faculty ethical responsibility, bureaucracy, and curriculuma local example

Today I reminded myself that I need to get more done on the paper on faculty ethical and social responsibilities in heavily bureaucratized institutions. It occurred to me that a recent academic senate discussion on our campus gave me a pretty interesting example of one of my key claims in the paper: At a certain point, bureaucratic division of labor responsibilities makes it so difficult for faculty to know the full implications of what they do, that it becomes impossible for them to take responsibility for what they do. (I borrow this idea from ethicist Michael Davis.)

The example concerns an ongoing issue on campus. Before I get into this, I want to preface by saying I am interested in this as an example, and I don’t mean to make any judgments of the people involved or the specific proposal they’re making (in fact, I like all the people involved that I've met, and the proposal looks kinda cool to me). I’m not at all trying to make sport of the frustration they might be feeling about the senate discussion. On the contrary, I think it’s totally understandable. All I’m wanting to do is think through the ethical issues, as related to the paper I’m going to be presenting at the AAUP conference this summer.

The faculty and administration in the College of Natural Sciences proposed a pre-medical professions certificate program for post-baccalaureates. The program would provide science education to satisfy prerequisites for qualification to apply to various advanced medical education programs – medical school, dental school, etc. The program would be conducted through university extended education (UEE), taught by faculty identified by academic departments in CNS, and the courses would correspond with regular-session courses taught by those departments. The departments and college would share any surplus revenue with UEE.

This program, on the surface, more or less appears to meet the specifications of the relevant CSU Chancellor’s Office Executive Order governing extended education, as a “special session” that is permitted outside the normal state-supported curriculum. Even though the courses correspond exactly with regular curriculum courses, the “special session” designation seems justified by the circumstances of the students (returning post-baccalaureates).

In academic senate discussion of the proposed program, three areas of concern came up. One was the implication of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the college and UEE, which, it was said, could set a precedent for similar MOUs on campus that would be disadvantageous for faculty and for departments. Second was that faculty paid on the UEE salary schedule would be substantially underpaid compared to their regular salaries (the lack of qualification of UEE work for retirement or healthcare benefits was not discussed). Finally, it was suggested that although the program appeared to meet the letter of the Executive Order’s requirements for a special session, the students in the program would qualify for post-bacc admission into the regular curriculum – there still is a post-bacc program, after all – and so the justification that these classes could not be offered without a special program was not based on program or curriulum needs, but in fact the lack of funding to the state support regular curriculum. (The lack of funding from the state is not sufficient under the EO to justify a special session.)

These are complicated issues, and moreover, from the standpoint of the faculty and administration of the CNS, abstract, distant, and relatively nebulous. If the faculty in CNS agree to teach under these terms, it was suggested, then it is their choice to do so – and, by implication, other colleges and faculty would be free to strike their own bargains with UEE. As to the salaries question, an additional stipend was arranged to bring the faculty salaries for teaching in the program closer to parity with the regular faculty salary (again, the issue of benefits was not discussed). As for whether the special session was warranted by the post-bacc status of the students, two replies were made. First was that it is very difficult for post-bacc students to get into the regular session classes because they have the lowest priority registration status. Second was that the Executive Order stipulates that a career retraining program would qualify as a special session.

The objections raised must strike the CNS faculty who support this program as a lot of meddling over something not relevant to their attempt to serve more students and be entrepreneurial. It is certainly easy to understand why faculty supporters of the program would tend to regard it as nobody else’s business. Furthermore, I see nothing amiss in their interest in starting the program, and no reason to think they have anything but the best intentions. Yet the issues raised are worth consideration, because what one college does in the university does have an effect on the others, and because faculty have a common situation and standing with respect to the university. But as I said, these are difficult issues even to see.

There are broader and still more abstract and general issues that I believe are driving these concerns. One is the integrity of faculty work and of the collective bargaining agreement, as well as of the union that bargains that agreement as the exclusive agent for the faculty. Another, still more abstract, is concerns about the privatization of public higher education. Shifting programs to UEE under the rationale that the regular program can’t accommodate their needs begs the question: Why doesn’t the regular program meet this need for educating the public? Any serious reply to that question should at least consider the long-term funding trends of public higher education as driving factors in the need for the program in the first place.

That said, doesn’t it seem too great a burden for the CNS and its faculty to bear to have to answer these questions? There is an ethical aspect and a cognitive one here. Cognitively, I mean to suggest the following. It is extremely difficult for those of us who care very much to do so, to work out in any detail how the defunding of public higher education has affected access to and quality of public higher education. Asking CNS and its faculty to understand and take responsibility for how their program fits into that overall picture is asking something nearly impossible. I submit that they couldn’t reasonably do it if they wanted to.

If the abstractness and complexity of the situation, and the bureaucratic division of labor reaches a point that they cannot be expected to see, foresee, or comprehend the broader implications of their program proposal in relation to these issues, how can they possibly take responsibility for them.

A further question is whether the CNS faculty and administration are ethically blameworthy for this failure to comprehend or take responsibility. (I’m assuming here that the concerns are legitimate. I think they are. I'm also assuming that they're not responsible for the defunding of public higher education or for bureaucratizaion. I think I'm on safe ground there.) I have two intuitions about this. One is, to the extent that I’m right, and it really is unrealistic or impossible for them to know the implications or effects of what they’re doing, then no, it’s not an ethical failure. But, second, to the extent that they may choose to ignore or brush aside the issues, then yes. But this could mean nothing more than that they are ethically accountable for admitting that they are very nearly precluded from taking that responsibility.

first day blues

Typical pre-semester anxieties last night woke me at 4 AM, from a bizarre dream in which the Chancellor of the CSU had imposed a policy on remediation involving providing milk to students. (This is a highly expurgated account of the dream. I don't want to go into more detail. Please don't ask. Imagine the weirdest possible ramifications of this. Now make it weirder, and ultimately cruel. There you go.)

