Gerry Canavan's Blog, page 67
January 21, 2015
An Especially Worthy Entry in Our Ongoing Series of Wednesday Links
*�����Well, Here���s What Won���t Pass,��� Obama Says Before Listing 35 Proposals.
* Aaron Bady’s amazing “African Writers in a New World” interview series at Post 45 continues with Teju Cole.
*��Daniel Maguire on the McAdams Case at��Marquette.��Really��hard��to believe they’ve somehow managed to create a situation where McAdams has the better side of the argument.
* Ashon Crawley on Ferguson and utopia.
* Cruel optimism and the NFL (or, Life in the Factory of Sadness).
* Meanwhile:��Patriots Black Ops Division Kills Opposing Team Leaders In Three States; ���All in the Game,��� Says Belichick.
* …or live long enough to become the villain: The Vagina Monologues is now reactionary.
*��Read the letter the FBI sent MLK to try to convince him to kill��himself.��Martin Luther King Jr.���s Stint as an Advice Columnist for Ebony��Magazine.��Happy Robert E. Lee Day!��…anytime the same state and culture invites you to worship a human being they tried to kill, we should be suspicious of the ways they want us to remember.
* I think I rediscover this fact with the same surprise every couple of years:��In 1991, a Boston University investigatory committee concluded that King had indeed plagiarized parts of his dissertation, but found that it was ���impractical to reach, on the available evidence, any conclusions about Dr. King’s reasons for failing to attribute some, but not all, of his sources.��� That is, it could have been anything from malicious intent to simple forgetfulness���no one can determine for sure today. They did not recommend a posthumous revocation of his degree, but instead suggested that a letter be attached to the dissertation in the university library noting the passages lacked quotations and citations.
* Neoliberalism and the Degradation of Education (Alternative Routes, Vol. 26).��A ton of good links here.
* Teach or perish. Teach and perish.
*��80 rich people now have as much as 50% of the rest of humanity combined.��Let’s meet our overlords!
*��Science Fiction Under Totalitarian Regimes, Part 2: Tsarist and Soviet Russia.��Here was Part 1: Germany.
* Coming soon: Keywords for Radicals.
* On the failure to reclaim the word “slut.”
*��When the trains stopped coming down the track, Tryon, NC began to crumble, and since then something disappears each day.
*��Groundbreaking Artwork Reimagines Disney Princesses As Office��Supplies.
*��‘Cultural Marxism': a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim. This is a term you see in the comment threads no one is supposed to be reading more and more.
*�����Overworked��� drone pilots are baling out.��Chomsky:��Obama’s Drone Program ‘The Most Extreme Terrorist Campaign of Modern Times.’
*��Lonesome Alito Declares Marriage Only Between A Man And The Sea.
* True crime watch:��Milwaukee man says stabbing sister, father was ‘right thing to do.’ Spoiler alert: no.
* I want to believe!��Russia Orders Obama: Tell World About Aliens, Or We Will.
* It’s already working!��U.S. Air Force Releases Thousands of Pages Of Declassified UFO Files.
*��10 Rules For Making Better Fantasy Maps.
*��Trustees Refuse to Reconsider Salaita���s Firing: ���That Decision Is��Final.���
* Scenes from the class struggle at the University of California.
* How Did We Get Here? The AAUP’s evolving emphasis on collective bargaining.
*��The twilight of a particular organizational form should not be confused with the end of worker organization itself. Institutions are not permanent, but workers��� interest in organization is. And besides, the current model is disappearing whether we like it or not.
*��
* Broken clock watch: Cuomo wants a train to La Guardia.
* Star Wars considering casting Tatiana Maslany for every role, one assumes.
* Pay Attention, 007! On the Usability of James Bond’s Gadgets.
*��Majestic Animals That Could Go Extinct This Century.
* A lifetime of being paranoid about this confirmed.
* The trouble with Harley Quinn.��Via io9.
* Sid Meier’s next: Starships.
* And doctors, who have already taken everything from us, want our pizza too.��The��line must be drawn here!
January 19, 2015
MLK Day Links!
*��Do you have a Hugo nomination ballot? John Scalzi’s Author/Editor/Artist/Fan Awareness Page may be of use to you.��You’ll note from the last comment that Green Planets is in fact eligible for a “Best Related Work” Hugo…
* What, To the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
*��What Taking My Daughter to a Comic Book Store Taught Me.
* The question is, can we afford not to send our basketball team on a $800,000 trip to the Bahamas, in these troubled times?
* There’s always money in the banana stand.
The state Board of Regents for Higher Education approved $761,181 in merit raises for presidents, vice presidents and top administrators in the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, but not without questions raised on the wisdom of doing so in tough budget times.
* Four Ways Human Beings Are Endangering Life on Earth.
* “Marine Le Pen is president of the Front National party in France.”��Wow,��The New York Times.
*��Is ‘SimCity’ Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
“I have Community College and a University, plenty of police coverage, yet I still have a city with homeless ALL OVER….. so what the fix for this or do I just not worry about it?” asks a player on Simtropolis.
*��The bizarre ESP experiments conducted on aboriginal children without parental consent.
*��Mike Ditka: I Wouldn’t Want My Child To Play Football.
* Another BitCoin processor turns out to be a scam.
* Behind the scenes at TfL���s lost property office.
* Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found.
Even while it leaps forward with features in its operating systems, Apple has a huge installed base it drags with it. And even if, for instance, iTunes has been a terrible mishmash for a decade, the fact that it continues to be one with a major new release in 2015 is beyond the pale: Apple should be learning, not starting over and re-inventing when it comes to stability and experience.
* 14th Dalai Lama announces he is also the 2nd Karl Marx.
*��An Internet of Treacherous Things.
* Old-School The Legend of Zelda art from Nintendo Power.
* Louie‘s Paula Adlon is getting an FX series.
*��The theme-park chain where children pretend to be adults.
* And Everyone Has Imposter Syndrome, Except For You.
January 18, 2015
Bask in the Warm Glow of Martin Luther King’s Dream with These Exciting Sunday Links
* CFP: Modernism’s Child (Centre for Modernist Studies, University of Sussex, April 20, 2015).
* CFP:��Obsidian Call for Submissions: Speculating on the Future: Black Imagination & the Arts.
* Martin Luther King’s other dream: disarmament.
* Our most cherished MLK Day ritual:��remembering there is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted than Martin Luther King Jr.
* 13 Words of the Year from Other Countries.��Another set of possible candidates.
