We're now former Washington Mutual customers, since they bit the big one last night and were forcibly sold to JPMorgan (as they call the conglomeration of former banks and financial institutions). It's the largest failure in US history as of 6:48 PDT today, but there's no really good reason at this point to believe they'll hold the record all that long.
So, the question I have is, how do I pay my rent? What happens to the automatic bills paid out of that account?
It's gonna be an interesting month.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
business as usual for Dow
Dow chemical got out of a lawsuit today that accused them of selling a pesticide that they knew caused sterility. They knew of the problems since the 1950s, continued to sell the pesticide in the US until it was banned in 1979, and continued selling it overseas until the mid 1980s.
The suit charged Dow with genocide and crimes against humanity, and the federal court ruling basically says the case doesn't fit the description of those crimes. It does not say what Dow did was acceptable, just that it wasn't deliberately genocidal. Dow's attorney claimed the ruling meant that Dow "is completely blameless, both factually and legally." He did not add "... of a deliberate policy of genocide."
All of which adds up to a new corporate motto:
Dow Chemical: Not As Bad As Mengele
The suit charged Dow with genocide and crimes against humanity, and the federal court ruling basically says the case doesn't fit the description of those crimes. It does not say what Dow did was acceptable, just that it wasn't deliberately genocidal. Dow's attorney claimed the ruling meant that Dow "is completely blameless, both factually and legally." He did not add "... of a deliberate policy of genocide."
All of which adds up to a new corporate motto:
Dow Chemical: Not As Bad As Mengele
Monday, September 22, 2008
my loveliest's birthday
This is for my love. This is the fifth of her birthdays we've spent together. It may not be high art, but it's meant.
impossible to contemplate
a thousand days without you
a century ago
the million hours
passed in the dark
uncountable dark
when I say you are a miracle
I mean you are the sun,
I mean you are
impossible to contemplate,
I mean you are the sun
impossible to contemplate
the dawn without you
or centuries, or hours
or anything,
even the dark
when I say you are the sun
I mean you are a miracle,
the centuries, the hours,
the miracle of light,
impossible to contemplate
impossible to contemplate
a thousand days without you
a century ago
the million hours
passed in the dark
uncountable dark
when I say you are a miracle
I mean you are the sun,
I mean you are
impossible to contemplate,
I mean you are the sun
impossible to contemplate
the dawn without you
or centuries, or hours
or anything,
even the dark
when I say you are the sun
I mean you are a miracle,
the centuries, the hours,
the miracle of light,
impossible to contemplate
some of these things are not like the others
Two timely items from the ongoing list of
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
18. Live theatrical performances. I just love 'em.
As advertised, we saw Cabaret in San Francisco Saturday night. It was terrific. At the end of August we hit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Othello, which were also terrific.
But indeed, I have a history of enjoying theatrical performances even when they're not any good. Way back in college, UNC Charlotte hosted the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival every summer - the only free professional theater in the US at the time. Mainly the plays were excellent, the performances excellent, but every once in a while there was a stinker. There was a completely useless and bizarrely inept staging of a Tennessee Williams play one summer that I probably should have been thrown out of. It was great.
Live theater always gives you something. Sometimes it's of questionable intrinsic quality, but you still get it. And it's all happening right there in front of you, so if it's a train wreck, it's a train wreck, and nobody can stop it. That's thrilling.
17. Ironic political comeuppances. I just love 'em.
Turns out that John McCain's chief of staff is gay. So McCain, who is in favor of states passing constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex marriages, and whose choice for vice-president is a devotee of a bizarre hate-mongering religious cult, apparently either doesn't know, or doesn't mind that Mark Buse, his chief of staff, is gay. (It's unlikely he doesn't know, if, as has been reported, McCain has attended dinner parties thrown by Buse and his partner.) It's a level of hypocrisy that most people find objectionable, and frankly difficult to reach. But McCain is a talented guy.
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
18. Live theatrical performances. I just love 'em.
As advertised, we saw Cabaret in San Francisco Saturday night. It was terrific. At the end of August we hit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Othello, which were also terrific.
But indeed, I have a history of enjoying theatrical performances even when they're not any good. Way back in college, UNC Charlotte hosted the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival every summer - the only free professional theater in the US at the time. Mainly the plays were excellent, the performances excellent, but every once in a while there was a stinker. There was a completely useless and bizarrely inept staging of a Tennessee Williams play one summer that I probably should have been thrown out of. It was great.
Live theater always gives you something. Sometimes it's of questionable intrinsic quality, but you still get it. And it's all happening right there in front of you, so if it's a train wreck, it's a train wreck, and nobody can stop it. That's thrilling.
