"Discrimination Complaint Argues That the U. of Texas at Austin Considers Race Unnecessarily"

From the Chronicle today:

"A new civil-rights complaint filed with a federal agency alleges that the "Texas 10-percent plan" has been so effective in bringing about diversity at the University of Texas at Austin that the university does not have any legal justification for considering applicants' race or ethnicity."

My Rejected McSweeney's List

This oh-so nearly got in... rats.


Titles of films that might be adapted to spice up a series of biopics of
one-term presidents

Coolidge Runnings
Die Harding
Bush Hour
Happy Fillmore
Hayes of Thunder
Van Buren: Party Liaison
Get Carter
Arthur!

fight terrorism on the back of your car

CIA student records

there is info in the CIA classified documents released in the past couple of days about radical student groups. one of the "security advisors" who requested that the CIA study student unrest was named walt rostow and later taught at UT. was he the husband of elspeth? here's the chronicle article.

mountaintop removal in appalachia

this is an older article from grist/orion, but it does one of the best jobs i've seen of explaining the issue that has been pretty much consuming my thoughts for the past couple of days.

new library catalog

What are other people's thoughts on the new UT library catalog online search format?

My initial reaction is that it has too many fancy features which make it unnecessarily clunky, and I don't really need to see pictures of book covers, as I don't need my library catalog to feel like Amazon.

Is it weird...

that I'm so into this concept? It's a book about how long it would take the earth to undo humanity's work, if humanity suddenly disappeared...

About Time

The NYTimes has a great piece of news about a number of small liberal arts colleges dropping out of the U.S. News World and Report ranking system. While I'm bummed my alma mater is not one of the colleges, I think it's about time these schools fought against the Reports quantitative rankings. I'll admit that I, as a middle class suburban high schooler, totally bought into this, but now as an adult I have to wonder why people would trust a subpar publication to guide this important and oftentimes very expensive decision.

Grrrrr

So, just another reminder on top of Danny's reminder - save your work. Save it on webpages and save it frequently. My laptop just crashed for the second time in two months for no apparent reason. A pox on HP. I'm breaking down and getting an apple. Please tell me I'll have better luck.

Operation First Casualty

My friend's doing a documentary on Iraq Veterans against the War. This is a short rough cut showing some street theatre they did in NYC.

Ransom's man

Long-ass article in the NYer about the head of the Ransom Center.

ROWE

I was perusing the NYTimes this morning and started reading an article about procrastination ( a meta-procrastination if you will). And the article mentioned Best Buy's new corporate philosophy Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), which you can more about here.
It got me thinking about this push in our department to get through our work faster. From reading the description academia is a natural ROWE model; work at your own pace,work when you feel like it, work where you're comfortable. However, our department is trying to put these seemingly artificial time frames on our work, without any additional support. Of course there are required deadlines at a corporation, but it seems to me that in a field where you can have almost total autonomous freedom (at least while you're a student) we should embrace that.
I don't know I just got up and I'm not even through my first cup of coffee, so this could be nonsense. I just think the process of higher education is totally fascinating.

10% here to stay

This, from the Chronicle today, will affect us greatly in the future...

Back up your work

This is a pathetic reminder to back up your hard drives. My hard drive just died on Friday for no good reason and I lost 6 months worth of orals notes and pictures.

Follow-up on Marvin's drug post

Remember "Drug Makers Paying Doctors"? Here's an article by the mother of a man in Minnesota who was mis-prescribed an antipsychotic by one of these doctors on the take...

What wall is this?

The Chronicle has an interesting article today about American high schoolers' knowledge of US history. They are supposedly testing better, but the article makes it clear that the level of testing is so low anyway that "testing better" means only that they have more facts, not that they are better able to display any independent thought, or ability to synthesize, or anything that we grade them for at the college level.

But even given these lower standards, their fact-level knowledge still isn't that great. Excerpt from the article:

In one of the most alarming examples, Ms. Kozbial-Hess said, the eighth- and 12th-grade tests showed students a photograph of a wall being torn down, labeled "Berlin 1989." The students were asked what event was depicted and what influence it had on U.S. foreign policy, she said.