5. DAGOBERTDUCKTAKS, NETHERLANDSIn the Netherlands, the Van Dale dictionary group chose dagobertducktaks, ���Scrooge McDuck tax,��� a tax on the super rich. The ���youth language��� category choice wasaanmodderfakker (someone with no ambition in life, from a blend of aanmodderen, ���muddle,��� and motherf***er). The ���lifestyle��� category choice was vergeetverzoek, ���forget request,��� a request to a search engine that sensitive information be removed.
* For-Profit College Investor Now Owns Controlling Share of Leading Education Trade Publication.��IHE’s ownership statement says that editors retain full editorial independence.
* Aaron Bady told me “Trust Us Justice: 24, Popular Culture and the Law” was a great talk forever ago, but I didn’t have time to get to it until this week. But it was indeed great, and something that will be useful in my classroom to boot.
* Comics studies is not a busman’s holiday.��Great rant. This goes for science fiction studies too! It’s hard and miserable work and you should leave it all to us!
*��Photomediations��Machine: Exploring the Anthropocene.
* Lili Loofbourow in the New York Times: “TV’s New Girls’ Club.”
Above all, promiscuous protagonism is interested in truths that are collectively produced. Its greatness stems not from a single show runner���s bleak and brilliant outlook but from a collaborative vision of art that admits a spectrum of shades. The central question driving this movement forward is no longer ���How did these mad men come to be?��� but rather ���How did these women get so good at staying sane?���
* If anything I think Matt Reed’s concerns about the inevitable cuts to #FreeCommunityCollege don’t go far enough.
������Meets the Next Recession��� frame still assumes the purpose of the plan is basically beneficent and that the Dems are trying to do good.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 17, 2015
But under the Canavan Reading��� of the plan, cuts to #FreeCommunityCollege are inevitable Phase 2 once you���ve used it to gut the four years.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 17, 2015
In some sense for a post-Great-Society neoliberal reform, the rollback of the plan IS the plan. Enjoy those Obamacare subsidies kids.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 17, 2015
* Behold, Phase 2!��That was quick.
* Free Community College Is Nothing to Celebrate, or What Piketty Means for Education.
* And from the leading light of the anti-schooling left:��The hidden costs of free community college.
One of the ways we talk about the value of education is in terms of a student���s future ���competitiveness.��� It sounds like it should correlate directly with wages, but they���re competing against other workers like them. And from a worker���s perspective, a rising educational tide keeps wages under control for all boats. More schooling doesn���t necessarily mean better jobs, it means more competition for the same set of jobs. The so-called ���skills gap��� is a myth; if employers needed educated labor so badly, they would pay like it. Instead, the costs of training more productive workers have been passed to the kids who want to be them, while the profits go to employers and shareholders. The state assuming some of those costs for some of those students doesn���t solve anyone���s problems. Rather, it���s another boon for the ownership class.
*��Philly���s adjuncts seek to rewrite their futures.
* New talk of splitting off Madison from the rest of the UW system.
Mikalsen said the most persistent rumbling of late is that the universities would operate as a public authority, with the state playing a much reduced role in overseeing hiring practices, construction bids and other internal matters that university officials have long said could be done more efficiently and cheaply with more autonomy. The trade-off would come in reduced state aid, Mikalsen said.
* And it sounds like UNC is next.
*��1970s Film: Vintage Marquette University.��More links below the video!
*��It���s a bit of a weird way to be selling the world���s biggest sporting event���and we���re gonna build a super-cool stadium and then tear it down again because everyone knows stadiums suck���but points for honesty, at least.
* The second interesting thing about the Packers, or football, I’ve ever heard. Here of course was the first.��Go Pack, times two!
*��Nobody Expects the Facebook Inquisition.��Also from Burke: An��Ethic of Care.
Perhaps that means ���check your privilege��� is a phrase to retire because it invites that kind of ease, a lack of awareness about what that statement hopes for and requires. If it���s not an expression of an ethic of care, trying to radar-ping the world around it to find out who else shares or might share in that ethic, and not a threat with power behind it, then what it usually leads to is the moral evacuation of a conversation and the production of a sort of performative austerity, of everyone in a community pretending to virtue they do not authentically embrace and avoiding the positive or generative use of the forms of social power they might actually have genuinely privileged access to.
* Eric Holder ends the scandal of civil asset forfeiture, at least for now.
*��Florida police use images of black men for target��practice.
���Our policies were not violated. There is no discipline that���s forthcoming from the individuals regarding this,��� Dennis said.
*��While the ire of environmental activists remains fixed on the Keystone XL pipeline, a potentially greater threat looms in the proposed expansion of Line 61, a pipeline running the length of Wisconsin carrying tar sands crude. The pipeline is owned by Enbridge, a $40 billion Canadian company, which has been responsible for several hundred spills in the past decade, including one in 2010 near Marshall, Mich., reportedly the largest and most expensive inland oil spill in American history.
*��The stark disparities of paid leave: The rich get to heal. The poor get fired.
*��Few New Parents Get Paid Time Off.
* “Carry bolt cutters everywhere”: life advice from Werner Herzog.
*��Last night ���The Daily Show���s��� Jessica Williams delved into a baffling Alabama law: HB 494. The law takes state funds ��� funds that are scarce in the Alabama justice system ��� to appoint lawyers for fetuses.
*��How Gothic Architecture Took Over the American College Campus.
*��Solar Is Adding Jobs 10 Times Faster Than the Overall Economy.
* “Zero Stroke Was A Mental Illness That Affected An Entire Country.”
* Love, marriage, and mental illness.
*��The $4 billion worth of subsidies represents a record high outlay at the very time Christie says budget shortfalls are preventing him from making actuarially required pension payments. What could explain it this incomprehensible paradox?��It’s been thirty-five years and the media is simply incapable of admitting that when Republicans claim to care about deficits they are lying.
* Some bad news, y’all, overparenting doesn’t work either.
*��Parents investigated for neglect after letting kids walk home alone.
*��I���ll never punish my daughter for saying no.
* Group projects and the secretary effect.
* Making the school day longer will definitely fix it. I suppose every generation feels this way but I really feel like the 1980s and 1990s were the last good time to be a kid.
* Teach the controversy: Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists.��Meanwhile, everything in the ocean is dying.
* But it’s not all bad news:��Ron Howard recording new narration for recut of Arrested Development��season four.
The biggest downside to a Walmart opening up in your community is that after all the protests, the negotiations, and, almost inevitably, the acceptance, the retail giant might just break its lease, pack up shop, and move a mile down the road. The process starts all over again, and Walmart���s giant, hard-won original behemoth of a structure sits abandoned, looming over its increasingly frustrated neighbours.
*��Duke University announced it would broadcast the Muslim call to prayer from its iconic chapel, then backed down after threats of violence.
