Question of the Day: Would you go to Grad School?

An interesting piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Thomas Benton and a follow-up to a previous column by the author. The overall argument is that students, unless independently wealth, well connected, well supported, or already supported by a current position, should not pursue a Ph.D. in the Humanities because of institutional constraints e.g. too many students and not enough positions; the academic labor system; nepotism.

After reading the article, do you agree or disagree with the author's conclusions? And, more importantly, if given the opportunity, would you pursue a degree in the humanities?

And the War Continued

The war on history that is.

Today, Rudy "America's Mayor" Giuliani followed the lead of Conservative Political Advisor Mary Matalin in claiming that no terrorist attacks occurred under President Bush's watch though there have been domestic attacks under President Obama's watch.

Giuliani:


Matalin:


War is Peace.

Spoken Word of the Day: You're So Cool...

You're So Cool.
You're So Cool.
You're So Cool.

Poem of the Day: Sunday, December 13, 2009

Amusing Myself, Li Bai

Face wine not aware get dark Fall flower fill my clothes Drunk stand step stream moon Bird far person also few

Facing my wine, I did not see the dusk, Falling blossoms have filled the folds of my clothes. Drunk, I rise and approach the moon in the stream, Birds are far off, people too are few.

More here.

Priorities....

Well, the public option for health care looks like it is dead. And rather than provide a meaningful debate on the issue, Congress needed time to debate something more important:

One PO dies and another finds new life. Sure the public option is effectively dead in the Senate, but a House subcommittee has passed a bill calling for a playoff to replace the entrenched and utterly pathetic BCS system to determine national champion in college football

I do like this claim by Ambinder: "Truly, the BCS is a broken system wobbling on the crutches of dollar signs and entrenched interests. In other words, it is the most quintessentially American system we could possibly have."

WTF, to borrow from the popular title used by others on here

So yeah, some of this post in rambling and a bit whinny, but believe me a very, very thankful I have a good job right now. However, I want to pass on some of the information that numbed me as a bit of a warning for my mates--snoop around on those faculty union sites at the schools where you interview as you might be amazed about what you can learn about salaries which can come in handy for negotiations. Now let the rambling begin.

I returned to my office today (as you know I have been away for a while) and struck up a conversation with one my colleagues that began with an insightful discourse on micro-brews (got to love them), which quickly digressed to unions, faculties, departments, wages, etc. Of these, ramblings the one that has stuck in my craw was our joint outrage over salaries and the ridiculous discrepancies among them within the units of my college/faculty. As A&H folks we are all used to the sciences, medical, business schools, and the like, making insane amounts more (for the many reasons we know), but I was slapped in the face almost quite literally upon learning that folks of my own rank (start date, tenure-rankings, etc.) make 7,000-10,000 dollars more than me to teach music, classical studies, English, and so on. I learned this bit of information from our faculty union which has a nifty little program that states what you should be making based on performance rankings, and you can just change departments to get the goods on their salaries. Although I expect English to make more than me, mainly because of the shear size of the departments and volume of revenues from students, I was taken aback by the vast amount of dollar seperation; a few grand, o.k. but 10,000 come on. Even though I stand a chance of reaping some of the benefits of such discrepancies if the wife can land a tenure-track job here, still. Moreover, what is truly f'ed up is that my colleague, who just made tenure makes considerably less (more than the numbers above) than her equals in other departments because a cliche in the salary-leveling that occurred several years ago. To keep up with affirmative action and women's equality, the university tried to bring the female profs to the pay of their male colleagues--the men were making 10s of thousands more per year. Instead of leveling across the university, the salaries were balanced within the departments, well my department at the said time, basically had no senior men, therefore there was no real imbalance so the women only recieved a modest pay increase (same for the men). Although, one can say my department was more progressive, these same women (and some now senior men) are still making, as I understand it much, much less than other tenured folks.

Well to even make things more crazy, which led to our discussion of money in the first place, there is a push to bring the university's pay scale to an equivalent amount to other comparable institutions in our region--an assistant prof at a comparable school makes 30,000 more than a prof at my institution and my university ranks higher than all but 2 of them.

The one element of good news, is that I make a few grand more than what our union's program says I should make.

I'm back from sabbatical...

and ready to jump into the blog.

Hello? hello?

Does this mean no year-end review?

Preventing Sexual Assault

Here are some tips on preventing sexual assault we all might find handy.

The Rhetoric of Appriopriateness: The Reality of Ficiton

Searching for MLK's "I Have A Dream," I found this: Stormtroopers' 9/11. It is a little eerie, a touch ironic, and contains everything from "I was on my way there" to "Emperor Palpatine knew" to "It justified our invasion of Hoth."

It is awkwardly humorous.

Um, Seriously?

Ok, here's one for the "What in the hell is the world coming to?" file. Apparently Levi Johnston is planning to pose Playgirl. Chew on that one for a while, Situationers.