I met my first class this morning. I forgot my "JOKE" sign. Note to self: remember that tomorrow morning. Bioethics requires its use.

Now I'm Pandora-ing through my office hour, and starting The Federalist Papers. Check this out:

Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.

That's Hamilton in 1787.

brief report of ongoing madnesses

Classes start in two days, and my schedule for the semester is not finalized. Consequently, I have opted not to put my syllabi together for the classes that might still be canceled. So there could be a little confusion as the semester starts.

Lauren is in surgery even as I write this. It's nothing major, it's outpatient, but still, it's surgery. Thanks, I'll tell her you said so.

I've drafted a paper, have another one to get done in a week, and have the revision of the AAUP paper to get started on.

Now for a political note. You may have heard various neocons pitching a return to the gold standard as a way to ... um ... to do something or other. Partly, they think that if the US returned to the gold standard, the federal government would not be able to run deficits because the federal reserve bank would have to stop printing money. From what I know about economics, I believe the basic flaw in their plan is that it simply isn't conservative enough.

After all, money doesn't grow on trees, not even paper money, which isn't even paper in the first place! (And let's not get started on the tree-hugging envirofascist movement!) For money to have real worth, it has to be based on a real, tangible thing. Fiat money isn't based on anything at all, except a social and political convention and the exchange value of goods, services, and labor. Labor obviously isn't tangible, and services aren't physical objects either, so that leaves goods, and we all know that a currency based on the exchange value of goods wouldn't be viable because we wouldn't ever know how much any goods would be worth. Right? Right?

A gold standard would give us a straightforward way to know the real value of everything, as compared to a certain quantity of pure gold. A laptop computer is probably worth its weight in gold, say, but my year's labor is worth, I dunno, say an ingot. I don't know how much an ingot weighs, but I figure, something like that. I'd carry my ingot to the Safeway and exchange it for groceries, get some return weight of gold back, and thus our economy would continue to flow freely, and we could all rest in the comfort of knowing that we really knew what things were worth.

That's the theory, anyway. But as I said, it's not conservative enough. If you really want a solid standard for money, you have to go back further in history, before the gold socialists took over. What we really need is a return to the beads and carved bones standard. You're welcome.

lots of things my family doesn't really know about me

We went back to Ohio for a visit. Chrissie Hynde notwithstanding, at least some parts of my city were not gone, though on balance, a lot of it was.

For the first time in probably about 10 years, my sister, my brother and I were all in the same place. There might be a long story behind that, but I'm not really sure. My family is like that.

I was about to write a quick gloss on the general situation, but that's not what I wanted to write about, so to heck with it. I'll just say that I have a brother 11 years older than me, and a sister 5 years older than me, and that, despite their calendar ages, I still insist on being 28.

What I wanted to write about is how weird it is to suddenly connect with all of them in this mediated way.

I'm connected to a few family members on Facebook, and posts to this antique blog eventually find their way to Facebook, so everything I write here or on Facebook is open to their inspection. My sister-in-law even mentioned, while we were in Ohio, that she has looked at a couple things I've posted, and a few of them she isn't too sure about.

So, all the stuff I post about erotic experience, about the weird food I cook and eat, about politics in higher ed, about union activism, about the whole world I occupy on a daily basis that has very very little to do with anything they knew or understood about me as a kid in Ohio... All of that is what they might read on any given day.

Today, for instance, I worked on the paper I'm hoping to present at the Back To The Things Themselves conference in New Brunswick this summer. The paper is about erotic experience, and today I wrote about being seduced by peaches.

Tomorrow it's as likely as not I'll be writing here about academic politics again, since I was just at the CFA meeting last weekend, and I also received confirmation today that my schedule for Spring is likely to change, with one week before classes start.

It's strange to think of my family reading any of this. I wonder what they might think of it, or of me, or whether they let it pass without wondering.

news and sports (that is, conspiracy theory and buying stuff)

What kind of a year will 2011 be? Well, if headlines like Obama exhorts Republicans to put politics aside is any indication, it's going to be a politically annoying year. I don't do partisan politics that much in this space, because the "two-party system" is utterly broken and predictable. But as I mulled over the GOP's early effort to repeal last year's health care reform bill, while the President was still on vacation, in a totally symbolic, legislatively useless, sniveling, pandering paean to their particularly wigged-out extremist wing, I came up with a very strange scenario.

I'm embarrassed to say, it's a cloak-and-dagger scenario, a really goofy, totally unsubstantiated, yet eerily plausible association of the sort that lead people to buy extremely rural real estate and stock their property with large quantities of canned food, canned heat, and weapons. Ready?

Throughout the Obama administration, there has been a conspiracy to destroy him - his historical reputation, his political agenda and power, his public image, everything. We know the Republicans have said they spent the first two years of Obama's administration attempting to obstruct everything on his legislative agenda. We know the Republican sympathizers at Fox News and elsewhere have spread deranged fantasies about him. I don't mean that. When people tell you they hate you, that they believe you're evil, and that they plan to try to destroy you, and then they do, that's not a conspiracy.

A conspiracy isn't a conspiracy unless it's covert, sneaky, pernicious, and above all disavowed by its members.

Now, consider: With large majorities in both Houses of Congress, and a popularly elected President with an ambitious legislative agenda, the Democratic Party refused to pass the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, refused to pass health care reform that provided any public option or meaningfully checked the monopoly power of private insurance companies, and in the end, ran as far away from their President as they could in the mid-term elections that they lost dozens of. Only in the lame-duck session did they get a few things done, including the DADT repeal. Only after all the political advantage they could have pressed had been eliminated by a mid-term election that the GOP machine turned against Obama.