"More than half of eighth graders and almost one-third of 12th graders did not even give a partially correct answer that this photo showed the fall of the Berlin Wall, despite the strong clue," Ms. Kozbial-Hess said.

"Only 1 percent of eighth graders and 12 percent of 12th graders gave an appropriate or complete response that identified the event and also mentioned the impact of the end of the Cold War," she said.

Given the name of this blog...

I figure someone should say something about Jerry Falwell and how he managed to extend Sacvan Bercovitch's thesis into the 21st century. I can't think of anyone who mastered the jeremiad in my lifetime better than Falwell. Remember that hs said that 9/11 happened because the US is to secular with its gays and other sinners.

I also can't think of anyone else whose death I've been happy about. What a prick. Anyway, most of you will recognize this ad as the one Falwell took Larry Flynt to court for (it made it to the Supreme Court and Flynt won), claiming that Falwell lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

Long live free speech!

How/why did our culture forget about St. Augustine?

Anyone who half paid attention to the news last week and the week before would've gotten the distinct impression that Jamestown was the first permanent settlement in the US. Wtff? Was this another way of erasing the Spanish influence on our culture? Is it related to the way we are encouraged to mispronounce Spanish names around here (San Jacinto, Manchaca, Guadalupe, Pedernales)? Here's an article about St. Augustine's reaction. It makes the excellent point that Jamestown wasn't even permanent. It stopped being a town in the mid-18th century while St. Augustine has continued to survive since it was founded in 1565.

Worth Checking Out

Friday night we went to see Buttercup, a band from San Antonio who come up to Austin pretty frequently to play free to cheap shows. They are really awesome and (I know Lisa's going to be pissed at me for saying this) Buttercup's free show blew Bright Eyes out of the water. I don't know if it was that the acoustics in Bass Hall weren't suited for a band who decided to turn all their levels up way too high or if it just wasn't my scene.

Anyways, go check out Buttercup if you have a chance this summer. Here's there website where you can check out there tunes: http://buttercult.com/

Totally entertaining fun band.

The future of American Studies

I've never actualy heard anyone referring to pop as "coke". But interesting nonetheless. I think my dissertation will be on the great "bag" vs. "sack" controversy that so divided central Illinoisans from Chicagoans when I grew up.

Anyway, check it out.

Would you eat one? I sure would.

Kool-aid pickles. F'in awesome.

Tidal waves and forks

Interesting article on Salon by a business owner whose company was wrecked by outsourcing. He's not mad about it, just rueful. It's rare that you get this kind of honest fly-on-the-wall account of the inside of the end of a medium-size business...

UT Press Book Sale

I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to the UT Press Book Sale. If you're like me, you just delete most of those official-looking event announcements from UT, but, the book sale is freaking awesome.

The film books are usually a pretty good assortment, and some of the cooking, birdwatching, art and photography things are good to have on hand for gifts. I'm sure the gardening and whatnot are fine, but that's not really something I'm hip to.

The University of Texas Press invites you to our 31st annual book sale! Come take advantage of terrific savings on new and classic books in many subject areas, including Texas history, gardening, cooking, birdwatching, children's books, art and photography, film, multicultural studies, and so much more. Purchases must be made in person during sale hours.

ALL NEW BOOKS 50% OFF!
MOST OTHER BOOKS DISCOUNTED 60-90%
HUGE SELECTION of "NEW" $3.00 and $5.00 BOOKS. No "hurt" or "used" books in this sale.
Sign up to win $500 worth of free books.
Free bonus book for each $50 of your purchase.
Free parking & wheelchair access.
Cash, Checks, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express accepted.

Friday, May 11--10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday, May 12--10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Rain or shine, under the tent at the Printing and Press Building located at the intersection of the northbound I-35 access road and Manor Road (north of Disch-Falk baseball field). For a map, visit our website at www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/booksale.html

Copyright your own number

I encourage all of you, in the wake of the AACS encryption scandal, to try to protect your very own 128-bit number.

