What's everyone taking?

Through my sinus headache haze, I realize I need to figure out one more class to take next semester (if my working does indeed interfere with food class, which it freaking might). I am at a semi-loss. What are you guys signing up for, and why?

New Edward Abbey book

Postcards From Ed: Dispatches and Salvos From an American Iconoclast.

Also in this article, a quote, from a 1954 Abbey journal, about Texas: "Why pick on Texas? Because it typifies, concentrates and exaggerates most everything that is rotten in America: it's vulgar -- not only cultureless but anti-cultural; it's rich in a brazen, vulgar, graceless way; it combines the bigotry and sheer animal ignorance of the Old South with the aggressive, ruthless, bustling, dollar-crazy brutality of the Yankee East and then attempts to hide this ugliness under a facade of mock-western play clothes stolen from a way of life that was crushed by Texanism over half a century ago. The trouble with Texas: it's ugly, noisy, mean-spirited, mediocre and false."

Damn.

Didn't they see "Mean Girls"?

God, the NYT cultural reporting section really needs me. In other news, I hate Halloween, and this is part of why.

For those of us doing orals...

I'm loving Virginia...

Built to Spill

So Pete just realized he's not going to be able to go to the Built to Spill concert this Friday at Stubb's because of work. I'm still going to go and wanted to see if anyone wanted to buy the other ticket from me.

happy birthday john!

sorry for the crease in your face,
but newspapers come folded, you know?

Um, so, in conclusion, blah blah blah, thus, etc.

A very useful paper:"How To Give An Academic Talk", by Paul Edwards. I just found it on the Society for the History of Technology site. I wish I had found it before our conference (not that all of our speakers weren't Brilliant). Becky, can we have an Intellectual Community on this?

best cat

here's a photo from the statesman today of cali, the best cat from the 2006 cat fanciers' association championship.

party time

saturday night (21 october) my co-op is having a party, mostly organized by me (as part of my co-op labor (= ). you and all of your posses are invited and encouraged to attend. we'll have 2 kegs of beer (one high quality, one not-so high quality), and fun times. i'll email out more information later.

asa dispatches?

any sensational news from asa?

The immigration debate goes comic

A fun view of recent events. This would be a good resource for any classes we're teaching. Or otherwise.

A rotten Baldwin

Did you guys know about this? Click title of post. Choice bit: "Baldwin writes that 'God has called me to go and make disciples of the youth of America. That is what I am going to try to do, and if you try to stop me I am going to break your face.'" You and what army, Stevie B?

Grupo Fantasma

Anybody happen to have any of their albums?

being politically active? what's that?

so. my friend who's in the harvard english program just wrote me an email about an idea he's been kicking around with some friends/colleagues in the same, about starting a political action committee in academia focused on the idea of changing american foreign policy. he wanted me to see whether anybody in my program would be interested in being in on it.

his basic idea is to try to start a force in academia that's interested in changing american foreign policy - a group that would be unafraid of appearing lefty or crazy or whatever. he writes: "the model for this group is essentially the NRA. Forget about public opinion and focus your attention on campaigns and putting pressure on politicians directly -- if most of the country thinks you're nuts, who cares? If the general population thinks an academic political group is nuts, so what? They think we're nuts anyway. The advantage, though, is that academia is a sprawling social network that's already in place."

(he also points out that it's disgusting how the torture bill's outcome got shoved aside by all this foley stuff. which is true.)

it's all true enough. the question is, what would we do? i think it's even more interesting to think of how we, as AMS people, would understand our own responsibility to integrate our positions on foreign policy into our work. anybody interested in talking about this more?

aq

how about that latest issue of american quarterly, eh?