17. Ironic political comeuppances. I just love 'em.
Turns out that John McCain's chief of staff is gay. So McCain, who is in favor of states passing constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex marriages, and whose choice for vice-president is a devotee of a bizarre hate-mongering religious cult, apparently either doesn't know, or doesn't mind that Mark Buse, his chief of staff, is gay. (It's unlikely he doesn't know, if, as has been reported, McCain has attended dinner parties thrown by Buse and his partner.) It's a level of hypocrisy that most people find objectionable, and frankly difficult to reach. But McCain is a talented guy.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
quick with the updatings, cuz tired
Back from a whirlwind trip to San Francisco to celebrate my loveliest's birthday. I had a sneaky plan all cooked up, to crash at an old teeny hotel and to go see Cabaret at the SF Playhouse. Cabaret was terrific. I think most people have only seen the rather tame movie version; this was something else entirely, and excellently done.
But I've still gots stuffs to do before class again on tomorrow morning. To read a blog with more actual content than this, do go check out my sweetest's entry concerning women's rights and the election.
But I've still gots stuffs to do before class again on tomorrow morning. To read a blog with more actual content than this, do go check out my sweetest's entry concerning women's rights and the election.
Friday, September 19, 2008
morning constitutional
It's Constitution Day!
Please take a moment to reflect upon the Constitution, whether it's the constitution of meaning by an intersubjective community, or the constitution of fraud by a series of acts, or even just the reconstitution of lemon juice in one of those little oval squirt bottles.
Or, if you swing this way, you could celebrate your Constitutional rights by wire-tapping yourself.
EDIT @ 7:03 AM:
This just in from the Modesto Bee: Economy in crisis. I guess that when, finally, the Bee notices a news story, it becomes more official somehow.
Please take a moment to reflect upon the Constitution, whether it's the constitution of meaning by an intersubjective community, or the constitution of fraud by a series of acts, or even just the reconstitution of lemon juice in one of those little oval squirt bottles.
Or, if you swing this way, you could celebrate your Constitutional rights by wire-tapping yourself.
EDIT @ 7:03 AM:
This just in from the Modesto Bee: Economy in crisis. I guess that when, finally, the Bee notices a news story, it becomes more official somehow.
Monday, September 15, 2008
fun and frolic in contingent academic employment
I subscribe to an email list for contingent academics. Someone on the list half-jokingly suggested that there should be an Exploitation Of The Week archive. It might be warranted, following the last week.
On Thursday, Inside Higher Ed published the story of San Antonio College administators requiring part-time faculty working full-time to sign a waiver indicating they are still part-time and won't be paid for additional work, or receive health benefits. The contingent academic email list went nuts. The comments section on the Inside Higher Ed story went nuts.
Almost immediately, San Antonio college officials said they'd restore wages and benefits, and that the whole policy would come to an end. It turns out, according to one dean, that nobody ever told the administration that it was wrong not to pay people for working. Some people need practical advice.
This morning brings the news that a long-time faculty member at Central New Mexico Community College has been summarily separated from employment, with apparently no notice, after hosting a Bastille Day event commemorating folkie/activist Utah Phillips.
(Neither college has a unionized faculty. I don't think that's a coincidence.)
What will tomorrow bring? It's almost as exciting as watching the finance industry collapse!
On Thursday, Inside Higher Ed published the story of San Antonio College administators requiring part-time faculty working full-time to sign a waiver indicating they are still part-time and won't be paid for additional work, or receive health benefits. The contingent academic email list went nuts. The comments section on the Inside Higher Ed story went nuts.
Almost immediately, San Antonio college officials said they'd restore wages and benefits, and that the whole policy would come to an end. It turns out, according to one dean, that nobody ever told the administration that it was wrong not to pay people for working. Some people need practical advice.
This morning brings the news that a long-time faculty member at Central New Mexico Community College has been summarily separated from employment, with apparently no notice, after hosting a Bastille Day event commemorating folkie/activist Utah Phillips.
(Neither college has a unionized faculty. I don't think that's a coincidence.)
What will tomorrow bring? It's almost as exciting as watching the finance industry collapse!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
what we have here is failure to communicate
One of the reasons I got into philosophy was a keen interest in communication breakdowns and meaninglessness (along with identity crises, personality collapses, world catastrophes). This led me to a nihilistic brand of existentialism, wherein hope for meaning or authentic communication between persons is always dashed because of a fundamental human incapacity for empathy. [As I think I've noted here before, I was a strange kid.] A few thousand pages of Pinter, Joyce, Nietzsche, Camus, de Sade, Stoppard and Beckett later, and I turned out to be a rather misanthropic and somewhat paranoid person.