Here's the background in a nutshell according to boingboing:

"Last week, the AACS consortium made history by issuing legal threats against the 1.8 million web-pages (and counting) that mentioned its secret code for preventing HD-DVD discs from being copied.

In effect, AACS-LA (the AACS Licensing Authority) claimed that it owned a randomly chosen 128-bit number, and that anyone who possessed or transmitted that number was breaking the law. Moreover, it claimed to own millions more random numbers -- claimed that the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalises telling people how to break anti-copying software, gave it exclusive dominion over its many keys"

The new labels

I couldn't stop. I blame the polar bear paper directly, and Knut indirectly. Feel free not to use them if you hate them.

Laptops in high school

NYT writes today that a lot of high schools who started techoptimistically giving a laptop to each of their students have decided to take them back, because the one-to-one student-laptop ratio doesn't seem to be doing any good for education. The lede of the article:

"The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did). Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers."

Interesting, vis a vis all of the arguments for and against letting undergrads have laptops in lecture so that they can google "Duke Lacrosse T-shirts" instead of taking notes. I, for one, still think somebody should invent the lecture hall wireless-blocker device and make a mint.

Loyalty Day

I can't take the credit for digging this up, but yes, May 1 is officially "Loyalty Day" in the United States. Have you taken your oath yet?

Update: Stupid Safari with no HTML link function! Click on the title of the post to see the link...

Tony Snow's job

Lately Bill Moyers and every other decent fringe and sometimes non-fringe journalist is blaming the media in large part for not asking the necessary questions leading up to the Iraq war. And for the past year or so, I've found the mainstream press to be far more adequate at their jobs than they were 5 years ago. Even the Daily Texan is getting some good stories. Which is why it's hard for me to ignore the possibility that all of this scares the hell out of the administration, and in a last ditch effort to get the press corps to toss them softballs, Dick Cheney has given Tony Snow cancer so everyone feels bad for him. Come on, these are the people that got a guy with no more credentials than your average male escort (Jeff Gannon, who asked "how are you going to work with these people [dems] who are so divorced from reality?") to gently blow the president in front of everyone. And we all know how Bush warms up to the press corps with his nicknames ("slim," "stretch," "blind guy," etc.). They even made Helen Thomas sit in the back and refused to call on her for awhile. So is it so far out to suspect them of giving Tony Snow cancer?

save the patriarchy

I don't even know what to do with this article, which argues that in order to reverse American demographic decline, we MUST reinstate patriarchy. Did I fall asleep and get time-traveled back to 1904, or something? Is the ghost of TR bending over me, tickling me with his bushy spectral moustache?

Excerpt: "Without implying any endorsement for the strategy, one must observe that a society that presents women with essentially three options -- be a nun, be a prostitute, or marry a man and bear children -- has stumbled upon a highly effective way to reduce the risk of demographic decline."

save the humans

The Rapture of the Bees

Check out this disturbing and fascinating article in the Times about disappearing bee colonies around the world.

Goodnight Mr. Halberstam

David Halberstam, who became famous for his coverage of the Vietnam War and won the Pulitzer Prize, died in a car crash at the age of 73. Sad.

Apparently, my contributions to this blog are quickly becoming this week in death.

boil

More photos coming...

Bill Goetzmann, Ismail Ax and Virginia Tech...

"In one [theory], tied to James Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Prairie," Ishmael Bush is known as an outcast and outlawed warrior, according to an essay written in 1969 by William H. Goetzmann, a University of Texas History professor. In Cooper's book, "Bush carries the prime symbol of evil - the spoiler's axe," the professor wrote."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/ismail-ax-sparks-web-frenzy/2007/04/18/1176696889800.html?s_cid=rss_age

Ones to Watch

The YCT released the new edition of the Professor Watch List. Fascinating document.