*��Kepler has given many gifts to humanity, but we should be careful throwing around words like ���habitable��� when talking about worlds 1,000 light years away, about which we only know sizes and orbits. It���s not my intention to put a damper on things, or to take the wonder and��imagination out of astronomy. Science requires both imagination and creativity,��but also analytical thought and respect for observational evidence. And after only 20 years of exoplanet discoveries, the observational evidence is rich, beautiful, and stands on its own. We don���t know the odds that life will��arise on other worlds, but we���ve got a few tens of billions of rolls of the��cosmological dice.
* Kotsko shrugged: The perpetual adolescence of the right.��Along the similar��lines, but thinking of ethics instead of intellectualism, I always think of David Graeber’s “Army of Altruists” from Harper’s, almost a decade-old now, on the way elites have cordoned off all meaningful work for themselves and their children alone.
*��Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty. But wait! Let’s quibble about the numbers!
* Hidden laborers of the information age.
* Just this once, everybody lives:��Netflix Renews Deal for ���Doctor Who,��� ���Luther,��� More BBC Series.
* Around the mid 2000s it became popular in Sweden for teenage boys to wear rubber bands around their legs on top of their jeans. The more rubber bands you had and variety in colors the more alpha you became to the other teenage boys.
* Like Uber, but for veillance.��Of course the university is at the cutting edge:
We���ve got an early warning system [called Stoplight] in place on our campus that allows instructors to see what a student���s risk level is for completing a class. You don���t come in and start demonstrating what kind of a student you are. The instructor already knows that. The profile shows a red light, a green light, or a yellow light based on things like have you attempted to take the class before, what���s your overall level of performance, and do you fit any of the demographic categories related to risk. These profiles tend to follow students around, even after folks change how they approach school. The profile says they took three attempts to pass a basic math course and that suggests they���re going to be pretty shaky in advanced calculus.
* #FeministSexualPositions.��(NSFW, obviously.)
* I guess I just don’t see why you’d bring your baby to work.
*��Top 10 Biggest Design Flaws In The U.S.S. Enterprise.��I can’t believe “elevated warp nascelles perched on extended��towers are super vulnerable to attack” didn’t even make the top ten.
*��Space, ze final fronti��re.
* Dave Goelz explains how to Gonzo.
* Apocalypse zen: photos of stairs in abandoned buildings.
* And I guess that settles it.��Little Boy Who Claimed to Die and Visit Heaven Admits He Made It Up.
January 15, 2015
Thursday Links!
* 2015 CFP for the MRG: “Enthusiasm for Revolution.”
* Reminder:��Call for Postdoctoral Fellow: Alternative Futurisms.
*��The Long, Wondrous Interview with��Junot D��az��You Have to Read.��By the great Taryne Taylor! From the same issue of Paradoxa that has my essay on Snowpiercer in it.
*��Ellen Craft, the Slave Who Posed as a Master and Made Herself Free.
*��Having paddled so hard to avoid the Scylla of hyperprofessionalization��in English studies, some promoters of alternative careers may not notice��that they are in the grip of Charybdis���s hyperprofessionalization of everything��else. The harder they paddle, the harder the whirlpool pulls us all down.��Great piece from Marc Bousquet addressing a number of key issues in academic labor.
* Universities without Austerity.
*��A History of the MLA Job List.
* The headline reads, “UMass Ends Use of Student Informants.”
* Arbitrator places adjunct on the tenure track.
*��Loved Your Nanny Campus? Start-Up Pledges Similar Services for Grads.
*��These Two States Will Revoke Your License If You Can���t Pay Back Your Student Loans.
*��These World Leaders Are a Worse Threat to Free Press Than Terrorism.
*��Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Edits Female World Leaders Out of��Charlie Hebdo March.
* What���s Missing From the Debate on Obama���s Free Community-College Plan.
* The end of the university in Louisiana.
* Malcolm Harris:��The Small Miracle You Haven’t Heard About Amid the Carnage in Syria.
*��Report: Duke Ignored Warnings on Research Fraud.
*��53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama���s Legacy.
*��Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s.
*��To be clear, late-night votes might be a bit of a problem for Joseph Morrissey, the newly sworn-in Virginia House delegate who must report to his jail cell about 7:30 each evening.
*��Muslim Americans are the staunchest opponents of military attacks on civilians, compared with members of other major religious groups Gallup has studied in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of Muslim Americans say military attacks on civilians are never justified.
*��$1 Million Prize for Scientists Who Can Cure Human Aging.��Sure, I’ll go in for a few bucks on that.
* Too real: ��Woman���s Parents Accepting Of Mixed-Attractiveness Relationship.
*��What If We Could Live In A World Without War But Way More Famine?
*��Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor.
*��A Cybernetic Implant That Allows Paralyzed Rats To Walk Again.
*��In 2014, Florida recorded at least 346 deaths inside of their prison system, an all-time high for the state in spite of the fact that its overall prison population has hovered around 100,000 people for the five previous years. Hundreds of these deaths from 2014 and from previous years are now under investigation by the DOJ because of the almost unimaginable role law enforcement officers are playing in them.
* Last week:��The City Is Reportedly Losing $10 Million a Week Because the NYPD Isn���t Writing Enough Tickets.��This week:��NYPD Slowdown Turns Into “Broken Windows” Crackdown.
*��The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Time to Shut it Down.
*��Albuquerque cop mistakenly guns down undercover narcotics officer during bungled $60 meth bust.��Elsewhere in Albuquerque.
*��1 In 3 College Men In Survey Said They Would Rape A Woman If They Could Get Away With It.
*��Danny Boyle Having “Serious” Conversations About 28 Months Later.��I’m in as long as it’s the first step towards Years.
* Radically unnecessary Avatar sequels reportedly having script problems.��What could explain it?
* Frozen in everything, forever and ever amen.
* Seems legit:��NASCAR driver says his ex-girlfriend is a trained��assassin.
*��This Computer Program Is ‘Incapable Of Losing’ At Poker.
*��Scholar and activist Glen Coulthard on the connection between indigenous and anticapitalist struggles.
* This seems like glorified Avengers fan fiction but I’m on board.��Meanwhile, in Fantastic Four news.
* Ah, there’s my problem:��iPhone Separation Anxiety Makes You Dumber, Study Finds.
* I’m you, from the future! At the 16th most popular webcomic.
* They say time is the fire in which we burn.
* The Marquette Tribune is following the ongoing McAdams suspension at the university.
*��Study says we prefer singers who look like big babies during good times.��This research must be stopped. Some things mankind was never meant to know.
* Community get a premiere date.