Right about then, I ran into phenomenology, in particular the phenomenology of language and meaning as discussed by Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty. Here was something entirely different. Directly challenging my sense of the meaninglessness of communication - and the communication of meaninglessness - these guys were saying that human life is meaningful, expressive and communicative from the level of speech all the way down: gesture, physical style, even the style of perception.
I had been thinking of the problem and tragedy of communication as the failure of language to express and to create intersubjective communion between persons. Pinter's plays, for example, are exercises in people speaking in ways that torture meaning and other people. Any time anyone in any of his plays says anything, they demonstrate the futility of communication - at least, this was what I thought.
But I had to re-appraise, because while speech seemed a hopeless avenue for communication, gesture didn't. I eventually came to feel that intersubjective communion is formed not through but almost despite speech, or, better, that speech is what we do when intersubjective communion can't go further. To put this another way, I was on the verge of the thought that intersubjective communion is silent sharing of present-tense living experience, and that we resort to language, to breaking that silence, only when there's a gap, a hole, or an obstacle to communion. Speech is what happens when shared meaning breaks down.
You get that in Beckett very nicely, I now believe. There's a whole heck of a lot of silence in Beckett's work, especially the novels. And in the novels, the torrent of words describing nothing serves as the background for the revealed meaning that silence has in relation to it.
Ever interested in pathology, I took up this silence project in order to ask whether the technical world of constant media bombardment could so overwhelm us that the silence is drowned out, obliterated - and with it, the possibility of meaning. This is all much more nuanced than I'm laying it out here, thanks to Dauenhauer, Merleau-Ponty, and other folks I'm reading, but the project is returning me to those old and fundamental stakes of my involvement in philosophy.
I'm working on what I'm calling for the moment the Strange Thesis, which is that communication always succeeds and always fails, in that it needs silence for speech to have a place, it needs speech for silence to have a direction and meaning, and it needs to be obstructed for there to be anything to communicate.
That's been my day. We also went to the post office.
Right about then, I ran into phenomenology, in particular the phenomenology of language and meaning as discussed by Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty. Here was something entirely different. Directly challenging my sense of the meaninglessness of communication - and the communication of meaninglessness - these guys were saying that human life is meaningful, expressive and communicative from the level of speech all the way down: gesture, physical style, even the style of perception.
I had been thinking of the problem and tragedy of communication as the failure of language to express and to create intersubjective communion between persons. Pinter's plays, for example, are exercises in people speaking in ways that torture meaning and other people. Any time anyone in any of his plays says anything, they demonstrate the futility of communication - at least, this was what I thought.
But I had to re-appraise, because while speech seemed a hopeless avenue for communication, gesture didn't. I eventually came to feel that intersubjective communion is formed not through but almost despite speech, or, better, that speech is what we do when intersubjective communion can't go further. To put this another way, I was on the verge of the thought that intersubjective communion is silent sharing of present-tense living experience, and that we resort to language, to breaking that silence, only when there's a gap, a hole, or an obstacle to communion. Speech is what happens when shared meaning breaks down.
You get that in Beckett very nicely, I now believe. There's a whole heck of a lot of silence in Beckett's work, especially the novels. And in the novels, the torrent of words describing nothing serves as the background for the revealed meaning that silence has in relation to it.
Ever interested in pathology, I took up this silence project in order to ask whether the technical world of constant media bombardment could so overwhelm us that the silence is drowned out, obliterated - and with it, the possibility of meaning. This is all much more nuanced than I'm laying it out here, thanks to Dauenhauer, Merleau-Ponty, and other folks I'm reading, but the project is returning me to those old and fundamental stakes of my involvement in philosophy.
I'm working on what I'm calling for the moment the Strange Thesis, which is that communication always succeeds and always fails, in that it needs silence for speech to have a place, it needs speech for silence to have a direction and meaning, and it needs to be obstructed for there to be anything to communicate.
That's been my day. We also went to the post office.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
blogging for dummies
Tomorrow my classes start. It'll be 103, so I'm not walking to school, which is very disappointing, because I like walking to school.
In the meantime,
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
19. Picnics. I just love 'em.
Food, the outdoors, people you like - what could be better? My favorite picnics involve fresh bread, cheese, fruit, and wine, but excellent results are obtainable with PB&J, a bag of mini pretzels and bottles of water, or really just anything that's eatable outside. A body of water nearby is a huge plus, and available shade, preferably from trees, is a sine qua non. Having hiked helps, too.
