and home because of evil dam construction. Unless the bird people happen to find them elsewhere. Which happens all the time -- I grew up with the snail darter controversy.

There are lots of genuinely endangered species, but the rhetoric of their advocates doesn't always work in the endangered species' favor.

Krugman and His Opponents.

Me, I just think he's obsessive and insufferable but I'm a humanist and hadn't heard of him before he got a column in the New York Times. International finance is NOT what I read for fun. Some people have invested more time keeping track of Professor Krugman -- like Donald Luskin.

Krugman used to separate his name from Mahathir's with nothing more than a dash, as in the Krugman-Mahthir strategy (yes, economist first, third-world leader of millions second). Luskin also quotes Krugman on facilitating conspiracy theory by agreeing (queasily it sounds like, but still doing it) to appear jointly with Mahathir. Luskin asks questions about honoraria which Krugman would do well to answer, given how he felt about people who took money from Enron (other than himself).

Oh, well -- some people think this is just Republicanism-in-crankiness. But then Professor Krugman proves that calling peoples' motives into question is a bipartisan game.

Updates for the Next Edition

The Black Book of Communism will have some supplemental material from North Korea for its next edition.

Mmmmmm, Macintosh Supercomputer Makes the NYT

The New York Times takes note of the Virginia Tech project. Students were paid in pizzas for labor, technicians with football tickets. When you have a small budget," said Srinidhi Varadarajan, a leader of the project, "you have to take risks."

Here's the VaTech page. It has pictures!

Macistas have been reading about this for a while, but it's nice to see it in a non-tech outlet like the Times.

Theater to Kill For

All sentences that seem true should be questioned.

Law Professor Makes Analogy -- the Wrong One?

The Yale law faculty sueing Donald Rumsfeld (and is it really personal, or is it the DoD?) say he's trying to "draft [them] in their war against gays and lesbians."

Surely it would be more accurate to say the federal government is trying to blackmail them by withholding about $300 million in research funding if military recruiters don't have access to career placement offices?

Of course, this tactic is one of the typical federal tactics used against states -- like withholding funding unless speed limits were lowered or drinking ages were raised.

Now if the federal government was withholding funding unless a certain percentage of Yale students actually entered the military, that would be a draft.

Professional Jealousy

Man who went over Falls twice says stunt "cheapens the legend." I think all people who go over Niagara Falls are nuts and leave it at that.

Muslims Heed Mahathir's Counsel, Embrace Technology

1-800-DIAL-A-FATWA. That's how a sophisticated 1400 year old relgio-legal tradition should operate. For some reason the link to the Toronto Star isn't cutting and pasting politely. Go there via Ms. Shaidle, who won't mind the pass-through hits.

How to Kill an iPod -- as Opposed to Marketing Your Own Second Rate Personal Music File Player on a WMA Format

Unlike all those silly manufacturers, Brian Tiemann has found how to kill an iPod. Someone with cash go buy him a new one! Mmmmm, with a dock. And the ability to use peripheral devices.

iPod Killers? Oh, no!

What's his name at Gizmodo carefully rations his use of the phrase "iPod Killer" as a headline to once a month.

October, 2003
September, 2003
August, 2003

Oh, well -- so long as he keeps expectations low maybe no one will call him on them.

More Zero Tolerance. Or Maybe Tolerance 22?

You offer a gun safety course, tell students to bring their guns, then tell them they can't because of zero-thinking.

Via Psychometrician Swygert.

Survivor?

If I thought people knew I was responsible for Destiny's Child's (where DO the apostrophes go in that?) Survivor I would be afraid of being stoned by club-goers, not demanding $200 million. But maybe that says more about dancing in public in 2001-02 in Syracuse, NY, than it does about the rest of the world.

Fulbrights for Iraqis.

I wonder if the Fullbright interviewers in Iraq will survive the process, unlike the ones on the West Bank last week?

Private schools up 5.7%, public schools up 9.8%

Tuition is up -- big surprise.

Prepaid tuition plans are in trouble and suspending new entrants -- ooh, you mean you can't trust state government? You mean state government didn't have any means of financing this promise other than the market either?

