"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.