The Democrats scuttled the President, not the Republicans. No, I thought, that's crazy. You haven't had enough coffee yet. But then I remembered how Obama became President, and what he did to outflank Hillary Clinton - the party Apparatchick - in the primary campaign. Obama's election was a great victory for the Democrats, but a defeat for the new-fangled Democratic group that came to power with Bill Clinton in 1992. Hillary was relying heavily on the inner circle of the Dem establishment to carry her to the Presidency, but the establishment couldn't find a way to beat Obama. And not only will they never forgive him for it, but they'll do anything they can to punish him for it.

And there it is. Mirroring the GOP strategy of the coming two years, which will be to posture and posture and posture in order to look good for 2012, the last two years the Democratic Party in Congress has done all it could to make Obama look bad. Do they care about winning or losing the Presidency in 2012? Anyone looking at it in terms of Presidential wins is not seeing the big, long-term picture, or the fundamental nature of the electoral politics business.

But people keep voting for people who say things that are obvious, blatant lies, just because they're lies we like. Voting is like playing the lottery.

So that's the news. And now, sports.

You can't change your car battery any more. At least, not if your car is a 2006 Jetta, and you're not fully decked-out with mechanic gear. That's because the car battery is bolted down, deep inside the engine compartment. I found that out during a long, extremely ridiculous dead-battery saga on New Year's Day. (Any saga involving a dead battery is likely to be ridiculous, I suppose.) The story is too long to recount following a conspiracy theory, but it took about 4 extra steps and several hours to purchase a new battery and have it installed by the same AAA roadside emergency aid mechanic who jump-started the car earlier that morning.

Yesterday I bought a new Swiss Army knife to replace the one I've lost. (It's part of basic equipment for me, along with guitar pick, pony-tail rubber-band, and handkerchief.) The knife came sealed in 18 square inches of plastic packaging - the type that is impossible to open without something like the knife inside the package or without cutting yourself on the sharp edges of the plastic. The last one I bought came in a small cardboard flip-top box that I could open unaided. And yes, I realize it's a so-called "passive theft-prevention device." The last time I bought a knife it was from a locked glass case, and an employee had to open the case and bring me out the one I wanted. In other words, the plastic is really an employment-prevention device.

There's a connection between those stories, isn't there?

top 5 stories of 2010

This will be the last in my series emulating the banal, creepily nostalgic pop culture artifact of reviewing the past year as it reaches its end. I won't use a headline like the San Francisco Chronic did today (Explosive losses, Giant victories), because eywwh.

Instead, I'll do a reverse-order top 5 kind of list. Those are always really uninteresting, aren't they? Gee, whatever could the top 5 stories of the year 2010 be? It's just that they write up all this stuff in early December so nobody actually has to work between Christmas and New Year's. Basically, almost nothing of global import happens during that week, except the occasional bombing, or attempted bombing, or maybe an assassination plot - nothing that won't keep until Monday morning, anyway.

5. The Apocalypse

This didn't actually happen. We did drive through Bakersfield on the way to and from LA several times, but that's really only a metaphor for the Apocalypse, not the actual event. This is what I tell myself over and over whenever we drive through. It helps.

4. Avalanche buries Cow State Santa Claus

This didn't happen, either. What did happen was the ongoing unrest on campus from Fall 2009 morphed into protests against the administration on March 4 and in the summer, related to some kind of event on campus the nature of which has slipped from my memory.

The avalanche referred to here is, like Bakersfield, metaphorical. It could be an allusion to the shredded non-existent documents allegedly the private property and garbage of a university official who maintained the non-existent documents on university property but which documents, had they existed, would not be university documents. Yes, that's right, it's an avalanche of bullshit. But seriously, what other kind could possibly strike our campus, given the topography around here (to say nothing of the climate)?

3. Former college instructor arrested following crime spree

This also didn't happen, but it was a near miss. Through much of the Spring semester, it seemed 90% certain that all or most of my work in the department would be cut. The philosophy job market nationwide was practically non-existent, as well. I had one interview, that I botched, for a job at a community college in Ohio where I wouldn't have been happy.

Given my advanced educational attainment in the humanities, my career options would have been sorely limited. Other than returning to school for something else, my best bet would have been a life of crime. I used to be pretty good at stealing stuff and breaking into places.

I'm glad to be teaching ethics, instead.

2. New enlightenment flourishes in social life and politics

Now I'm just making shit up, just like the pros do it. Although, even here, there's a grain of truth, if by "enlightenment" we mean an era of shrill, screeching, pandering, fear-mongering, and slander.

1. 2011 canceled due to budget cuts

We can't be sure this won't happen until midnight tonight. Given how many state budgets are in the crapper, and how poor the economy continues to treat most of us, states like California and Arizona could try this as a way to reduce deficits, or at least shift attention away from their gross irresponsibility when it comes to dealing with fiscal realities.

On the other hand, given how well the economy treats people who still profit from it, and how much they stand to benefit from this continuing, and paupering states in the process while they collect interest, tax breaks, and public money in the form of fees paid to outsource formerly public services like education, probably 2011 won't be canceled at all, it'll just be a repeat of 2010.

I don't know about you, but I'm planning to have bubbly on hand for the countdown.

2010 - a year in words and numbers

My series of entirely useless summing-up posts continues, this time taking up these spent and emptied examples of the genre.

Apparently, the OED added 39 words in 2010, including the vomitous defriend and staycation, the oddly old-fashioned fussbudget and buzzkill, the ubiquitous exit strategy, and the rarely-useful steampunk, quantitative easing, and microblogging. One imagines the difficulty of using all of these in a single sentence, although such a sentence could be a promising entry in the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest.