The financing of "higher education" in America is a great mystery. Me, I keep thinking that something parallel to the Dissolution of the Monasteries is coming -- too much of what we offer is the intellectual equivalent of perpetual chantries, I fear.

(On the other hand, the good news for my particular self-interest is that the second listed contributing factor (after dropping state appropriations) is rising faculty compensation. But then that's what people with benefices thought, too.)

Pitiful.

To paraphrase Paul Krugman, Islamic anti-semitism is a response to George Bush.

He finds only 28 words of it "offensive".

Further -- Pace the comments below (and Dick -- how long does it take to set up an email account?) it's the obsessive-compulsive pattern in Professor Krugman's writing that worries me. (By the way, read about his persecution complex?)

Prof. Krugman leaps from something he knows a lot about -- the Asian crisis of the 90s and Mahathir's reaction (though he sharply understates the antisemitism of that response -- google Mahathir and Soros and look) to domestic politics. Along the way we realize that Krugman is a Mahathir appeaser who suggests that Mahathir doesn't really mean all this -- it's just domestic politics.

When times are tough, Mr. Mahathir also throws the Muslim majority rhetorical red meat.

And that's what he was doing last week.

No. What he was doing last week was lashing out against "the Jews." Just as he lashed out against George Soros as having the same effect as terrorism. I suppose Dr. Mahathir is all in favor of Muslim currency speculators.

Interesting that Prof. Krugman is all for Mahathir pandering to local politics given what he thinks of Republican politics in America.

And even further:
More concisely than I could put it, David Adesnik on Oxblog asks:

WHOSE FAULT IS ANTI-SEMITISM? I dunno. But I figure it's got to be either the anti-Semites themselves, or George W. Bush.

The second link shouldn't surprised you if you've read this far. The first link is worth reading, too.

What CBS Thinks of Parents, Teachers, the Government, and Homeschooling

Did you read about that unfair and unbalanced CBS report on the abused homeschoolers? Mr. Michael Lopez explicates the key statements that reveal the world view behind the bias:

But it's hard to know how widespread abuse might be because the government doesn't keep track. It doesn't even know how many children are taught at home in this country.

In eight states, parents don't have to tell anyone they're home schooling. Unlike teachers, in 38 states and the District of Columbia, parents need virtually no qualifications to home school. Not one state requires criminal background checks to see if parents have abuse convictions.

Go read it -- his comments are most apt.

Omigosh - I am old in pop culture terms

People I think of as being about my parents age or YOUNGER are playing T.V. grandparents -- James Garner (about) and Suzanne Pleshette (younger).

Coals to Newcastle

Linking to Professor Reynolds. This entry on Josh Marshall's peevish media-mindedness is important, though.

Marshall says "CNN was in full grovel mode." Professor Reynolds replies:

It's revealing, isn't it, that by the professional standards of American journalism, groveling to Saddam was widespread and seen as barely worth reporting, while even the possibility that someone might write something favorable about the United States is seen as an appalling breach of accepted practices.

But the reporting has been bad, and it has been biased.

I think the CNN revelations have undercut what little credibility foreign affairs reporters still carried. Why should we believe anything they say anymore without criticizing* the message and the messenger? Anything?

*I mean 'criticizing' in the academic sense, though the vulgar sense is far too often appropriate, as in "you sanctimonious bozo, why didn't you tell us what you knew about Saddam?"

Big Mama & Big Daddy Are Watching -- via your cellphone

Well, they haven't decided to DO it yet, but Nokia is willing to enable parental nosiness.

Even If He IS Pro-Palestinian He's ALSO an Anti-Semite

Dr. Mahathir Mohamad spoke in English - a language he understands well. I read it. I saw that the thrust of his his speech was not lifting Muslims up but fighting an enemy. These were not passing analogies -- they were the burden of the speech.

Too bad he's what passes for a moderate Muslim leader. Here's the backpedalling.

Here's the one statement in the speech which could be used to say that he's anti-Israel, not anti-Jew. However, it is the only time he creates two groups -- all the other references ARE to Jews:

We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well disposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. 