*��whothefuckismydndcharacter.com.
*��And Cookie-Based Research Suggests Powerful People Are Sloppier Eaters.��Of course the sloppy among us have always known this.
January 11, 2015
Ain’t No Sunday Like an MLA Sunday Links
* In case you missed them: the syllabi for my spring classes, which start tomorrow.
* Meanwhile MLA saves its best panel for last:��759. Guilty Pleasures: Late Capitalism and Mere Genre.��Today at 1:45!
*��On March 11-12, 2015, the Humanities Division at Essex County College will host its Spring 2015 Conference, ���Speculative Humanities: Steampunk to Afrofuturism.��� This two-day conference offers space for writers, musicians, artists, and academicians to explore, expand upon, and rethink the implications of speculative humanities. This year’s conference will feature a special emphasis on the life, work, and influence of Octavia E. Butler.
* #MLA:��An Economist���s Critique of Job Market for English Ph.D.s.
Got a pretty convincing argument today that the proper ���academic job market as game��� metaphor isn���t Scrabble but Cards Against Humanity. 1/2
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 11, 2015
You have to play elements of your arbitrary hand against randomly drawn circumstances, plus participating at all makes you a bad person. 2/2
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 11, 2015
* The MLA should give Jonathan Goodwin a Lifetime Achievement Award for this post about midcentury MLA job ads.��Check out his Twitter feed for more.
* Really, though,��huge shoutout to all the literary critics heading home today.
* #FreeCommunityCollege.��Did Obama Just Introduce a ���Public Option’ for Higher Education?��Angus is happy.��Who Has a Stake in Obama���s Free Community-College Plan?��Of course, it’s a Republican plan.��And there’s a catch.��Or two.
Point of this plan is to ���disrupt��� higher ed by shifting resources to colleges w/ lower labor costs + worse working conditions. Start there.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 9, 2015
*��Contingent Faculty and #FreeCommunityCollege.
*��$18 billion in job training = lots of trained unemployed people.
You cannot solve a systemic jobs crisis by new jobs training. The best you can do is help some people beat out other people.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 16, 2014
Sometimes you don���t get a sales pitch. It���s none of your business, it���s reactionary to even ask the question, it���s an assertion of privilege, something���s got to be done and what have you been doing that���s better? Sometimes you get a sales pitch and it���s all about will and not about intellect: everybody has to believe in fairies or Tinkerbell will die. The increments sometimes make no sense. This leads to that leads to what? And what? And then? Why? Or perhaps most frustrating of all, each increment features its own underlying and incommensurable theories about why things happen in the world: in this step, people are motivated by self-interest; in the next step, people are motivated by basic decency; in the next step, people are motivated by fear of punishment. Every increment can���t have its own social theory. That���s when you know that the only purpose is the action itself, not the thing it���s trying to accomplish.
*��Securitization, risk management, and the new university.
*��Administrators, Authority, and Accountability.
*��Militancy, Antagonism, and Power: Rethinking Intellectual Labor, Relocating the��University.
As leverage, Silvia Federici outlines the two-part process of demanding a wage for previously uncompensated labor. The first step is recognition, but the ultimate goal is refusal. ���To say that we want money for housework��� she says, ���is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it, both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity��� (Wages Against Housework). Another way to say this is: it is only with the option of refusal that not-publishing is meaningful.
It is clear that ���publish or perish��� is undergoing a speedup like all other capitalist work. We must all struggle for a re-valorization of living labor. And in the first step against publication���s command over living labor, we agree with Federici, who demands that ���From now on we want money for each moment of it, so that we can refuse some of it and eventually all of it��� (Wages Against Housework).
* Exclusive: Prosecutor in Serial Goes On the Record.
*��The U.S. has more jails than colleges. Here���s a map of where those prisoners live.
* Scenes from the class struggle inside the National Radio Quiet Zone.
* Debt collection as autoimmune disease.
*��Male Senators Banned Women From Senate Pool So They Could Swim Naked.��Until 2008.
* Wow.��F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Said to Seek Charges for Petraeus.
*��“It’s clear he hasn’t been very lucky with the ladies the last few months,” West said of his client.
* Nightmare terror attacks in Nigeria using ten-year-old girls as suicide bombers.
* Clocks Are Too Precise (and People Don’t Know What to Do About It.
* Great moments in matte paintings, at io9. I had no idea the warehouse from Raiders was a matte either, though in retrospect of course it was.
*��New research is first to identify which reserves must not be burned to keep global temperature rise under 2C, including over 90% of US and Australian coal and almost all Canadian tar sands.
* Rave drug shows great promise in treating depression once thought resistant to drug therapy. I hope they found some way to control for the curative effects of glowsticks.
*��How Wes Anderson���s Cinematographer Shot These 9 Great Scenes.
* Here comes Wet Hot American Summer: The Prequel Series.
* The kids aren’t all right:��Millennials Are Less Racially Tolerant Than You Think.
* “Men, what would you be willing to give up to live a couple decades longer?”
* Dad creates drawings based off of quotes from his toddler daughter.
* How LEGO became the Apple of toys.
*��We Wish These Retrofuturistic Versions Of American Cities Had Come True.
* Every episode of Friends at��the same time.
* And exciting loopholes I think we can all believe in:��“He was doing research for a film,” said Sherrard. “It’s not a crime; it’s artwork��� He’s an intellectual.”
January 9, 2015
New Syllabi This Spring: “Video Game Culture” and “Magic and Literature”
As I get ready to head out to MLA, I thought I’d post my two new syllabi for this semester, HONORS 2953: Video Game Culture and ENGLISH 3000: Magic and Literature.��(My Cultural Preservation course hasn’t changed all that much, but you can see the new website here.)
This syllabus I just wrote winds up spending two weeks on Frozen. How did that happen?
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 9, 2015
That���s on the syllabus too! RT @kjhealy: @gerrycanavan I blame the decline of the West.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 9, 2015
Here’s the meat of both, the week-by-week schedules, as well as the “What Is English 3000?” explanation for those who don’t know the history behind this course…
#1 ENGLISH 3000
WHAT IS ENGLISH 3000?
ENGLISH 3000 is a new course, emerging out of the English���s department recent redesign of its curriculum, which is intended to serve as a gateway to 4000-level study in the discipline (as well as in the humanities more generally). The previous major had tended to silo different historical periods, forms, genres, and methodological approaches each within their own courses, constructing an intellectually diverse curriculum primarily through the juxtaposition of the various course requirements. In contrast, the new major loosens those requirements and chooses instead to put the different perspectives together within a single course, in an effort to promote shared conversations and collective interests across the English major while also allowing students more freedom to define a course of study that truly matters to them. This, of course, is ENGLISH 3000, which was taught for the first time in Fall 2014.