Of course, my own efforts in bad writing this year were restricted to participating in National Novel Writing Month - in which I completed the 70,000-word satirical Autobiography of Biff Nerfurpleberger. The book contains approximately 4 narrative voices, the two main ones being Biff's own, and his competing autobiographer, someone called Simon Ratmason - both of whom are unreliable narrators. Biff is a bad writer because he's completely inattentive to the fact that he's writing, or, at times, what he's writing. Simon's a terrible writer in the tradition of most celebrity biographers, especially musician biographers. It was great fun to write, even the hideous parts by Simon that made me cringe, or worse. I think, if you're writing a work of fiction, and you're yelling at your narrator, you're doing some worth doing.

Some more words related to 2010 include: peanuts, yeast, turtle, frustrating, delicious, hilarious, and subjection.

And now, some numbers.

0 - the number of remaining payments on Eddie Jetta.
10 - the number of courses at my birthday dinner party.
10 - the number of people at my birthday dinner party.
2 - the number of cats currently living with us.
13.5 - the number of pounds the lighter one weighs.
1 - the number of purple-handled scissors on my desk.
1 - the number of manufacturers who still build tape decks, apparently.

Also: 37, 117, 90, 12, 64, i, 41,233, 0.02.

2010 - the year in review, in terms of threats to homeland security

The following review interprets and determines threat levels regarding the relevant ongoing concerns.

Threat #1: Job Security

Despite constant threats to Job Security during 2009 and early 2010, Employment has remained intact. Current threats to Employment include long-standing political attacks on humanities, specifically philosophy, and ongoing state budget crises, coupled with withdrawal of public support for public universities. A new three-year "temporary" appointment was obtained in August, however, continuing state budget issues and local campus fiscal irregularities create an environment in which insurgency should be anticipated.

Threat Level: Yellow ("Elevated"). California's large budget deficit will continue to threaten Job Security for at least the remainder of this three-year "temporary" appointment. In addition, bargaining between the CFA and CSU point to emergent threats.

Threat #2: Health

Local conditions have resulted in resurgence of both depression and anxiety, culminating in two adverse events during 2010. In June, an outbreak of anxiety led to a full-scale panic attack on a commercial flight bound for NYC-JFK, forestalled only through the heroic efforts of on-board civilian medical personnel. In October, a depression insurgency arose; however, counter-insurgency by NaNoWriMo forces prevented any significant gains by the enemy.

In response to the panic attack, a summer program of health review and restoration was undertaken, with positive results including a wide reduction in stress, decreasing resting heart rate, and general improvements to preparedness. The October plot was undermined successfully as well.

Ongoing local threats include Feline-centered Urinary Tract threats, as well as Loveliest-Targeted threats that have, thus far, remained impervious to intelligence efforts.

Threat Level: Yellow ("Elevated"). It remains unclear when, if, or how these enemy covert operations may be launched. Constant surveillance continues to be necessary.

Threat #3: Canadians

It remains clear, as 2010 nears its close, that the biggest single threat to local security conditions in this area is posed by Canadians. The nature and extent of the threat is considered so serious that no detail of any kind, and no vague allusion of any kind, may be provided in this report, for fear of undermining security and intelligence efforts in this area.

Threat Level: Red ("Severe").

landmark 650th post!

A few random items.

It's been a while since I posted anything about food or cooking. Last night was pizza night here, which can mean some combination of things. Last night I made my famous notorious gorgonzola béchamel sauce and schmeared one pizza with that, adding fresh mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, scallions, kalamata olives, and crimini mushrooms (which I always pronounce like a euphemism for "Christ" that some folks enjoy, notably my Dad). I also made what I would love to call pizza sauvage or something equally pretentious, which is just dough with a coating of olive oil and sprinkled sea salt with toppings (the salt is, in this case, Hawaiian red salt, dried and cured in clay pots, old school, because, as has been mentioned in this space from time to time, I am a foodie snob in possession of 8 different salts and 5 peppers at any given moment, and let he among ye who isn't some kind of junkie cast the first paraphernalia). The naked pizza had diced tomatoes, criminis, fresh mozza, etc. etc., and spinach on it. It was one of the best pizzas I've ever made, in my estimation.

In my mind, the pizza orgy was to celebrate being 99 44/100% done grading for the semester. Lawdy, do I hate grading. But there it is. I have one paper, for one orphaned student for whom I am volunteering my work to be a project adviser, to go.

I already have received one complaint about grades, and it's a valid one, I think. Most grade complaints are, in my experience. I'm not perfect. I don't even add well.

Before I stop wasting everyone's time with this useless post, I'll pause to mention two things:

(1) That I'm planning a series of Year In Review posts, and

(2) I'm off to play a guitar lesson for an elaborated fingerstyle version of "Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel."

...

And also that I dreamed all night of weird goings-on on our campus (though topographically, architecturally, and geographically transformed) involving former students suddenly getting married; festivals suddenly ending in ways that prohibited my access to my Loveliest, my old Japanese-built Takamine classical, and my car (regarding which, proceed with caution, Dan or Jackson, whoever in my dream world is driving Eddie Jetta); a rude security guard; and creepy people from the university doing creepy things (who shall remain nameless).

crazy busy

I think I'm finally over the rotten head cold that forced me to teach the last week of classes via charades. Apparently, people don't play charades any more. I joked that I was playing charades in class, and proceeded to make the charades sign for "movie," but not one person played along. It's also pretty hard to perform charades of ethical concepts or abstractions like "obscenity."

The week before that I was grading term papers, to get them back for possible revision. That was the same week of way too much holiday musical performance. In one week, Lauren had her long dress rehearsal and two performances with the MSO chorus, then we saw the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus the evening after the second, matinee, MSO gig. The very next afternoon we went to Carolfest on campus, and last Saturday we went to the Central West Ballet performance of the Nutcracker. There's one more, next Tuesday - the Candlelight concert with MSO.