Saturday is the annual university labor unions-sponsored picnic. It's gonna be big this year, I hear: 250 or so have RSVPed. It's gonna be 103 Saturday, too. Apparently, CFA has rented shade for the day, and it's going to be near the pond on campus I call "Projectile-vomiting Goat-head Lake," but I think hiking is out.
I've picnicked in all kinds of weather, including some weather that strongly contraindicates picnicking, so this is nothing new.
20. Internet time-wasters. I just love 'em.
I'm always grateful when bloggers link to online quizzes, personality surveys, IQ tests, trivia games, and other goofy crap like that. I don't spend an inordinate amount of time on them, but occasionally one finds oneself enraptured by them. I think the most dangerous is Lolcats. Damn, is it easy to spend an hour on Lolcats.
I've also recently been digging image generators that let you do stuff like add cartoon speech or thought balloons to images, for instance:
Or book covers:
In the meantime,
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
19. Picnics. I just love 'em.
Food, the outdoors, people you like - what could be better? My favorite picnics involve fresh bread, cheese, fruit, and wine, but excellent results are obtainable with PB&J, a bag of mini pretzels and bottles of water, or really just anything that's eatable outside. A body of water nearby is a huge plus, and available shade, preferably from trees, is a sine qua non. Having hiked helps, too.
Saturday is the annual university labor unions-sponsored picnic. It's gonna be big this year, I hear: 250 or so have RSVPed. It's gonna be 103 Saturday, too. Apparently, CFA has rented shade for the day, and it's going to be near the pond on campus I call "Projectile-vomiting Goat-head Lake," but I think hiking is out.
I've picnicked in all kinds of weather, including some weather that strongly contraindicates picnicking, so this is nothing new.
20. Internet time-wasters. I just love 'em.
I'm always grateful when bloggers link to online quizzes, personality surveys, IQ tests, trivia games, and other goofy crap like that. I don't spend an inordinate amount of time on them, but occasionally one finds oneself enraptured by them. I think the most dangerous is Lolcats. Damn, is it easy to spend an hour on Lolcats.
I've also recently been digging image generators that let you do stuff like add cartoon speech or thought balloons to images, for instance:
Or book covers:
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
how can this be? tell me!! how??!!
The 2008-2009 academic year begins tomorrow, with a day of long meetings of university, college, and department faculty, when we'll all hear about the wonderful plan CSU has for our lives.
I start classes on Friday, which is completely ridiculous. It's not the first time.
So, although I regret the end of the summer, I do have that strange feeling of a new beginning that I often get at the start of a school year. Or is that heartburn?
I start classes on Friday, which is completely ridiculous. It's not the first time.
So, although I regret the end of the summer, I do have that strange feeling of a new beginning that I often get at the start of a school year. Or is that heartburn?
Friday, August 29, 2008
vacationtime
Purpose of trip: (1) To attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. (2) To catch up with my friend Nancy from North Carolina, whom I hadn't seen in around 6 years, and who hadn't met Lauren. (3) To see the Redwoods and the California and Oregon coasts.
Duration of trip: 4 days, as follows:
Day 1: Drive 360 miles from Turlock to Ashland, through the Central Valley and the Mt. Shasta region.
Day 2: Morning in Blue Moon Bed and Breakfast; wandering cute-cum-touristy downtown Ashland; A Midsummer Night's Dream at 1:30; move to Super 8 near freeway; return to downtown Ashland; Othello at 8; return to Super 8 for much needed cooling-off period.
Day 3: Drive 180 miles to Bullard Beach State Park, near Bandon, Oregon; meet up with Nancy; walk on beach; lunch in Bandon; wander cute-cum-fishy downtown Bandon; drive 130 miles down Oregon coast, with stops for gawking and road construction, to Crescent City, CA Travelodge.
Day 4: Drive 460 miles, down US 101 through Redwoods, dodging road construction until reaching Calpella, then on CA 20 past Clear Lake and over the pass into the Central Valley at Williams (pausing for road construction), then on I 5, suddenly realizing that Sacramento traffic would be in high dudgeon upon arrival and choosing a side-trip to Sacramento's Ikea store (stopping, then crawling, then stopping, then crawling, from 4:49 until 5:45, over a distance of 6 miles, due to an accident that occurred shortly after 4 pm, before reaching the appropriate exit), then on down I 5 to Stockton, then CA 99 (the Crankster Freeway), pausing for road construction, to Turlock, arriving home at 9 pm.