The plan is for the ENGLISH 3000 sections to gather together a variety of literary forms (poetry, drama, prose fiction, film, and so on) from a variety of historical periods (ours runs from Shakespeare to Harry Potter) and explore them through a variety of critical perspectives and interpretive lenses (we study feminism, Marxism, postcoloniality, queer theory, genre theory, New Criticism, structuralism, disability studies, and reader response). Our conversations will thus become richer and denser as we go, as we build a shared vocabulary for our critical interventions. In the process, we will also be able to explore a number of the multiple writing styles and publishing venues that are available to literary-minded thinkers today: creative writing and academic writing, of course, but also journalistic writing, popular criticism, the personal blog, fan criticism, and even fan fiction. I hope you will find these examples inspirational as you think about the possibilities for your own writing in the future.
Professors teaching ENGLISH 3000 each choose some wide-ranging but ultimately unifying theme to structure their courses; while we might have studied literature and medicine, or literature and science, or literature and the law, the theme I have selected for our section of this course this semester is ���magic and literature.��� This theme is present in some way or another through every literary text we will encounter, from the vaunted heights of the literary canon to culturally suspect and supposedly frivolous works of genre fiction (again: Shakespeare to Harry Potter).
Although ENGLISH 3000 shares some similarities with our sophomore-level courses, including its consideration of multiple authors and historical periods and the use of a ���theme��� as an organizing principle, ENGLISH 3000 should not be thought of as an introductory or remedial course, nor as a free-form general-interest survey; rather, it is an opportunity for you to meet together as emerging literary scholars to figure out what you think defines (and what should define) literary study in the twenty-first century. The conversations we begin here will, I hope, ripple across all the courses you take in the English department at Marquette.
GENERAL COURSE PLAN
WEEKS 1-2: INTRODUCTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES: POETRY
���������������������� Concepts: New Criticism, Structuralism
WEEK 3-5: DRAMA: THE TEMPEST
���������������������� Concept: Postcoloniality
WEEK 6-8: NOVEL: ONE HUNDRED YEAR OF SOLITUDE
���������������������� Concept: Marxism, Genre, Allegory, Utopia
WEEK 9: THE SHORT STORY: ���THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER��� AND ���THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN���
���������������������� Concept: Feminism
WEEK 10-11: FILM: FROZEN
���������������������� Concept: Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, Disability Studies, Reader Response
WEEK 12-16: YOUNG-ADULT LITERATURE: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
Day-by-Day Schedule
M
January 12
FIRST DAY OF CLASS
W
January 14
W.H. Auden, ���So An Age Ended������ [D2L]
Arthur Rimbaud, ���After the Flood��� [D2L]
M
January 19
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY���NO CLASS
W
January 21
New Criticism
How To Interpret Literature: ���New Criticism���
Robert Frost, ���Mending Wall��� [D2L]
M
January 26
Structuralism
How to Interpret Literature, ���Structuralism���
Dan Harmon, ���Story Circle 101��� [online]
J.R.R. Tolkien, ���On Fairy-Stories��� [D2L]
in-class discussion: The Lord of the Rings (film and book)
W
January 28
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I
M
February 2
The Tempest, Acts II-III
W
February 4
The Tempest, Acts IV-V
M
February 9
Postcoloniality
How to Interpret Literature, ���Postcolonial and Race Studies���
Heather MacDonald, ���The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity��� [online]
Natalia Cecire, ���Humanities Scholarship Is Incredibly Relevant, and That Makes People Sad��� [online]
W
February 11
Postcolonial Commentary on The Tempest
George Lamming, ���A Monster, A Child, A Slave���
Barbara Fuchs, ���Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest���
M
February 16
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 1-5
W
February 18
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 6-10
M
February 23
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 11-15
FIRST PAPER DUE
W
February 25
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 16-20
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, ���The Solitude of Latin America���
M
March 2
Marxism
How to Interpret Literature, ���Marxism���
Gregory Lawrence, ���Marx in Macondo��� [D2L]
W
March 4
Tools and Methods: Genre, Allegory, and Utopia
Fredric Jameson, ���Radical Fantasy��� [D2L]
Ursula K. Le Guin, ���The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas��� [D2L]
M
March 9
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS
W
March 11
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS
M
March 16
Feminism
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ���The Yellow Wall-Paper��� [D2L]
How to Interpret Literature, ���Feminism���
W
March 18
The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (excerpt) [D2L]
Neil Gaiman, ���The Problem of Susan��� [D2L]
SECOND PAPER DUE
M
March 23
Cultural Studies
How to Interpret Literature, ���Historicism and Cultural Studies���
David Forgacs, ���Disney Animation and the Business of Childhood��� [D2L]
Lili Loofbourow, ���Just Another Princess Movie��� [online]
W
March 25
Queer Studies
Frozen
How to Interpret Literature, ���Queer Studies���
Google Search: ���queer reading of Frozen��� [Google]
M
March 30
Disability Studies
Frozen continued
How to Interpret Literature, ���Disability Studies���
Su Holmes, ���Cold and Hungry: Discourses of Anorexic Femininity in Frozen��� [online]
ZebraGal, ���Let It Go���Autism Version��� [YouTube]
W
April1
Readers and Fandoms
Frozen continued
How to Interpret Literature, ���Reader Response���
Henry Jenkins, ���Transmedia Storytelling 101��� [online]
M
April 6
EASTER HOLIDAY���NO CLASS
W
April 8
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter 1-4 review and discussion
M
April 13
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
W
April 15
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
M
April 20
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
W
April 22
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
M
April 27
IN-CLASS WORKSHOP DAY FOR GROUP PRESENTATIONS
W
April 29
GROUP PRESENTATIONS
F
May 8
FINAL PAPER DUE VIA D2L DIGITAL DROPBOX BY 3 PM
#2��VIDEO GAME CULTURE
DATE
KEYWORD
TEXTS
Tuesday, January 13
START
FIRST DAY OF CLASS
Tuesday, January 20
PLAY
Game: The Stanley Parable
Corey Mohler, Existential Comics: ���Candyland and the Nature of the Absurd���
Tuesday, January 27
RULES
Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Gamic Action, Four Moments���
Tuesday, February 3
ART
Roger Ebert, ���Doom,��� ���Critics vs. Games on Doom,��� ���Why Did The Chicken Cross the Genders,��� ���Video Games Can Never Be Art���
Ian Bogost, ���Art���
Tuesday, February 10
CRITIQUE
Game: Braid
Patrick Jagoda, ���Fabulously Procedural: Braid, Historical Processing, and the Videogame Sensorium���
Tuesday, February 17
COGNITION