Final papers, and finalized term papers, are just starting to roll in, so I'll be looking at between 120 and 240 papers, depending on the various options my various students take. That's at least 100 too many, give or take.

Holiday shopping has been, perforce, hasty. Of updating this here online public journal, not a whit. However, in the course of writing the madcap and thoroughly alleged autobiography of Biff Nerfurpleberger, I dropped the names of various songs Biff composed and recorded throughout his career. I've had to write and record two of them, just out of compulsion. The second one, yesterday's achievement, is a seasonal song called "Don't Shoot! It's Santa! (And Rudolph too!) (And Frosty!) (And Jesus!)" Be forewarned that I may post to teh Interwebs.

good day

Today was a good day. My Bioethics class was pretty good – there were some good questions about Foucault’s critique of scientific discourse, and its application to the scientific discourse of medicine (through Canguilhem). My class is populated largely by nursing students who take the course to fulfill both the humanities GE requirement and their own program’s requirement for ethics education. The recent course material presented them with some serious intellectual challenges, and I decided to spend the class session today reviewing some of the concepts and trying to lead them to a deeper appreciation of the meaning of the critique for their own (future and present) practices.

One student asked a question about exactly that, and framed it in a very intriguing way. She prefaced by saying that for the last two weeks we’ve been discussing these issues, she has struggled in her nursing classes with accepting the assertions about medical conditions, diseases and deviations from “normal” physical conditions. If this is the “freedom” that Foucault’s critique leads to – the free choice regarding how and to what disciplinary practices and discourses we submit and subject ourselves through – then, she remarked, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Another student remarked that she was also struggling with that.

Score! A sort of ultimate ideal of teaching, for me, is to create the conditions under which a student can produce a powerful critical knowledge that matters for them intellectually and personally. Basically, when students are upset, I win. (I’m putting that in a deliberately contentious way.) Then another student chimed in on the same subject, objecting to Foucault’s critique in one of the classic ways – that his critique doesn’t tell us how to make ongoing social arrangements we rely on continue to work.

This is a class I’ve struggled with. It’s a good class – even a little too good, if you catch my meaning – and it’s been hard to provoke them to talk about the ethical questions I’ve tried to pose to them. There have been occasions over the semester when it has seemed they’ve been awake and aware on the level I’ve wanted to reach – a level of fairly significant discomfort, frankly. But I never felt I’ve been able to keep them working, thinking, and upset at that level.

After class, two very academically prepared students waited to ask about their term papers, and another student engaged in the discussion waited to ask more questions about Foucault. One of the students was asking where my office was, so she could talk to me during my official hours. Instead, faced with all four of them, I decided to hold my office hour just outside our classroom.

We spent the next hour together – partly talking about their term papers, but also about the discussion in class, what it meant for them in their future practice, how it was affecting their approach to their university lives, what we’d been discussing in class meant in the grand scheme of things medical…

And the magical thing happened, that all of us who teach for a living dream of. Without any prompting, without any provocation, they kept bringing issues, articles, discussions, themes, concepts, and moods and intuitions, that the course was built around, together, in their own discussion, their own understanding. It became clear from their discussion that all we’ve talked about, all we’ve read and discussed, has made a tremendous difference to them, has made them wonder, doubt, and think. I just can’t say how good that felt.

Like I said, it was an hour. I realized the time that had elapsed when the conversation finally slowed, and we realized we had our various places to go. The clock in the hall told me I had not only failed to get to my office for my official office time after class, but had spent twice that time there.

These are incredibly rare moments. They are what makes teaching worthwhile. I’m inexpressibly grateful to you today, gang.

national novel writing month

So, I'm writing a 50,000 word novel this month. I started on Tuesday, and I've reached 23,000 words. More later on this insanity.

album of the day: all the songs on my iPod, in alphabetical orderPart 12 of ??

1. Long December - Counting Crows. Studio version. The live versions from either the VH1 show or the MTV show (we've got a double CD incorporating both of those) are vastly superior. I've never seen Counting Crows in concert, but I imagine they'd be tremendous.

2. Lord Granville - Al Stewart. Nobody sees Al Stewart in concert, of course, and Lord Granville, among all the songs on The Year of the Cat, is one I imagine lease likely to play well live.

3. Los Angeles - X. My Duquesne pal Dave "Dave" Koukal turned me on to X. The first album of theirs I bought was Los Angeles, which contains the song "Los Angeles," and I've never really been sure what I think of the album or the song. The re-released CD had a demo track of "Adult Books," and that's really what got me into X.

4. Los Angeles, I'm Yours - The Decemberists. Okay, I'm sold. As iPods are notorious for doing, mine repeats this song inordinately frequently when set to "randomly" "shuffle" songs. This morning I gave in. You win, Decemberists.

5. Loser - Beck. Get crazy with the cheez whiz all you want, Beck. You're still a loser.

6. Love - The Sundays.

7. Love Always Remains - MGMT. This is one of their more poppy tracks, which I don't think I mean as a pun.

8. Love The One You're With - Crosby, Stills, and Nash. My pal Bobo the Wandering Pall-bearer once started yelling about Israel and Palestine when this came on the radio in the car. It's not really about religious, cultural, and political conflict.

9. Love, Reign O'er Me - The Who. I'm a total sucker for this song, and it's not just Townshend's descending electric guitar line, but also Roger Daltrey's absolute pummeling of the vocal. Just soak in the genius.