Assessment and evaluation:
(1) Drive to Ashland.
Duration of trip: 4 days, as follows:
Day 1: Drive 360 miles from Turlock to Ashland, through the Central Valley and the Mt. Shasta region.
Day 2: Morning in Blue Moon Bed and Breakfast; wandering cute-cum-touristy downtown Ashland; A Midsummer Night's Dream at 1:30; move to Super 8 near freeway; return to downtown Ashland; Othello at 8; return to Super 8 for much needed cooling-off period.
Day 3: Drive 180 miles to Bullard Beach State Park, near Bandon, Oregon; meet up with Nancy; walk on beach; lunch in Bandon; wander cute-cum-fishy downtown Bandon; drive 130 miles down Oregon coast, with stops for gawking and road construction, to Crescent City, CA Travelodge.
Day 4: Drive 460 miles, down US 101 through Redwoods, dodging road construction until reaching Calpella, then on CA 20 past Clear Lake and over the pass into the Central Valley at Williams (pausing for road construction), then on I 5, suddenly realizing that Sacramento traffic would be in high dudgeon upon arrival and choosing a side-trip to Sacramento's Ikea store (stopping, then crawling, then stopping, then crawling, from 4:49 until 5:45, over a distance of 6 miles, due to an accident that occurred shortly after 4 pm, before reaching the appropriate exit), then on down I 5 to Stockton, then CA 99 (the Crankster Freeway), pausing for road construction, to Turlock, arriving home at 9 pm.
Assessment and evaluation:
(1) Drive to Ashland.
Pretty.
(2a) Ashland.
Pretty. Cute. Food. Blue Moon B&B was pin-neat, which worked. We suffered the Great August Kitten Access Scare. The next morning, after breakfast, the Great August Kitten Access Scare was resolved, just before we entered a cd shop.
(2b) A Midsummer Night's Dream. Pretty. Hilarious. They did the faeries as 80s "club kids," you know, fairies - which was completely goofy but somehow managed to be sexy. Actually, the entire production was archly ridiculous but also tremendously oversexed, which some of us like, a lot. They had musical numbers, there was a guitar solo by Bottom in the closing, just nutsy stuff left and right - the players were done as hippies, and they came out in a VW microbus.
(2c) Moving, dinner. Eh. We went to a pub that looked like just the thing (Guinness on tap, pub fare), but the food was unimpressive or odd. After running back and forth to the parked car twice in mishaps, Othello. It wasn't pretty. They played in totally straight, with costumes that could have been 19th century or 16th, weirdly. Iago was sometimes hard to hear, in the very back row of the bottom bowl of the theater. They played Iago as driven by irrational but uncontrollable envy and pride - a real seven-deadlies approach, which was good. I don't like the idea of a psychotic Iago or a jealous Iago very much, and although there is plenty of racism in the play, I don't like the idea of racist Iago either. We left at 11:15, got back to the fabulous Super 8 by 11:30, and by then, what with the Great August Kitten Access Scare, all that Shakespeare, and having finished our day with Othello, coming home with few wits intact, we needed serious downtime.
(3a) Driving to Bullard. Pretty. Oregon road signs are sometimes hard to read, very small, or misdirecting. Plus the directions I'd obtained from Google didn't direct us to the right place. But we managed. I was tired and a bit snippy.
(3b) Meeting Nancy, walking on the beach, eating lunch in Bandon. Nancy is the kind of person that is immediately comfortable to be around. She'd had a lot of trouble getting out of Charlotte for her vacation, but made it at last. It was wonderful to see her again. The beach was nice too. We probably walked a couple miles, and Lauren got to dip her toes in the ocean, which is vital to her well-being. We had lunch at a bait-and-tackle shop that sold fresh fried fish in various formats, and the ubiquitous clam chowder.
(3c) Oregon coast.
Pretty. Rocks, water, fantastic views. We hit Crescent City by 6, got into the motel room, walked to the Safeway to buy non-fried, non-meat, non-restaurant, non-pub foodstuffs, which was perfect for dinner. Long period of decompression.
(4) Redwoods.
Pretty. I made the mistake of not taking an immediate side-trip to get into the woods, but as it turned out, that's for the best, since unbeknownst to us at 9 am when we left, we'd be in for a 12-hour day of driving. So instead of pretty hiking, we had pretty driving. And it was, very very. By the time we got to Laytonville (a tiny rural burg we suspect of being owned by Willie Nelson, since we saw half a dozen guys there who looked like Willie Nelson, and they had a biodiesel fueling station and what was probably a head shop), it was 98 degrees. The rest of the drive was very hot, over 100 all the way around Clear Lake
and down into the Central Valley.