Stephen Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You (excerpt)
Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken (excerpt)
Short: ���Play���
Tuesday, February 24
HABIT
Game: Tetris
Ian Bogost, ���Habituation���
Chris Higgins, ���Playing to Lose���
Sam Anderson, ���Just One More Game������
Tuesday, March 3
OBSESSION
Film: The King of Kong
Tuesday, March 10
PAUSE
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS
Tuesday, March 17
VIOLENCE
Game: Portal
Short: ���Duty Calls���
Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Origins of the First Person Shooter��� and ���Social Realism���
Tuesday, March 24
MASCULINITY
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter, ���Designing Militarized Masculinity: Violence, Gender, and the Bias of Game Experience���
Todd VanDerWerff, ���#GamerGate: Here’s why everybody in the video game world is fighting���
Tuesday, March 31
MASTERY
Game: FreeCiv
Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Allegories of Control���
Trevor Owens, ���Sid Meier���s Colonization: Is It Offensive Enough?���
u/Lycerius, ���I’ve Been Playing the Same Game of Civilization II for Almost 10 Years. This Is the Result.���
Tuesday, April 7
IDEOLOGY
Game: SimCity
Ava Kofman, ���Les Simerables���
Mike Sterry, ���The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City���
Tuesday, April 14
FREEMIUM
Game: Candy Crush
Ramin Shokrizade, ���The Top F2P Monetization Tricks���
June Thomas, ���Sugar Coma���
Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman, ���The Most Realistic Game Ever���
Ian Bogost, ���Rage Against the Machines��� and Cow Clicker
Tuesday, April 21
GAMIFICATION
Lifehacker, ���Gamify Your Life: A Guide to Incentivizing Everything���
Michelle Greenwald, ���Gamification in Everything���
Dan Schawbel, ���How Gamification Is Going To Change The Workplace���
Ian Bogost, ���Why Gamification Is Bullshit���
Short: ���Sight���
Tuesday, April 28
COUNTERGAMING
Games: molleindustria.org
Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Countergaming���
Classes start after my red-eye from Vancouver Sunday night…
January 7, 2015
Closing All My Tabs Before I Flee The Country Links
* The new issue of Extrapolation is out! This one was put together before I was an editor, but it’s still really great stuff.
* CFPs:��Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2015.��Tolkien at the University of Vermont.��The Marquette Undergraduate Humanities Conference.
* Dear English Major: A 7-Step Guide to Your Final Semester as an English Major.
* It’s syllabus prep week at universities all across America. Here’s a provocative��one from Vanderbilt:��PHIL 213:��Police Violence and Mass Incarceration.
* #MLA:��Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet ��� And There���s No Easy Fix.
*��Solidarity without Affect: The MLA Subconference Enters Its Second Year.��Via Freddie deBoer.
* Give me the child at 18 or so, and I will give you the man: Nine Percent of 114th U.S. Congress Are Alumni of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
*��Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory.
*��California colleges see surge in efforts to unionize adjunct faculty.��Washington University adjunct faculty vote to form a union.
*��Is depression a kind of allergic reaction?
* Why we can’t have nice things, 2015 edition:��The Senate’s 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54��Republicans.
*��Pot Tax Adds $40 Million To Colorado���s Economy: Crime, Traffic Deaths And Unemployment Are Down.
*��The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls.
* Great moments in headcanon, Guardians of the Galaxy edition.
*��I say teach the controversy: ���Creationist: Aliens Will Go to Hell and Not Even Jesus Can Save Them.���
* Actual Supreme Court decisions: To remain silent, one must first speak.
* Dog bites man:��2014 Was The Hottest Year On Record Globally By Far.
*��On the 60th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov���s ���Lolita,�����the Los Angeles Review of Books has assembled a group of female authors, artists��and performers who, dedicated to examining the faces, bodies and voices of the young girl, consider the significance of Nabokov���s pubescent protagonist as both a literary conceit and an object of patriarchal fetish.
* The process used is ridiculous and would result in termination if used.
*��As a growing movement of unschoolers believe, a steady diet of standardized testing and indoor inactivity is choking the creativity right out of our kids. The alternative: set ‘em free.
*��Here���s a comic strip about children dying of preventable diseases.
* Horrible attack on a satirical magazine in Paris.
*��A Colorado NAACP Office Was Bombed Today.��A gasoline can near the bomb, apparently intended as a firebomb, failed to ignite.
*��People diagnosed with serious mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression — die 20 years early, on average, because of a combination of lousy medical care, smoking, lack of exercise, complications of medication, suicide, and accidents. They are the most discriminated-against and neglected group in the U.S., which has become probably the worst place in the developed world to be mentally ill.
*��Tangled, Brave, and Frozen All Made the Same Critical Mistake.
*��Nestle CEO: Water Is Not A Human Right, Should Be Privatized.
*��The Suburbanization of the US Working Class.
*��Few things we criminalize because they are ���harmful��� are anywhere close as harmful as prison.
*��How White Liberals Used Civil Rights to Create More Prisons.
*��Ferguson Grand Juror Sues Prosecutor To Lift Gag Order.
*��“The little girl come to my door,” 71-year-old Larry Wilkins told NBC News. “She told me that her mom and her dad were dead, and she was in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down. She asked if she could stay here.”
*�����I’m no longer watching television in which middle-aged men figure out how to be men. I’d rather watch shows about teenaged girls figuring out what it means to be a monster.���
*��A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below 25 grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: If you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s. (An inability to empathize with others has just got to be a disadvantage for any rich person seeking political office, at least outside of New York City.) “As you move up the class ladder,” says Keltner, “you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others. Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.”
*��Our New Politics of Torture.
*��The Cost of US Wars Since 9/11: a mere $1.6 Trillion.
*��The CIA has to approve every script for spy drama��The Americans.
* Here’s what’s in the new issue of The Journal of Puerile Mathematics.
* Preach!��Scientists Agree Work Makes You Wake Up Too Early.
*��United States Passes Old Soviet Union For Largest Prison System In History.
*��Visibility As Violence On Social Media.
*�����Bullsh*t jobs���: Guerrilla posters welcome commuters back to work.
*��In Preventing Trans Suicides, ‘We Have Such A Long Way To Go.’
*��The True Cost of Teach For America’s Impact on Urban Schools.
* I can’t believe I’d never read this before: the original script to Back to the Future is wonderfully bananas, including��the “nuke the fridge” scene from Crystal Skull thrown in as a sweetener.