10. Madame George - Van Morrison.

11. Magic Bus - The Who. It's almost hard to believe the same guy wrote this. But also genius.

12. Maginot Waltz - Ralph McTell. A cute little ditty about the singer and his pal Albert hanging around playing music and the singer trying to cozy up to Albert's cousin Marjorie, with a very cool chord progression, until it turns all off-to-war in the surprise finish:

Nine o'clock come round we had to take the charabanc
Albert was too drunk to play the banjo but still we sang
All except Marjorie, I could tell at a glance
Because me and Albert was leaving for France.

I said "We'll both be home in a week or two
Me and Albert and Lord Kitchener will teach the Hun a thing or two.
I'm sure to return, after me do not yearn
And we will waltz together all our lives through."

Did they? Well, certainly not in two weeks.

album of the day: all the songs on my iPod, in alphabetical orderPart 11 of ??

1. Lapsing With Drainpipe - Grogshow.

2. Last To Know - Neil Finn.

3. Laughing - Winterpills. Three mopey indie/alternative tunes in a row. I needed this?

4. Lazy Line Painter Jane - Belle and Sebastian. That's more like it. I love the ambiguous gender/sex/sexuality stuff in the chorus as the song progresses: "You will have a boy tonight/ You will have a girl tonight / On the last bus out of town..." This version is from a collection of random bits and pieces, Push Barman To Open Old Wounds.

5. Leave It Like It Is - David Wilcox. My friend Nancy knew him when he was scratching out a living playing fingerstyle guitar in coffee shops in the mountains of North Carolina. And now where is he? I think he's scratching out a living playing fingerstyle guitar in coffee shops. Who says show biz doesn't pay?!

6. Leif Erikson - Interpol.

7. Length of Love - Interpol. The more I listen to Interpol, the more I'm willing to accept them into my musical life. They have a good chunky feel. They may be one of those who deliberately title songs so they play consecutively when people play all the songs on their iPods in alphabetical order (I'm looking at you, R.E.M.). Or I might be paranoid.

8. Life And How To Live It - R.E.M. Aha!

9. Life Being What It Is - Kaki King. I love this song. I love Kaki King. She doesn't love me. Life being what it is...

10. Life Is Hard - Bob Dylan. Or as Dylan would say.

11. Lion - John Fahey. Fahey wrote this song about his cat, Lion, after Lion's death. The separate parts are a romping blues and a slow, sweet ballad, and, on my listening at least, capture two essential cat moods.

12. Lips Of The Goddess - Grogshow.

13. Listening For The Weather - Bic Runga. Apparently one of the biggest names in New Zealand pop music, I only know Bic Runga because of this song about the ineluctable vicissitudes of weather, the inevitability of age, and the will to be accepting of each.

14. Little Blue Joy - Paper Cats. A short solo guitar piece of mine, title drawn from a comment Lauren made about a tiny blue wood-sided house somewhere.

15. Living Room - Tegan and Sara. What I like about this song, and what I like about Tegan and Sara, is the sense of their being almost totally out of control. I'm not sure at all I'd like to be around them when they finally lose it.

16. Lonely Rag - Nick Roche. I found this on Soundclick when I first set up my account to share Paper Cats music on the web. It is indeed lonely sounding. If I recall correctly, Roche is from the UK, has some kind of technical job (engineering?), and at 50-something aspires to learn to play better. I need to remember him when, as lately, I despair of ever playing well.

album of the day: Mr. Demachy - Pièces de Viole

A few weeks ago, my loveliest and I started talking about and listening to more classical music - in particular, cello stuff, and in particular, Bach. About that time, I heard about the music streaming site Pandora, and added Bach to my list of musicians (along with Beth Orton, John Fahey, Bert Jansch, Land Of Talk - a very weird list). Pandora uses something they call musical DNA to identify what similar music you might like, and plays it for you.

It played me two Baroque composers I have since fallen madly in love with: Tobias Hume (of which more anon) and Machy (aka Le Sieur de Machy, or on the cover of this album, Demachy) - both composers and players of the viol, the predecessor of violins, cellos, etc. The Pièces were written sometime in the 17th century, but feel rather pre-Bach, both because of the lack of more modern instruments, and because they're still written in more varied modes.

I realize this is why the musician in me loves this music. It's just not like music that's been made since Bach, since we've standardized and reduced our modes and have perfected tuning and scales of instruments, in particular of stringed instruments. Back then, one viol was much like another, but not identical to another, and the frets on them were adjustable, which would change the way the instrument scaled.

But the real reason I have fallen in love is that the bass viol's range is somewhere between a cello and a viola, and has the sonority and cry that cellos have. The varied musical modes add more to the melancholy of the bass viol's sound, so the whole of it has tremendous emotional punch. You do have to really like melancholy music, though.

The four suites contained in the Pièces are modally and chromatically linked, progressing from D minor, to D major, to G minor, ending in G major. Even the major keyed suites aren't your grandpa Bach's major key, because the intervals are both not quite the usual and the steps aren't quite the same as on Grandpa Bach's blasted violins and cellos.

I want to make my guitar sound like that, and to a limited extent, one can do that by changing the tuning. I keep a crappy Takamine tuned to open-C major, with the low E string tuned down to C, but because the frets are built for higher string tension, the lower tuning distorts the scales. Yippee, I say.

I'd love to get my hands on a bass viol, but my guess is they costs millions of dollars, and I have no experience whatsoever with bowed instruments. Maybe I should look for a lute?

That's the other reason I'm enamored: I love early instruments almost as much as I love early music. They both have an imperfect grace that I'm just a sucker for. The viol, like the guitar, derive from an earlier mainly Spanish-made instrument called the vihuela (there are Mexican vihuelas nowadays, but these are the old jobs, the vihuelasaurus as it were). Viols moved north into France, and eventually England, and somewhere along the way somebody decided to bow them instead of pluck them. Machy has a little pluck left in him, too. It sounds somewhere between a guitar and a harp, hint of banjo in there, rather than like a plucked violin or cello - the sound boxes are smaller and so there's much less of that deep resonance.

terminally tired

We went to our fourth Bridge School Benefit concert Saturday night, through the kind auspices of our pals Jennifer and Andrew. It was, as every year, jammed (the grass seating area was entirely full), chock-full of excellent performances, and very long. It was also rainy at the beginning.