The Professor Watch List is designed to be a resource to the student body of the University of Texas. This report includes professors who push an ideological viewpoint on their students through oftentimes subtle but sometimes abrasive methods of indoctrination.
This List does not target professors for their opinions in or out of the classroom, and professors are not judged by their politics alone. What is considered is whether the professor respects and strives for intellectual honesty in his or her classroom through presenting a fair and balanced delivery of information that is not crafted to produce a certain mindset within the receiving student. Classroom presentation, instructor attitude and reading material are among applicable measurements of this standard.
Additionally, some professors will be listed on our Honor Roll. These professors embody an intellectually honest classroom or teach a subject we feel is important to higher education but is oftentimes downplayed, shunned or forgotten about by largely liberal campuses.
YCT does not advocate retaliation against listed professors, nor do we demand they change their teaching style. YCT members have made every effort to produce a non-partisan list.

Apparently, no one from AMS made the cut. Also, the population of the list makes me think that perhaps all members of YCT have chosen government, economics or similar for their course of study.

One of my favorite poems

of which Carly's post reminded me...

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!

- Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut dead at 84

I read in an introduction he'd written to one of his novels about how once someone had asked him what he was doing while he was smoking in a bar. He'd said he was committing suicide by cigarette, and decided to quit smoking. For some reason, I keep thinking about that story, hearing about his death. I guess he decided he might as well live. 84 years is a long road to wander.

public transportation hip hop

as if everyone needed another reason to love portland.... their public transit system (tri-met) now has its own (fairly long) hip hop song...

Invisi-bandages!

Not only is the above video a relatively high-production-values commercial parody, it's a good companion to Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."

Uncle Ben's Return

The ASFS listserv has been kicking around this "Uncle Ben" thread for a couple of days, and when I finally followed it to the bottom and read the Stuart Elliot NYT article about Uncle Ben's new marketing campaign, I was mindblown. I am fascinated by the thought processes behind decisions like these. My only explanation is that there must have been some very powerful person at the top of the food chain who had this idea, or liked it, and who (whom?) nobody else wanted to offend. Here, read.

Jerry Herron, American Studies Professor, on MySpace ban at Catholic school...

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703220463

Didactic Cartoon Animals

A great article/slideshow from Slate about ways that cartoon animals have been used to teach children. It contains the original "Duck and Cover" video which gets better every viewing.

heavy metal mind

The results of a study of more than 1,000 of the brightest five per cent of young people will come as relief to parents whose offspring, usually long-haired, are devotees of Iron Maiden, AC/DC and their musical descendants.

Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent "metalheads" are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders.

Stuart Cadwallader, a psychologist at the University of Warwick, has found that socially awkward intelligent kids sometimes listen to heavy metal, which is "a comfort to the bright child." Read more about this breaking discovery here.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but why is it remotely surprising that teenaged geeks like heavy metal? Next, someone will demonstrate that sometimes intelligent, socially awkward kids enjoy playing video games on the internets, or prove a link between being teenaged and being angsty.

X-posted from Sparklebliss.

Drug Makers Paying Doctors...To Talk

Just some highlights from a NYT article about new laws (in some states) requiring "drug makers to disclose payments to doctors." Enjoy (linked above).

"More than 250 Minnesota psychiatrists together earned $6.7 million in drug company money — more than any other specialty. Seven of the last eight presidents of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society have served as consultants to drug makers, according to the Times examination."

"Dr. George Realmuto, a psychiatrist from the University of Minnesota, said most of the marketing associated with his lectures was packaged around his talks.
“It’s at a wonderful restaurant, the atmosphere is very conducive to a positive attitude toward the drug, and everyone is having a good time,” said Dr. Realmuto, who compared the experience to that of buying a car in a glitzy showroom. He earned at least $20,000 between 2002 and 2004 from drug makers."

“The vast majority of the time that we did any sort of paid relationship with a physician, they increased the use of our drug,” said Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a former sales representative for Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson who left the industry in 2002. “I hate to say it out loud, but it all comes down to ways to manipulate the doctors.”