* Peak neoliberalism: eventheliberal Kevin Drum says an AI revolution that will be “pretty brutal for the 90 percent of the population that occupies the middle classes and below” will be a “basically positive” development.
* PS: Drum might have been overestimating the timetable here.��In 10 years, your job might not exist.
*��The paper makes no claims about in-person classes or very large online courses, but says that the study’s findings provide “the first evidence that increasing class sizes in the online context may not degrade the quality of the class.” And the paper says that “these results could have important policy and financial implications.”
*��‘Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds’ ��� why are there so few women?
*��What To Do When You Discover Your Co-Worker Writes Erotic Hulk Fanfic.
*��Anti-terror plan to spy on toddlers ‘is heavy-handed.��� Well, that’s debatable.
*��67 Science Fiction And Fantasy Movies To Watch Out For In 2015.
*��The 20 Worst Films Of 2014.
*��The 10 Most Insignificant Wars in History.
*��A Nuclear Plant Leaked Oil Into Lake Michigan For Two Months Straight.
*��Police say at least 30 people are sleeping permanently in Madrid airport���s terminal 4 but the number goes up in winter.
*��In 1997 the Swedish parliament wrote into law a “Vision Zero” plan, promising to eliminate road fatalities and injuries altogether. “We simply do not accept any deaths or injuries on our roads,” says Hans Berg of the national transport agency. Swedes believe���and are now proving���that they can have mobility and safety at the same time.
* Cell Phones Don’t Seem to Cause Brain Cancer.
*��We lost our son to football and brain disease. This is our story.
*��They Might Be Giants, Again: The Adult Comeback of a Cult Band.��Even Dial-a-Song is back.
* Science fiction poetry: “Sci-Fi Violence.”
*��Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate.
* Star Trek: The Next Generation in forty hours.
* It’s good to get ahead of things:��Should Martians Pay U.S. Taxes?
*�����Hold for release till end of the world confirmed.���
* And the winner of the Worst Thing Written in 2015 has been announced. Thank you for your interest and we hope to see you again in 2016.
January 3, 2015
Weekend Links!
* The commentators calling $3,000 salaries evil a century ago would have an aneurysm at the sight of coaching contracts today. Deadspin found last year that college football coaches were the highest-paid state employees in twenty-seven states. (Basketball coaches held that status in another thirteen.) The salary inflation is a direct product of increasing college sports revenue, thanks in large part to massive television deals. Because the colleges and their athletic departments are nonprofit, they need to spend the money they bring in, and since they can���t pay players, there are only so many places that money can go. Head coaches and other athletic staffers are direct beneficiaries.
* My Favorite Graph of 2014: The Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percent.
* Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion.
* Elsewhere in the richest society ever in the history of the world.
* David Harvey and Leo Panitch: Beyond Impossible Reform and Improbable Revolution.
* North Korea, Sony, and stenography.
* The successful attempt to reduce fat in the diet of Americans and others around the world has been a global, uncontrolled experiment, which like all experiments may well have led to bad outcomes. What���s more, it has initiated a further set of uncontrolled global experiments that are continuing. Editorial in the British Medical Journal.
*��A new study from Stanford looks at what happened in Italy, when a 1961 law doubled the number of students in STEM majors graduating from the country���s universities.
* …when people claim that the ���free market��� system outproduced Soviet Communism, what they are saying is that markets more effectively produced discipline. It was more successful at imposing patterns of human action and restriction conducive to military and economic production than a command economy was capable of imposing.
*��“Why Is My Curriculum White?”
* If Tom Joad is alive after 1945, what is his future? Am I the only who sees him becoming a conservative like most of his fellow ex-sharecropper migrants and voting for Goldwater in 64? Grapes of Wrath fanfic at LGM.
* Neill Blomkamp’s Secret Alien Movie Looks So Good We’re Furious.
*��Math Suggests Most Cancers Are Caused By “Bad Luck.”
* Florida: We’re The Worst. Arizona: Not So Fast.
* And then there’s Wisconsin. Pregnant woman challenging Wisconsin protective custody law.
At the clinic, a urine test showed Loertscher was pregnant, and also revealed her past drug use. Another test confirmed she had a severe thyroid condition.
Medical officials shared the findings with the county social services personnel, who subsequently went to court and had a guardian ad litem appointed for Loertscher’s 14-week-old fetus.
Social workers asked Loertscher repeatedly to release her medical records to county officials, and said that if she didn’t, she would be jailed until she had her baby, which would then be put up for adoption.
* Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?
* UNC-Chapel Hill Firing Professor Over Academic Fraud Scandal.
* Lines mankind was never meant to cross: LEGO Awarded 3D Printing Patent, May Allow Users to Print Own Bricks.
* The NYPD is Ironically Proving that Most of Their Police Work is Completely Unnecessary. The Benefits of Fewer NYPD Arrests.
* And Traci Reardon and J.W. Stillwater have a good old fashioned New Year’s Sentiment Off.
January 1, 2015
Rise and Shine, It’s 2015! Links
*��2014 Kinda Sucked: A Look at Our Slow Descent Into Dystopia. I didn’t think it was all that slow.
* That annual tradition:��What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January��1,��2015?
* B^F:��“Ryan North reviews George Gipe’s insane novelization of Back to the Future, published before the book was released.”
*��Keywords for the Age of Austerity 14.5: “Errors in Judgment.”
*��This City Eliminated Poverty, And Nearly Everyone Forgot About It.
* How to be politically optimistic in Wisconsin.
*��In an alternate universe, the New York Police might have just solved the national community-policing controversy.��Routine harassment of citizens is down as much as 94%!
* I say teach the controversy:��No matter what vernacular is employed, the time has come for other alternatives to the handcuffs, leg irons and waist chains routinely used on incarcerated youth in the District.
* Carcetti for President:��Maryland Governor Will Commute All Remaining Death Sentences To Life Without Parole.
*�����DA Who Failed to Indict Killer Cop Now GOP Front Runner for Congress.��� 2015 starting out great!
* “Girls from a variety of backgrounds were featured within the campaign, reflecting that anyone can embody the spirit and character of Annie.”��Oh, Target.
*��Look, I get that the football players are angry. I even get that all the boosters who hadn’t stepped up before are now swearing that they would have donated millions of dollars to keep the program alive if only Watts had asked them. But the Faculty Senate? At a bare minimum, shouldn’t they have had the back of a president who wanted to stop draining money from academics into football, even if no one else did? Yeesh.
* “This book review by 13-year-old Eve Kosofsky (later Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, known for her brilliant work on queer theory) appeared in the January 1964 issue of Seventeen. You���re welcome.”