Conclusions:
(1) We're going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival again.
(2) We're going to tour the Redwoods in more depth some time.
(3) We need to get to the coast oftener.
Friday, August 22, 2008
interface u
With the new academic year fast approaching (all too fast approaching, but that's another story), I've been working on getting classes together, with the usual combined feeling of hope and anxiety, punctuated by bursts of rage when Blackboard does something stupid. Among the times of the year, this is one of them.
Blackboard, for those who don't have the pleasure, is a proprietary web-based course software package. Schools and colleges pay the Blackboard people (and a few others who offer similar packages) thousands and thousands of dollars for the licenses to run these, and spend thousands more on servers to run them. There are some extremely avid users of Blackboard among faculty I know - and by some, I mean, let's see... 2.
I use Blackboard, but I don't like it. I use it mainly to avoid having students pay a publishing company $100 or more apiece for a textbook that doesn't work well for my course.
Some people use Blackboard to "deliver" entire courses. I loathe this expression, and I don't even know what it's supposed to mean, unless a course is a ready-made package of material, and in that case, I don't think I know what "teaching" means, other than to be a delivery-system for information.
(What really surprises me is that some faculty seem to feel just fine about that model of teaching, and don't seem to recognize the implication of it that is glaringly obvious to me: ultimately, there's no way I can compete with digital media as a delivery-system for information. I create way more noise, am far less efficient, and I demand a higher wage.)
This year, I've decided to use Blackboard to "deliver" quizzes to my Professional Ethics students, as a way for them to gauge that they've understood a couple key points in the reading, and also as a bit of a prod to keep them up to date on the reading. I thought it was a good idea. Sometimes that kind of prodding is just what a student needs to keep from procrastinating too much. There are a lot of students like that.
But this requires that I use Blackboard's test creator function, which is the computer interface equivalent of tooth extraction via renal catheter. So when I think of my colleagues who enthuse about Blackboard, and who use it to "deliver" courses, which presumably these faculty have designed through Blackboard's various routines, I gotta wonder.
And is it just as wondrous an experience for students? Do major insurers cover this procedure?
Anyway, today I took a break from all that, and we walked around at Knight's Ferry instead.
Blackboard, for those who don't have the pleasure, is a proprietary web-based course software package. Schools and colleges pay the Blackboard people (and a few others who offer similar packages) thousands and thousands of dollars for the licenses to run these, and spend thousands more on servers to run them. There are some extremely avid users of Blackboard among faculty I know - and by some, I mean, let's see... 2.
I use Blackboard, but I don't like it. I use it mainly to avoid having students pay a publishing company $100 or more apiece for a textbook that doesn't work well for my course.
Some people use Blackboard to "deliver" entire courses. I loathe this expression, and I don't even know what it's supposed to mean, unless a course is a ready-made package of material, and in that case, I don't think I know what "teaching" means, other than to be a delivery-system for information.
(What really surprises me is that some faculty seem to feel just fine about that model of teaching, and don't seem to recognize the implication of it that is glaringly obvious to me: ultimately, there's no way I can compete with digital media as a delivery-system for information. I create way more noise, am far less efficient, and I demand a higher wage.)
This year, I've decided to use Blackboard to "deliver" quizzes to my Professional Ethics students, as a way for them to gauge that they've understood a couple key points in the reading, and also as a bit of a prod to keep them up to date on the reading. I thought it was a good idea. Sometimes that kind of prodding is just what a student needs to keep from procrastinating too much. There are a lot of students like that.
But this requires that I use Blackboard's test creator function, which is the computer interface equivalent of tooth extraction via renal catheter. So when I think of my colleagues who enthuse about Blackboard, and who use it to "deliver" courses, which presumably these faculty have designed through Blackboard's various routines, I gotta wonder.
And is it just as wondrous an experience for students? Do major insurers cover this procedure?
Anyway, today I took a break from all that, and we walked around at Knight's Ferry instead.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
California, here we come!
I found out about a year ago that California's corporate law has some interesting features, for instance, that if a California non-profit corporation does something amiss, like failing to file taxes for several years, the State can suspend, or even revoke, that corporation's Articles of Incorporation. This effectively forces the corporation to re-charter itself under a new name, and if the State, which has no resources to dedicate to the task, somehow discovers the ruse, why, that corporation is subject to the ultimate penalty - you guessed it, not being permitted to contract.