“You’re making him money in several ways,” said Gene Carbona, who left Merck as a regional sales manager in 2001. “You’re paying him for the talk. You’re increasing his referral base so he’s getting more patients. And you’re helping to develop his name. The hope in all this is that a silent quid quo pro is created. I’ve done so much for you, the only thing I need from you is that you write more of my products.”

"A 2002 survey found that more than 80 percent of the doctors on panels that write clinical practice guidelines had financial ties to drug makers."

Hometown Baghdad

This is a web video series, a kind of reality tv/documentary thing that follows three twentysomethings in Baghdad. They're relying on Web distribution to get the word out (they're on Salon, too), and want as many people to see/link to it as possible...The link is to their homepage, where you can see two more clips.

Anti-academic writers

An interesting article in Salon about books by writers who hate academics (particularly, those in English departments). The author is an academic, and makes some good points. Here's one:

"But I still don't understand, frankly, why people hate literary scholars for having a professional vocabulary while remaining perfectly content with economists' using "devaluation" or philosophers' using "existentialist," or physicists' talking about a "projective Hilbert space endowed with the Fubini-Study metric." These days even Tucker Carlson uses "deconstruct" and George W. Bush has developed quite a fondness for "ideology," which half my dissertation committee rejected as jargon. So what's the big deal? Have there been excesses of obscurantism and pomposity? Yes, but as our literary writers have long known, from Laurence Sterne to Herman Melville to James Joyce to William Vollmann, sometimes nothing succeeds like excess."

Hal Rothman...

died from complications due to ALS yesterday. Below is the notice from H-net and here is a nice article about him from the Las Vegas Sun.

Friends,

Below is a message sent out by the chair of the department of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

I am sure many of you knew Hal Rothman, and many more knew his wonderful work. He was a smart guy, a shrewd historian, a fine citizen, a wonderful father and husband, and, as he showed us in the last year and a half, a very, very brave man.

Personally, I'll miss my good friend. Few have been more fun to argue with.

Elliott West

It is my sad duty to inform you that our colleague, Hal Rothman, passedaway last night from ALS. Our sympathies go out to Lauralee, Bret, Talia ,and the rest of his family. Hal's funeral service has been scheduled forWednesday, February 28 at 3:00 p.m. at Palm Mortuaries in the Main Chapelat 7600 S. Eastern. Donations in Hal's name may be made to the ALSFoundation (I don't immediately have that address) or to Midbar KodeshTemple.

Midd College history dept bans Wikipedia

I kind of also find it fascinating that this article, which ran in the NYT, is the most-emailed article today.

four-legged duck

the article discusses his running prowess and stamina in handling media attention, but does not predict how he'll fare in water.

Junior! The Wendy's Guy!

For all those of us who have eaten at the Wendy's in the union, here's an intimate portrait of Junior. What a legend.

congratulations marvin!!

No Undergrad Left Behind

Anyone who's been frustrated by the cognitive results of TX's teach-to-the-test high school education, as embodied in UT students, will feel a shiver run down his or her spine at this news.

On a binary scale of 0 and offensive...

Check this poster for a show at a local venue.

In the red

A 4-disc collection of Soviet anti-capitalist propaganda films is out.

"Black and White," produced in 1933, depicted a highway with an endless row of blacks lynched on telephone poles. "The Millionaire," made in 1963, told the story of a rich American woman who leaves $1 million to her pet bulldog, who becomes so wealthy and powerful that he eventually is elected to Congress. And in the 1979 animated short "Shooting Range," a jobless American youth finds work in a carnival shooting gallery only to discover the evil, greedy owner is now charging double — for people to use the youth as target practice.

These films, rarely seen in the West, are among several dozen included in a four-disc DVD anthology titled "Animated Soviet Propaganda" that is being distributed by Kino International and Films by Jove. The collection retails for $89.

The anthology is divided into categories titled "American Imperialists," "Fascist Barbarians," "Capitalist Sharks" and "Onward to the Shining Future: Communism." The DVDs include interviews with Russian film school professors, directors and animators, including famed animator Boris Yefimov, who was 101 and died two years after being interviewed.