It's not enough for me. I've moved him from the "moderate" to the "oh, dear, maybe we can't work with Islamic leaders after all" column. Sorry. Just because he suppresses Islamist organizations in his own country (after all, he's been in office for 22 years and doesn't seem to want that to change violently) doesn't make him a moderate.

And Some People Think I'm a Pessimist?

Professor Krugman recycles his depression -- at least in titles:

Hey, don't let Krugman get to you. Liberals claim that the so-called "neo-cons" have been plotting the invasion of Iraq for years. Well, Krugman's been forecasting the imminent demise of the U.S. economy for even longer. Two — count 'em, two — of his books in the early 1990s (this one and this one) had the phrase "The Age of Diminished Expectations" in their titles. And when the boom of the late 1990s proved him wrong, he had the gall to write a book called The Return of Depression Economics. Last April Krugman was predicting that SARS would cause a global depression. A year earlier he was predicting a "third oil crisis." If it's not one crisis it's another.

Dr. K puts the "dismal" back in the Dismal Science for me.

Can't Win for Losing.

Read Michelle Malkin on the New York Times' understanding of conservatives of color winning elections in the South. Hint -- they don't get it. I especially like "almost freakishly impressive resume."

Omigosh. Shareware. For me!!

Danger! OSX users and book buyers beware! Days of procrastination ahead!

Books is OSX shareware for me -- you can input the ISBN or ASIN number for any book and let Amazon.com fill in most of the data (including cover art -- which is wonderful but annoying if the Amazon image is not the one of the edition in hand). Then you can make all sorts of personal notes.

I went to the My Account section on Amazon and told it to give me the info on everything I've ever ordered (which looks to go back about 12 months). That was a quick 48 books (the ones that were for me, as opposed to gift books -- and remember that I spent 5 months away from the office in the last year) added to the system.

This is a much smoother piece of work than any of the database type things I've done for myself (I've tried at least twice) or anything else I've ever downloaded.

I found it on MacShareware.net and I forget where I came across that.

Pitiful, but True

Executives who need tech tutoring on the sly.

We all know these people in every walk of life. At FAR too many places they make actual decisions about tech policy for the rest of us!

Get Fit!

The solution to America's obesity problems!

Via the irreplaceable Miss Kathy Shaidle, from whom religion news is more common than workout tips.

Do You Ever Get That "I'm in the wrong line of work" Feeling?

People invent copy protection program -- get money from investors.
Grad student points out that holding down the shift key while loading the CD will defeat "protection."
People threaten suit.

Now I am capable of inventing copy protection schemes almost as good as that. Can I get $10 million in market capitalization to lose when the first grad student comes along?

Probably not. Life isn't fair, so I'll go on showing slides instead of asking investors for millions of dollars.

Mark Steyn.

It's hard to say what part of this is the funniest. There are the googleized place-of-birth-mass-murderer jokes (I'm especially fond of "That would be the Judy Woodruff who, like 1970s serial killer Lendell Hunter, is a native of Augusta, Ga." But then there's this:

At Thursday's Democratic Presidential debate, Jeff Greenfield asked the candidates why it was that only 34 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats -- the lowest number since before the New Deal. ''You're looking at the glass as half-empty, I look at it as half-full,'' said former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, demonstrating the command of basic math that has made the federal budget what it is. The Democratic glass isn't half-empty, it's two-thirds empty.

And then there's this lovely paragraph on the difference between an Argument and Personality:

Let us take the Davis/Bustamante campaigns at face value: The Republicans said it was all about business and taxes and growth; the Dems said it was about whether Arnie was a Nazi sex fiend. OK, let's take that as seriously as Katie Couric and the rest of the gang did. Every day I get a gazillion e-mails screaming ''BUSH IS A NAZI!!!!'' Also Cheney, Rumsfeld, even yours truly: We're all Nazis. In California, an accident of birth gave the Democrats the opportunity to run with the Nazi hysteria literally. It flopped spectacularly.

Who knows -- maybe the Party of the Really Unpleasant Opposition will learn and there'll be a race in 2004. I don't think GWB is unbeatable -- but the professional party operatives on parade in California aren't the ones to do it.

Two New Homeschoolers.