So I wasn't that surprised when I read that two unaccredited colleges are moving to California from Idaho, to open doors along with possibly dozens more, since California now has no regulatory agency to oversee businesses operating as colleges.
[You know what's coming, don't you?]
So, we're pleased to announce that, as of August 20, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. has re-opened in California. And unlike Breyer State University and Canyon College, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. is accredited, just not by the usual agency. Plus, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. is the only entirely on-line college that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in fields from A to Z, with no coursework, no exams, no needless paperwork, and all for no tuition or fees!
So I wasn't that surprised when I read that two unaccredited colleges are moving to California from Idaho, to open doors along with possibly dozens more, since California now has no regulatory agency to oversee businesses operating as colleges.
[You know what's coming, don't you?]
So, we're pleased to announce that, as of August 20, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. has re-opened in California. And unlike Breyer State University and Canyon College, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. is accredited, just not by the usual agency. Plus, Doc Nagel, Inc. U. is the only entirely on-line college that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in fields from A to Z, with no coursework, no exams, no needless paperwork, and all for no tuition or fees!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
birthday dinner
So, we threw the big birthday dinner party yesterday, starting around 3, and ending around midnightish. Ten courses is a lot.
My favorite item was the shrimp with saffron mousseline.
Outrageous. The mousseline is a sort of hollandaise, with whipped cream added. I added saffron to the lemon juice reduction that is central to hollandaise, also to the egg yolks, also to the butter, and also to the cream. I added a little sugar, because saffron suggests this. Completely, completely insane preparation. Utterly ludicrous dish. Ridiculously flamboyant. I was giddy about it, giggling the whole time I was whipping butter into the sauce. I mean, who makes saffron mousseline? Who would have ever eaten it? See? amuse gueule! Tee-hee-hee-hee!
The other amuse was melon, mozzarella, and prosciutto en brochette.
I made a sauce for these from balsamic vinegar reduced to 1/4 volume, with a bit of sugar, Kirschwasser, and a plum in it (then strained out). Madness. It was tart and sweet and tasty and loved the holy heck out of the melon, mozzarella and prosciutto.
The last dish we took a picture of was the first entrée, tilapia with a basil-spinach-lemon-butter sauce.
Hah! I read a recipe for fish cooked "chartreuse," which means braised in tomato, carrot, onion, and spinach (for the color, hence the name), and made something really entirely unlike that, thinking "Hey, green sauce on fish. Cool." It was, in fact: the fish was served cold, along with all the first several courses, since it was 100 degrees at 3 pm. So, complete menu:
AMUSES:
shrimp with saffron mousseline
melon, prosciutto, and mozzarella skewers
HORS-D'OUEVRE
toasts with Provençal tapenade
SOUP
Portuguese consommé (cold, slightly spicy, tomato-infused consommé)
FIRST ENTRÉE
tilapia with chef’s chartreuse sauce
SALAD
SECOND ENTRÉE
ratatouille (cooked by roasting rather than stewing)
basil and rosemary sorbet
MAIN COURSE
herb-encrusted rack of lamb, with vegetables
DESSERT
fruits and cheeses
Everybody seemed to have different favorites. Everyone marveled at the sorbet, which was in fact pretty nifty, if I do say so myself. The ratatouille was perfect. The lamb was gorgeous. But nothing beats the satisfaction of the saffron mousseline.
My favorite item was the shrimp with saffron mousseline.
Outrageous. The mousseline is a sort of hollandaise, with whipped cream added. I added saffron to the lemon juice reduction that is central to hollandaise, also to the egg yolks, also to the butter, and also to the cream. I added a little sugar, because saffron suggests this. Completely, completely insane preparation. Utterly ludicrous dish. Ridiculously flamboyant. I was giddy about it, giggling the whole time I was whipping butter into the sauce. I mean, who makes saffron mousseline? Who would have ever eaten it? See? amuse gueule! Tee-hee-hee-hee!
The other amuse was melon, mozzarella, and prosciutto en brochette.
I made a sauce for these from balsamic vinegar reduced to 1/4 volume, with a bit of sugar, Kirschwasser, and a plum in it (then strained out). Madness. It was tart and sweet and tasty and loved the holy heck out of the melon, mozzarella and prosciutto.
The last dish we took a picture of was the first entrée, tilapia with a basil-spinach-lemon-butter sauce.