Sorry to be a one-note Nancy.

But.

Dear Undergrads: No, Racism Is Not Dead, It's Just You Now

Via Austinist, conclusive proof that the sixties really did not "fix everything."

New Jersey rules on net anonymity

New Jersey ruled that the anonymity you create in creating web aliases/screennames/handles/usernames is protected by law.

Computer users in New Jersey can expect that personal information they give their Internet service providers will be treated as private, a state appellate court decided yesterday in the first such case considered in the state.

As a result, New Jersey and several other states will give greater privacy rights to computer users than do most federal courts, and law-enforcement officers in New Jersey will need to obtain valid subpoenas or search warrants to obtain the information.

The court ruled that a computer user whose screen name hid her identity had a "legitimate and substantial" interest in anonymity.

Of course, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation is deeply pleased. Defining these types of rights is important -- and to me seems at least somewhat intuitive, given the (relatively) protected nature of things like phone records.

The Low-Down on Jeremiah

Want to know all about the original Jeremiads? Slate's "Blogging the Bible" has reached Jeremiah. It's all fire and Brimstone at the halfway stage.

One more thing...

There's now a mathematical formula to describe/predict procrastination.

Cash rules everything around me

FYI re: the filthy-lucre goals of the undergrads. I thought they were all about sex, but boy, was I wrong!

My "nostalgic alarmist" bells and tin cans started clanging as soon as this article tripped my mental perimeter. This article makes explicit ref to the idea that today's kids are more materialistic than in previous years. But I wonder whether people aren't just more comfortable with defining themselves as materialistic. Or whether these pollsters were asking different people. Or different questions. Or whatever. I think those gold-rushers were as materialistic as any ipodder of today.

Roe V. Wade Anniversary

It's the 30th anniversary of Roe V. Wade.

I'm anticipating a lot of unpleasantness for the employees of Planned Parenthood and other organizations today. NPR has a series of stories related to abortion and reproductive rights, all available here.

List of demands

This is X-posted from my blog, but I thought some of y'all interested in race/class identity might be interested:

This is Saul Williams's video for "List of Demands (Reparations)," the single off his last album, which was produced by Trent Reznor. I think the song is pretty genius. What I don't think is genius is the video below, which is a flaccid, cutesy cover of the song as done by Jenny Wilson and Robyn.



The cover completely deflates the aggression of the original. And, while I'm normally all for covers, this one treads on some dangerous political territory. I'm sure Jenny Wilson and Robyn are genuinely in awe of the original piece -- imitation remaining the highest form of flattery. However, style in sometimes does dictate substance, and I think this is one such instance. Breathy indie pop in its current incarnations really can't say anything that significant about U.S. race relations.

Boo google

So while I appreciate the handiness of Google for searching the web, I do NOT appreciate being strongarmed into using gmail in order to use blogger.

Blue. Different.

So there's this new Blogger version I just signed up for that lets me move page elements around without having to go into HTML.

The upside is that I can now easily put a picture, text, a feed from another site, or other things on the righthand side of the blog (more webliterate people might find this basic, but I'm happy). So if you have a pic you think deserves right-hand-column status, send it to me - otherwise we're stuck with Sacvan Bercovitch, so act quickly. We can also start using labels for each post, like tags on flickr, which would be really fun to do. I also like the collapsible archive listings.

The downside is I can't figure out how to make the thing list our aggregate names as it did before - instead it wanted to list only my name, which I didn't like, so I just took it off and now we're authorless. The other downside is I hope you guys can all sign in without needing gmail accounts. I'm not sure how that's going to work. Keep me apprised as to possible problems.

Guess what? Polar bears are in trouble...

and they are SO CUTE! And the White House knows it! They're finally being considered for threatened status, and the admin. admits that they're threatened because of thinning sea ice caused by climate change. It's all very well and good (and quite Christmasy! is this one's name Tiny Tim?) but they still won't officially say that *humans* cause this thinning ice, because then we'd be responsible for changing our daily actions and not having SUVs...which not even a polar bear with its paws tucked under its chest can make us give up. Idea: let's just name an SUV after it, and then we'll be squaresies.