Yep. Expelled for albuterol (a substance I'm using 4 times a day now and woulld be happy to share with any gasping student).

How is this going to change his college admissions chances? Well, since they didn't prosecute there's no felony conviction and he'll have a great essay topic on "the event that has changed me the most".

Principals and Superintendants -- where DO they find these people?

They're going to lose. This sort of thing has been litigated before. Don't they always lose?

Meanwhile they send students the message that public officials can't tell the difference between a hijab and gang paraphernalia*, between dangerous illegal drugs and albuterol.

These zero-tolerance policies show me exactly why rejecting government schooling is the answer -- don't trust your children to these bozos. They do this stuff over and over and over and over again. To use another mantra of the drug wars, "Just say no."

Here's some commentary on Education Week that captures the reason for my disgust. The authors give 3 reasonably useful points about the problem of challenging codes in courts -- we can sum them up by saying "they teach children to challenge authority over what are frequently trivial matters." Then there's this:

We believe that students and schools would be best served if the courts would adopt this simple policy toward school dress and grooming disputes. In the spirit of Tinker, courts should recognize students' constitutional right to express themselves on religious, political, and social issues while at school, so long as the speech is civil and nondisruptive. On those rare occasions when a dress code impinges on an important right of free expression (religious garb, for example), then the courts should intervene.

Well, no, actually. School officials should recognize students' constitutional right to express themselves on religious, political and social issues at school so long as the speech is civil and nondisruptive. The issues shouldn't have to get to courts because people in positions of authority should have both sense; if they don't have sense they should have a little brochure called Why Going to Court Over Your Dress Code Will Waste Taxpayers' Money. Actually, that's not a bad idea. A slim volume called Lawsuits You Will Not Win, the perfect Christmas gift for school administrators everywhere.

Here's your Volokh-a-rama link to explain it to them.

Update -- Professor Volokh has spoken to the specifics -- and, indeed, they will lose. And it's not even a matter of federal, but state statute. Bozos.

Ever have trouble spelling paraphernalia? I do. It's that -pher-. Not intuitive without the etymology: parapherna <-- para (Greek, "beyond") + pherne (Greek, "dowry") -- a woman's possessions above and beyond her dowry. Her stuff. Paraphernalia.

Interesting Diversity

I'm sure what I find most interesting about this Washington Post story -- the word "diversity" doesn't occur.

Chapel Hill has decided to do something about college costs for the poor:

Students from families with incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level -- or about $28,000 for a family of four -- will be eligible for the program. University officials said about 8 percent of the next freshman class, or about 300 students, may benefit. In the past, federal and financial aid programs have covered about 60 percent of these students' costs.

There will be work-study employment involved, but capped at 12 hours per week.

Real diversity in American education -- even in the South -- will be much better served by income-based testing rather than race. The Post doesn't seem to understand that.

Alterna-Barbie -- Razanne, Your Veil-Wearing Doll

Whether you believe that Barbie is a Zionist Conspiracy or that she's just a bad role model for your little girl, now the veil-wearing Razanne is available.

They have the full ideology of the veil available (this model sold separately):

Lest people think that she's all about praying, there's In-Out Razanne, whose wardrobe also includes a short, flowery dress she can wear inside the home, in view only of men in her family.

Contingency and Final Principals

In the comments below Academy Girl asks:

Dear Cranky:

You wrote: "Yes, people, I have been co-opted. Bought. Signed, sealed, and delivered.

Here at These Colleges we're doing "position requests" -- telling a faculty committee and the administration who we need to hire adjunctly to teach next year.

These people, of course, are paid considerably less than I am to teach courses that I am unwilling to teach -- like the second semester survey of Art History."

I'd quote the rest of your blog entry, but it basically just reads as "me, me, me, me, me, me, me."

Aw, shucks. You'll admit it; you're co-opted. I wonder if that will bother you the next time you deposit your paycheck? Or will you just tell yourself let the adjuncts eat cake?

What would make you speak up for the adjuncts instead?

Academy Girl

I might as well respond here.

"Dunno, A.G. - maybe a tenure track job? I'm still on two-year-at-a-time contracts myself. But that's enough about me -- what do YOU think about me?"