Hah! I read a recipe for fish cooked "chartreuse," which means braised in tomato, carrot, onion, and spinach (for the color, hence the name), and made something really entirely unlike that, thinking "Hey, green sauce on fish. Cool." It was, in fact: the fish was served cold, along with all the first several courses, since it was 100 degrees at 3 pm. So, complete menu:
AMUSES:
shrimp with saffron mousseline
melon, prosciutto, and mozzarella skewers
HORS-D'OUEVRE
toasts with Provençal tapenade
SOUP
Portuguese consommé (cold, slightly spicy, tomato-infused consommé)
FIRST ENTRÉE
tilapia with chef’s chartreuse sauce
SALAD
SECOND ENTRÉE
ratatouille (cooked by roasting rather than stewing)
basil and rosemary sorbet
MAIN COURSE
herb-encrusted rack of lamb, with vegetables
DESSERT
fruits and cheeses
Everybody seemed to have different favorites. Everyone marveled at the sorbet, which was in fact pretty nifty, if I do say so myself. The ratatouille was perfect. The lamb was gorgeous. But nothing beats the satisfaction of the saffron mousseline.
Friday, August 15, 2008
happy birthday...
... to Napoleon Bonaparte, 239 years old today!
, and to Julia Child, who woulda been 94
, and to India, independent in 1947
, and to the Congo, independent in 1960
, and many many more! Turns out it's also Oscar Peterson's, Sir Walter Scott's and Thomas de Quincey's birthday (I didn't know that until this morning), Rose Marie's as well, and also the anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal. Also: Debra Messing (who was also born in 1968, but I don't think she's 26 like I am), Ben Affleck (meh), Flyers goalie Marty Biron. It's also the day Catholics observe the Assumption of Mary.
Us, we're going to Modesto. Ah, Modesto. Nothing more to be said, really.
Except this: Among these people whose birthday I share, Napoleon and Ben Affleck are not allowed in the house. Neither, also, are India or the Congo, or the Panama Canal. It's not that big an apartment. The Assumption takes up far more room than you'd probably expect.
, and to Julia Child, who woulda been 94
, and to India, independent in 1947
, and to the Congo, independent in 1960
, and many many more! Turns out it's also Oscar Peterson's, Sir Walter Scott's and Thomas de Quincey's birthday (I didn't know that until this morning), Rose Marie's as well, and also the anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal. Also: Debra Messing (who was also born in 1968, but I don't think she's 26 like I am), Ben Affleck (meh), Flyers goalie Marty Biron. It's also the day Catholics observe the Assumption of Mary.
Us, we're going to Modesto. Ah, Modesto. Nothing more to be said, really.
Except this: Among these people whose birthday I share, Napoleon and Ben Affleck are not allowed in the house. Neither, also, are India or the Congo, or the Panama Canal. It's not that big an apartment. The Assumption takes up far more room than you'd probably expect.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
tax tip!
Looking to save on your income taxes this year - and next year, and next, and next?
Incorporate! Two-thirds of large corporations in the US avoid high corporate income taxes (among the highest among affluent societies) by simply not paying them! Think of the savings!
Why, if a couple earning $65,000 in joint wages were instead to file as a major corporation, their federal tax burden could be reduced from $8800 to $0 - almost 100% savings!
Incorporate! Two-thirds of large corporations in the US avoid high corporate income taxes (among the highest among affluent societies) by simply not paying them! Think of the savings!
Why, if a couple earning $65,000 in joint wages were instead to file as a major corporation, their federal tax burden could be reduced from $8800 to $0 - almost 100% savings!
coming soon: birthday dinner
I don't want to tip my hand much about the plans for my birthday bash on Saturday. (My birthday is actually on Friday, but the orgy bacchanal dinner bacchanal will be on Saturday.) I want most things to surprise my eaters...
however, I can say the following.
Ten courses.
2 amuses gueules, one involving shrimp.
hors-d'ouevre to be named later
soup course: consommé à la portugaise (which means it's gots tomatoez innit)
a cold entrée
a salad festooned with flowers
a warm entrée
a sorbet
fancy main course with fancies
fruit and cheese
The precise nature of the dishes I intend to keep as secret as I can. One of the amuses will be quite amusing indeed, if I can pull off the preparation. And I can, because I am the philosopher-chef! I am saucier than thou!
however, I can say the following.
Ten courses.
2 amuses gueules, one involving shrimp.
hors-d'ouevre to be named later
soup course: consommé à la portugaise (which means it's gots tomatoez innit)
a cold entrée
a salad festooned with flowers
a warm entrée
a sorbet
fancy main course with fancies
fruit and cheese
The precise nature of the dishes I intend to keep as secret as I can. One of the amuses will be quite amusing indeed, if I can pull off the preparation. And I can, because I am the philosopher-chef! I am saucier than thou!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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