American Studies in age of corporatization

Writeup that ran on Inside Higher Ed about a panel Janet was on at ASA, re the place of AMS in a corporatizing university.

Chinese environmental decay

There's a big feature in the Times this morning on environmental damage in China. If I were President, it would be a requirement that these pictures appear on labels of manufactured goods which come from these factories. I'm not saying consumers shouldn't be allowed to buy stuff that comes at this kind of an environmental cost; just that people should *know* that low-priced toasters don't happen in a vacuum.

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.

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...