After seven hours of Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, David Lindley, Lucinda Williams, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Idol, Modest Mouse, Grizzly Bear, and, oh yes, Buffalo Springfield, we walked as we have done every year the couple miles back to our hotel. We got to our room at 1:40 AM. We didn't get really properly to bed for another hour.

Up at 9 to grab breakfast and drive home, home by 1 PM, to spend the rest of the day in a muddled state of consciousness. One thing I don't like about Bridge School is that after that much stuff in one evening, I lose the impact of individual performances. The other thing is the exhaustion the next day.

I'm still tired this morning, and just about my first conscious thought this morning was to wonder if exhaustion could be terminal in a literal, medical sense. To the internet I've hied self, then, to find what wisdom I could on the subject.

According to this exchange on Yahoo! Answers, indeed, exhaustion can be terminal. We might, however, question whether the diagnosis of death by fatigue is correctly applied by the, um, roofer who answered.

Something called "Wrong Diagnosis" offers the tidbit that exhaustion death is actually a misnomer for Bell mania. I find this disappointing, because Bell mania is a symptom-related syndrome, rather than a proper diagnosis of death caused by exhaustion. Plus, I'm personally just not that into bells.

I found an online test for an EasyDiagnosis (presumably TM) to determine, from the comfort of your own keyboard, whether you are about to die from exhaustion. The disclaimer uses large bold fonts to tell you, repeatedly, that this diagnosis software, whatever it does, doesn't diagnose. Which may or may not cover the EasyDiagnosis people's asses legally speaking, but sure as heck doesn't answer my question, which is why the hell anyone dying of fatigue would spend their last moments on earth trying to get a computer program to confirm it - or, really, to do anything.

I still, therefore, have no trustworthy information on whether a person in ordinarily fine health can (as they say in the South) up and die from fatigue. I suppose this is the kind of thing I should really ask qualified medical personnel. I'm sure my Kaiser Permanente GP will be happy to hear from me, for the first time in five years, when I email him to ask. Maybe I should ask for a referral.

down with negativity!

For the last couple weeks I've suffered an unaccountable bout of depression.

All depression is unaccountable, as anyone who's had any kind of treatment for it can tell you. There are only "factors" in depression, no "causes," and no "cures."

One such "factor" is having previously been depressed, which is kind of like saying that there's a correlation between the sun rising Wednesday and the sun rising all over again on Thursday. (Which it has.) My first actually acknowledged and treated depression happened when I was 9. Then again at 14, 19, 22, 27, 29,... you get the general idea.

A major "factor" this time around is that every day I am immersed in a tub full of the vomit and excrement of powerful people. In the media, this mainly takes the form of the resentiment of an ownership class so paranoid and jealous of its wealth and control that it foments fake populisms to pervert democratic processes. At the university, it's the mind-warping inversion of all meanings to preclude any real public accountability or responsibility. On the streets of this town, it's mainly in the trickle-down form of bumper stickers, like the one I see in a parking lot telling me that the driver will keep his guns and money, while I keep the change.

(Which - HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR! Keep the Change!! HAR HAR HAR! I have insane urges to grab people like this and shake them, shove them up against their own vehicles and sneer into their faces while I mutter in barely-withheld violence, "Oh, don't doubt it for a second, buddy. That crazy [derogatory word for African American] in Washington is going to come and take your guns away. And your money.... And your truck.... And your daughters....!" I don't do these things, you understand.)

So, I'm going to try to take a vacation from all that vomit and excrement, give myself a thorough wash. For me, that generally means a refreshing dip in a cool satire pool.

For the next little while, Paul Krassner is my co-pilot.

album of the day: all the songs on my iPod, in alphabetical orderPart 10 of ??

1. I Was Meant For The Stage - The Decemberists. Quick, name three other songs with the word "derision" in them!

2. I Will Follow - U2. Way back in the day, U2 were a proto-alternative band with a unique sound.

3. I'll Be Back Up On My Feet- the Monkees. Kind of genius: the staccato rhythm of the lyric and the punchy rhythm guitar give this recording a tremendous forward momentum.

4. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight - Norah Jones/Bob Dylan. A very lovely take by Norah Jones on one of The Bob's sweetest ballads. She even retains his long pause on "IIIIIIII'll be yooooooour..." and snap on "ba-by tonight," which is good, because it wouldn't be half the song it is without those.

5. I'll Stop The World And Melt With You - Modern English. For some reason, this is mislabeled on my iPod as being by the Cure.

6. I'm Burning For You - Blue Öyster Cult.

7. I'm In The Mood - John Lee Hooker with Bonnie Raitt. From one of those late-career John Lee 'n' Friends projects that has such mixed results. Bonnie Raitt is no slouch on slide guitar, though.

8. I'm On Fire - Bruce Springsteen. It's Boss's day tomorrow! Er, no, sorry, that's Bosses' Day. Screw that.

9. I'm Only Sleeping - the Beatles. A strangely good fit after "I'm On Fire."

10. I'm Special - the Pretenders. Okay, you have my attention. Geez!

11. I'm The Man Who Loves You - Wilco. Kick-ass distorted/feedback guitar solo. Did you know Summerteeth is 17 years old now? That album can drive a car!

12. I've Been Everywhere - Johnny Cash. Rapid-fire delivery catalog song. It's fun to listen to all the place names and compare with my own (rather extensive) list of places I've been.