*��Researcher: Sony Hack Was Likely an Inside Job by a Woman Named “Lena.”
*��U.S. Solar Is 59 Percent Cheaper Than We Thought It Would Be Back In 2010.
* Salon’s charter school scam roundup for January 1.
*��White Flint isn’t completely dead, but the outlook is not good. The only stores still in operation are a Lord & Taylor and a P.F. Chang’s. On Jan. 4, the P.F. Chang’s will close.��Why I’m Mourning The Death Of A Mall.
* And Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal rings in the New Year right with the Uncomfortable Truthasaurus.
December 31, 2014
NYE Links!
* Finally, my moment has arrived: Smuggling LEGO is the new smuggling diamonds.
*��The New Brand of Jesuit Universities.
* On Optimism: Looking Ahead to 2015.
* From climate denialism to��climate cashing-in with nothing in between.��Are We Approaching the End of Human History?
*��Thanks to energy drilling operations, northern New Mexico is now covered by “a permanent, Delaware-sized methane cloud.”
* Serial, episode thirteen: 1, 2, 3 coming today or tomorrow I think. A sort-of out-there blog post on what it could all mean: The Serial Podcast: The Possible Legal Implications of Jay’s Interview for Jay & Adnan.
*��UI Chancellor Responds To Salaita Report. This is actually a fairly significant walk-back of Wise’s position — I think she’s actually more progressive on academic freedom than Cary Nelson now — though since she’s still pretending Salaita wasn’t actually hired it doesn’t do much good for him.
*��Professors are teaching less while administrators proliferate. Let���s find out how all that tuition is being spent.��Colleges Need a Business Productivity Audit.��Of course the actual text of the article zeroes in on instruction first, which is not the source of the problem…
* It’s the original sin of college football, and you’ll never guess what it is.��In Harbaugh hire, excessive pay would send wrong message.��How one former coach perpetuated a cheating scheme that benefited hundreds of college athletes.��Shut down middling college football programs and shift the money back to instruction.
* The arc of history is long, but: New Michigan Law Bars College Athletes From Unionizing.
* Another angle on the growing Title IX mess:��Mothers of accused college rapists fight back.
*��Rise of the Simulations: Why We Play At Hard Work.
* Brent Bellamy reviews��Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s The Collapse of Western Civilization.
* 538 profiles the best damn board game on the planet, Twilight Struggle.
* Really interesting idea from Bleeding Cool about what might be happening with Marvel’s sliding timescale.��I could honestly see them doing this, or something like it, at least until they start getting some��rights back.
*��Profit from Crisis: Why capitalists do not want recovery, and what that means for America.
*��Anthropology and the rise of the professional-managerial class.
*��Is Wisconsin destined to be a Rust Belt backwater?
*��Why Idris Elba Can���t Play James Bond.
* Seriously, though, sometimes you can’t just switch the skin tones and have the story turn out the same.
*��Seven ���great��� teaching methods not backed up by��evidence.
.* BREAKING:��Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion.
* Counterpoint:��Black and African writers don���t need instructions from Ben Okri.
* To Discipline and Punish: Milwaukee Police Make Late Night Visits.
* I say teach the controversy:��Kids and Jails, a Bad Combination.
*��
* This Deadspin piece has really made me regret softening my anti-Vox stance in recent months.
* Sounds like the Afghanistan war has ended again. This is #3 or #4 at least, right?
* How to destroy a city: just build a highway.
* The CDC is saying we’re all going to get the flu.
* And as if the IMF wasn’t bad enough.
*�����Why should the legality of a sale of secrecy depend entirely upon who initiates the transaction? Why is bribery legal but blackmail not?���
* Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People.
*��No Charges for Police Chief Who Used Badge to Try and Intimidate Teen into Posing Nude.
* …but believe it or not��it is��possible for a cop to get fired over a fatal shooting.
*��LAPD Launches Investigation Into ‘Dead, Dead Michael Brown’ Song Sung at Retired Cop’s Party.
*��The labor movement should rally against police violence, whether police unions like it or not.��I think we should let this whole work stoppage thing play out personally.
* Emails and Racist Chats Show How Cops and GOP Are Teaming Up to Undermine de Blasio. The headline actually undersells the severity of a story where they talk about planting drugs on his daughter.
*��Horrifying civil liberties predictions for 2015.
* Elsewhere in the richest city in the richest nation ever in the history of the world.
*��Military Turns To Prison Labor For $100 Million In Uniforms — At $2-Per-Hour Wages.
*��What Stalled the Gender Revolution? Child Care That Costs More Than College Tuition.
* North Dakota to eliminate taxes because fracking fracking fracking forever fracking. What could go wrong?
* Real life Alien vs. Predator: Cuomo vs. the New York State Legislature.
But Cuomo has insisted he would agree to a pay hike only if the Legislature addressed a long series of criminal and ethical charges against many of its members by passing several reforms, such as a limit on outside incomes earned by lawmakers and a system of publicly financed campaigns.
The legislative leaders, however, responded that Cuomo was making demands he knew were unacceptable in a politically motivated effort to appear as a reformer because he���s under federal��investigation for dismantling his anti-corruption Moreland Commission panel.
*�����Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good thing.���
* Streetcars, maybe not so great?
* Heartbreaking story of a trans teen’s suicide, based on a suicide note that went viral. Now go hug your kid.
*
A Few Goodmen: Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors
ALLEN C. GOODMAN (Wayne State University)
JOSHUA GOODMAN (Harvard University)
LUCAS GOODMAN (University of Maryland)
SARENA GOODMAN (Federal Reserve Board)
We explore the phenomenon of coauthorship by economists who share a surname. Prior research has included at most three economist coauthors who share a surname. Ours is the first paper to have four economist coauthors who share a surname, as well as the first where such coauthors are unrelated by marriage, blood or current campus.
* Bat-Kierkegaard:��The Dark Knight of Faith.
*��Want to feel old? This Is What the Cast of Doug Looks Like Now.
* For its first Star Wars spinoff Disney has selected the impossible task of recasting Harrison Ford. They chose… poorly.
* Austerity in everything: Science proves once-in-a-lifetime moments will just make you more depressed.
* And there’s more!��You���re more likely to die on your birthday.
*��Living at a high altitude may make people 30% more likely to commit��suicide.
* “Deputies said the shooting appears accidental”:��Idaho toddler shoots and kills his mother inside Walmart.
* Wake up, sheeple! Back to the Future predicted 9/11.
* From io9:��Physics students at the University of Leicester claim to have calculated the amount of energy required to transform water into wine.
*��Celebrities That Look Like Mattresses.
* And I guess I always knew I’d die on a roller coaster.
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