At these Colleges some contingent faculty are actually treated reasonably well -- anyone teaching more than a half-load (3 courses a year -- full load is 5) gets full benefits. I'm one of the lucky contingent faculty who tenure track faculty are always mistaking for someone who is eligible for leave.

Of course this system encourages us to employ people for 2 courses a year -- that way we only pay them per course -- while still allowing the permanent faculty to congratulate themselves for exploiting less than some schools they've heard of. And yes, the institution is gradually converting positions like the one which I have (which has been filled by someone full-time but contingent for at least the past 16 years) to tenure track. They recognize those positions as structurally part of the curriculum, which is progress toward maintaining the current system.

You see, I agreed with much of Academy Girl's indictment of the academy (though she uses the f-word and refers to the "dark ages" in a way that lets me know that nameless or not she's no blogging medievalist). But rather than endorsing change she proposes the expansion of the current system. She writes in Contingent Faculty Organizing:

However, contingent faculty members have to be courageous and strong -- alone and in numbers -- so that they can garner the status they deserve in our universities and colleges -- permanent status. And I don't mean permanent status, as in "permanently contingent," which is what we have now. I mean PERMANENT STATUS.

What's going to happen is NOT permanent status for the contingent, but the end of tenure for the permanent. I agree that the contingent should organize and organize separately from the permanent for all the reasons she gives; one more reason is that in 20 years no one is going to have a contract leading to life tenure.

The best thing I see coming is term-contracts. Which is what I have. There may be longer term contracts (I'm on 2 year contracts) and without tenure maybe the 6-years-and-out guidelines of the A.A.U.P. can go away

For a different -- though hard to call more optimistic or pessimistic -- take on university reform see Professor Timothy Burke on Sexton and Fish. President Sexton at NYU has made a kind of proposal for a "teaching track." Dean Fish at the University of Illinois at Chicago uses what Prof. Burke characterizes as the hostage-taking approach to negotiating with his state legislature to preserve the status quo.

Why Am I Not Blogging? Existential Guilt.

Yes, people, I have been co-opted. Bought. Signed, sealed, and delivered.

Here at These Colleges we're doing "position requests" -- telling a faculty committee and the administration who we need to hire adjunctly to teach next year.

These people, of course, are paid considerably less than I am to teach courses that I am unwilling to teach -- like the second semester survey of Art History.

Of course I can take refuge in the fact that I'm a Republican exploiter of the academic underclass rather than a hypocritical Democrat exploiter of the academic underclass, but it still doesn't make me feel any less troubled.

I thought about doing a roundup post last week on the "conservatives/Republicans in academe" theme but that didn't seem very interesting. Honestly -- who can deny with a straight face that the professoriate is more Democrat than it is even white or male? There's lots of nuance beyond that simple admission, though. Go to the Volokh Conspiracy for the generally libertarian take on it. Go read Professor Timothy Burke for lots of extremely intelligent thought -- though come to think of it his contributions on the subject were in comments on Crooked Timber.

I'm not going to bother other than to say that I've never been discriminated against because of my politics, but then I teach medieval art (now that I no longer teach 19th and 20th century art on a by-the-course basis, which I did for years). No one cares much about my politics.

On the other hand, there are certainly graduate schools where my preference for teaching about things rather than theories would prevent me from ever getting tenure. Luckily I work here, not at one of those places. See Big Arm Woman for a discussion of theory over content. She did it. I did it. I prefer what I do now. Not that there's not value in theory, but there's lots and lots of value in content.

Would I send a conservative to graduate school? Babycakes, I wouldn't send an out lesbian lineal descendant of Karl Marx (but still a visible person-of-color) to graduate school in the humanities -- it's a mug's game. I like it, but I wouldn't encourage anyone else to try.

This is not pulling up the ladder after I've gotten in the tower. I assure you that I'm still clinging to the windowsill -- the Tenure Track contract doesn't start until July, 2004.

A Return to Blogging

Mr. Douglas Turnbull of The Beauty of Gray has returned to blogging: Elias Canetti, NCAA pay-for-play, Wesley Clark speculations -- what more can you want?