13. If I Needed Someone - the Beatles.

14. If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It - Al Stewart. I dunno, Al, it's just so put together, I can't be sure it did come naturally.

15. In My Place - Coldplay. One of the best numbers by the band we're supposed to love to hate.

Hey, by the way, this is my landmark 641st post!

album of the day: Bringing It All Back Home

My favorite "early" Dylan album includes several well-known songs - "Maggie's Farm," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" being among Dylan's best-known. These songs were very influential, as well. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was famously and popularly covered by the Byrds, who sang one inconsequential verse of it. "Maggie's Farm" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" indirectly affected untold thousands of folk singer-songwriters' socially-conscious efforts.

But the most influential, and most copied, I would argue, is "Subterranean Homesick Blues" - the fast-paced story song made into the famous film of Dylan in the alleyway dropping cuecards on the pavement, literally dropping names/concepts from the song. That film, which tons of people have seen, analyzed (yes, that's Allen Ginsburg; no, it doesn't mean anything), and copied, makes the song seem to be a catalog song - which it clearly isn't - and has led to at least 4 more-or-less satirical mimicries that I know of. First was the obscure Simon and Garfunkel bit, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or, How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)," which satirizes the entire genre of folk-rock, which evidently Mr. Simon did not believe his own music was part of. Simon did, however, establish the parameters of the "Subterranean"- style Dylan knockoff with his vague logic and name-dropping - picking up the vibe of the film, rather than the actual song lyric. Second is R.E.M.'s "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," the logic of which is less clear and which drops fewer names, less coherently. Third is Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire," which is still less logical, drops more names even less coherently, and is the least satirical of the direct ripoffs. Finally, there's the Weird Al Yankovic parody, "Bob," written entirely in palindromes, and complete with parody film.

I think we wanna cover the original "Subterranean Homesick Blues," because it's actually kinda good. That'd be the second cover we'd do from this one album, though, and that rather arbitrarily strikes me as one too many. Lauren also wants to cover "Mr. Tambourine Man," all 290,117 verses of it.

My favorite single track on the album is "She Belongs To Me," a rather ambiguous ode to a woman who the singer might love, might be under the power of, or might really be suspicious of, depending on how you read it. In any case, it's a spooky portrait of a spooky woman, who apparently "paints the daytime black." The song really hit me when I was 18 and suddenly found myself in a very heavy relationship with a 30-year old woman who, in a certain respect, had everything she needed, who was an artist, and who did not look back. It was the first time I felt like I was having the kind of experience that people like Bob Dylan wrote songs about - the first time I felt that the authentic voice of experience of loss, confusion, and heartache could be one I would ever speak with.

I also have serious affection for "Gates of Eden," a pessimistic paean, and the bleak (and, depending on my mood, irritatingly narcissistic) "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." But there's also the ridiculous "On The Road Again" and "Bob's 115th Dream."

Earlier I wrote that Blood On The Tracks would be my Exhibit A in the case for Dylan's greatness as a songwriter. I must have been crazy, because this is clearly the stronger album for overall lyrical cleverness, range of themes, and critical perception and bite.

album of the day: all the songs on my iPod, in alphabetical orderPart 9 of ??

Now, for the letter I!

1. I Am A Rock - Simon and Garfunkel.

2. I Am Also A Walrus - Biff Nerfurpleburger. Written because I realized my character/alter ego Biff believes he was a member of the Beatles, and needed to write a post-Beatles self-referential song (like all of the actual Beatles did). I'm pretty sure Biff is not deranged, though most of his fans may believe otherwise. The whole Beatles thing is because he is badly misinformed.

3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart - Wilco.

4. I Don't Wanna Grow Up - Tom Waits. If you've never seen the video of the song, directed by Jim Jarmusch, it's revelatory - I'm just not sure of what. Jim Jarmusch is not allowed in the house.

5. (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea - Elvis Costello. Well, then, don't go, Elvis. Do I have to explain everything to you?

6. I Feel It All - Feist.

7. I Found A Letter - Paper Cats. Not my favorite of ours. I wrote it one evening when I found a letter or something written by my ex. Seeing her handwriting was really weird, and brought back a lot of very bad memories, so I wrote them all in a song. As one might imagine, it's not a very nice song.

8. I Found A Whistle - MGMT. I don't know what was happening when they wrote this. I'm guessing its allegorical. Or apocryphal.

9. I Guess I Planted - Billy Bragg/Woody Guthrie. Union song!

10. I Kicked A Boy - The Sundays. The Harriet Wheeler of the date this song was recorded would probably be welcome to kick me a few times. She's got one o' them voices, I tells ya!

11. I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts - X. Not only does this song express John Doe's bad conscience about being an American, but it also incorrectly foretells the doom of American bands. Hah! Stick that in yer pipe and smoke it, X fans!

12. I Remember California - R.E.M. Yes, California is on the edge of the continent. Very informative, Michael.

13. I See Your Face Before Me - Miles Davis. I only know this Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz song from Miles' mid-50s recording, which is painfully desolate. Someone once wrote that no one else has ever been able to express loneliness and forlornness like Miles playing the trumpet. Exhibit A right here.

14. I Started A Joke - the Bee Gees. Wow, has this thing utterly failed to remain current, or even viable, in any way, shape, or form. Play it once, I dare you. Does. Not. Work. Especially not after Miles.

15. I Want You - Elvis Costello. Look, Elvis, she's with that other guy, and she doesn't care what you think of him. And quit being such a creep! This is, in fact, an amazing song. If you're in a committed relationship, and you've got a desperate longing for someone else in a committed relationship, and the two of you are alone together, and that person plays you this song, I for one believe it might mean something.

16. I Want You - the Beatles. In fact, not too very different from the previous song - for the first and only time today.