MediaCommons

MediaCommons is a project for media scholars, students, and anyone interested. One of the people behind it is one of the Flow founders. It's worth perusing, even if you're not into media studies, just to see a fairly innovative use of web publishing for academic ends. Or, you know, to read about the homonormativity of Project Runway. C'mon, homonormativity. They have a "call for papers," but they're using the term "paper" conceptually -- they're really after "works of digital scholarship."

Having worked with Flow as well as a host of non-academic web publications, I'm pretty interested in efforts like this. One good thing with web-based things is that it can really cut down on the time drag in academic publishing, which is totally disruptive to things like television studies -- by the time people can publish about shows, they've gone off the air.

"MediaCommons is a response to the host of systemic problems that afflict academic publishing today. Scholarship -- and particularly scholarship in a field as fast-moving as media studies -- is hindered by the often debilitating time-lag between the completion of a piece of writing and its publication, and by yet more delays between the publication of that text and release of any reviews or responses to it. ...

The combination of such structural problems in academic publishing has resulted in an increasing sense of disconnection among scholars, whose work requires a give-and-take with peers, and yet is produced in greater and greater isolation. These problems are particularly acute for media studies scholars, who need the ability to quote from the multi-mediated materials they write about, and for whom form needs to be able to follow content, allowing not just for writing about mediation but writing in a mediated environment."

Writing in a "mediated environment" sounds fantastic. I'll be interested to see how this plays out. I know I've really valued being able to bring video and images into conference presentations; being able to do that easily with my papers/writings would, I believe, be really advantageous.

Rocky's Great Chinese Ancestor

Once again the NYTimes has run an article about the discovery of a new animal complete with action painting. Who are these artists and how did they get into this fantastic line of work?

As for the newly discovered mammal:
"...the scientists say it shows that mammals experimented with aerial life about the same time birds first took to the skies, perhaps even earlier."

YouTube - Barack Obama Announces Candidacy for President

YouTube - Barack Obama Announces Candidacy for President

I can't figure out how to have the clip up on the website.

Global Jeremiad?

I haven't seen the full text, but from the description in the NYT it seems like it.

East Austin's gentryfickashun makes the nat'l news

In case anybody missed this from the NYT yesterday.

Dinosaur Comics

Carly. I just started reading them a couple days ago (see how behind the Internet times I am?) and I cannot stop. Here is one that goes right along with my dumb "Jurassic Park" paper. Click on the link to see it in actual readable form. May you all procrastinate as I have procrastinated.

The usual term is "creative writing"

So, Ian McEwan got accused of plagiarism. The case against him seems pretty weak, and he winds up defending himself. His defense is basically a definition of "research," amounting to an admittance that he learned various historical details from reading other books. The really interesting part of this, though, is that a lot of writers, including the notoriously reclusive Thomas Pynchon, have rushed to his defense, saying that this level of scrutiny says very bad things for their art, and detailing the ways that their own works involve "plagiarism" at McEwan's level.

This has some relation to the current debates over copyright legislation/enforcement, and is of course, interesting due to the types of discussions still happening in the wake of the James Frey scandal and the Kaavya Viswanathan debacle and that whole James T. LeRoy thing. As much as I find Viswanathan's actions dubious, I'm ambivalent about Frey, and pretty nonplussed about LeRoy. How "original" do new works have to be? How exposed should their sources be? And, really, who gets to decide if things in creative works are true?

Random postmodernism generator

Sorry to make this the me-blog again (briefly), but my friend just sent me this, which randomly generates a theory-heavy essay every time you refresh from the link at the end. Is funny/funny/anti-intellectual/funny.

Against Said

On Salon today, a review of a book by Robert Irwin: _Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents_. Salient quote: "Irwin maintains that Said's thesis is false, the arguments he made for it dishonest, distorted and weak, and his theoretical framework self-contradictory and evasive. He charges that Said engaged in a counterfactual rewriting of history, attacking figures from earlier eras because they did not say or do what Said thought they should have. Said's entire project, in his view, is 'a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is difficult to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations.'"

The article holds Irwin up as a bonafide scholar in the field (and thus touts the book as a major reimagining): "Irwin teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, has written on Arabic literature and art, and is the Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement." Sounds credible, though "written on Arabic literature and art"? That's a little weird. I've written on nudists and forest porn and am no expert in sexuality...Still, the book sounds like it could be important. Anybody else heard anything about it?

Oh, now I'm pissed.

The Bush Admin. has apparently begun shutting down libraries run by the EPA, with the flimsy excuse that they need to save some money. The agency says they're going to digitize the lost material, a lot of which is data re: the effects of industry on the environment, but there's no money allocated for that (see previous sentence re: saving money) and the Union of Concerned Scientists say they doubt it'll happen...

2 is coincidence, 3 is a trend

The Baltimore Sun says that "Does Your Chain Hang Low" is actually just the latest iteration of a subgenre of hip hop called "minstrel rap" (I might argue against the conflation of hip hop and rap, but that's not really the point here). The story references a few other songs, and points to a New York Times article discussing the "Zip Coon" connection.

On Longing by Susan Stewart...I need it.

Does anyone have a copy of Susan Stewart's On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection? The PCL's lone copy is checked out and "on request." If you have a copy, can I please borrow it? I'll be deeply grateful.

Surely somebody must know this

Looking for a book recommendation:

ISO a book that will explain, delineate, etc, narrative forms in film in the 1920s and 1930s.

Should be easy, right? Anybody out there taken a film theory class? John, maybe there's one on your visual culture list or something?

Some friend

James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, was going to help counsel Haggard out of his dreaded and painful homosexuality, but he backed out. "Uh...I'm just really busy right now," he hedged. "It's not that I don't like you. I'm just really busy. Too busy. To focus on your GAYNESS. Gay."

speaking of infections...

you can get $5 flu shots (with student id) today until 4pm at mccombs school of business
and tomorrow noon-4pm at the student services building on dean keaton.

Further Haggard tidbits- the jeremiad never ends!

Click on the title of the post for a great Salon article about Haggard's congregation's reaction to the demise of their pastor. Seeme like the jeremiad is alive and well, at least in Colorado Springs...

Here's a dissertation topic for you...

Can we come up with a name for this style? Redneck chic, anyone?

There was talk of getting t-shirts printed up for the course. I think Waffle House just did it for us.

Jonesy

Wales Millennium Centre - Jones Jones Jones!
I hope your family represented!

Can't hide, sinner

So last year, when I wrote that paper about evangelicals who pray for the souls of cities, this man, Ted Haggard, who is the head of the Natl Evangelical Assn, and the founder of New Life Church in Co. Springs (huge megachurch, I think maybe over 10,000 members), was the author of three of my sources.

In some of those books he recounted experiences sitting outside of "adult bookstores" and gay clubs, waiting to ambush people who came out with the force of his pitying prayer. Sometimes, if the people who came out were members of his church, he'd approach them and see if they "needed his help" getting out of the spiritual pit into which they'd dug themselves.

Now a CO man has come forward telling the world that he and Haggard had sex (that would be GAY sex), and that he helped Haggard score meth. The guy's story is pretty credible - he has recordings of some of the conversations he had with Haggard.

I'm not sure whether to be surprised or not. What makes me mad is that this will probably make no difference in the midterm elections, even though it should, because Haggard has had unprecedented access to the White House (he used to talk to the President or Rove like once a week - that phone line has probably been cut off at this point!). Access which he used to push anti-gay and abstinence-only agendas. Ah, the dark, hypocritical miasma at the heart of that whitened smile...

It's going down

Eat your fishes now, kids. Your offspring will only have your memories.

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?