New York Calorie Count

Last year, NY State enacted a policy that gave consumers information on the number of calories in every dish at restaurants throughout the state. Because of the knowledge imbalance between consumer and restaurant, NYS thought by providing people more information on what they eat they would be able to make better decisions, especially in regards to their calorie intake.

After the first year, studies show that the calorie labeling did not reduce calorie intake. In fact, calorie intake increased. In response, libertarians attempt to be first in line to proclaim the nanny state and nanny state legislation does not work.

Yet, something seems odd with the findings. According to the Times:

The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.

It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.

But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.

The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country.

There seems to be very little discussion of the economic climate and the connection between fast food sales and poverty stricken areas. While this study tentatively shows that, even with better information about food, consumers may not make better choices, the commentary does not discuss the context of the study as well as a Queens resident, interviewed by the Times, who was in Harlem for a job interview and, while at a McDonalds, ordered two cheeseburgers, which contain 600 calories, for two dollars:

When asked if he had checked the calories, he said: “It’s just cheap, so I buy it. I’m looking for the cheapest meal I can.”

Comps Topic #1: Visual Rhetoric & Ideology

Analyze the following interactive painting from McNaughton Fine Art, playing close attention to the development of a political ideology that constitutes the American Polity. After analyzing the painting, provide an answer to the following question: What is the construction of the American ethos revealed by this painting?

When writing this essay, it is important to note who is included, who is excluded, and who has been represented? Furthermore, you need to identify the god and devil terms and the consequences of those terms as revealed in this painting.

You should complete this answer in two hours.

Thanks to Sully for the link.

There's inherent and there's ideology

Some writers at Conservapedia started the Conservative Bible Project to remove the liberal bias in the Bible and promote Conservative ideology.

At this point, I wish this were a joke. Seriously. The first line in the entry, "Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations," makes about little sense unless of course there is one institution that interprets the different versions of the Bible for all people. But what do I know. Maybe King James, who wore gloves when touching the Bible and asked his writers to include the notion of the Divine Rights of Kings, was liberal after all.

Oh well. At least this projects admits that the Bible is far from inherent and only contains some decent stories. What's best is not to live out the lessons or the stories but instead to change the stories to fit your own ideological precepts.

But, if you still need evidence to adhere to the Conservapedia complaint against liberal bias, here are the arguments that prove liberal bias:

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the "master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." But is "shrewdly", which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is "resourceful". The manager was praised for being "resourceful", which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term "resourceful" in its entire translation of the Bible.

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

Well, I hope in the Conservative rewrite, Jesus becomes a CEO rather than a useless vagrant that walks around from town to town, upsetting the locals in the way Socrates did. I mean what type of authority figure, regardless of whether or not he is the Son of G-d, does not have a job or work for a living; is married with children; own guns and hunt; reject homosexuals as the scourges of the earth; support the War in Iraq; and rejects the political authority of his historical time. What kind of role model is this Jesus person any way. And why does he hate markets, private property, and rich people? What a Jackass!!!

"Hear, Hear" to Conservapedia and their ideological crusade!!!

Nut up or shut up

Every evening after Wild Man goes to bed, PW and I watch a little TV, generally while we do various other things around the house or work. In the past few weeks we've seen a lot of commercials for Woody Harrelson's new movie Zombieland. Most of the trailers have included what is apparently Harrelson's character's catch phrase in the film: "Nut up or shut up." Last night, as I was prepping for today's class, PW was watching a football game. And again, we saw a trailer for the movie. This time, however, the catch phrase was changed to "Put up or shut up," and the change had clearly been looped in. It was a very, very noticeable change. Since then I've been wondering what is so offensive about the original phrase that it had to be changed. Is this only an American issue? Last night we were watching an American channel, and we'd always seen the trailers on Canadian channels previously. Why the change? In what rhetorical situation is this particular phrase inappropriate or worthy of censoring?

Question of the Day: Jon Stewart's America

Did Jon Stewart hurt America?

Five years ago, Jon Stewart appeared on the now defunct show Crossfire, with the rather zero integrity journalists of Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. Well, I should say, Carlson defined himself as a journalist even if his normative beliefs about libertarianism got in the way of his reporting, and Begala, a former Clinton White House Aide, is a political commentator, which frees him from any ethical use of facts. But I digress...

Daniel W. Drener argues that Stewart's questions on Crossfire, which led to the demise of Crossfire. Of course, he continues the argument and states that the demise of Crossfire also led to the demise of The Capital Gang and Hannity and Colmes years after the fact. How Stewart;s appearance led to the retirement of Colmes from Hannity and Colmes is not clear but....

In place of the crude ideological debate, Drener states we just have the ideology manifested in Glenn Beck, Keith Olberman, and Hannity. Of course, shows like these existed before Crossfire's demise. And other shows, such as the Sunday morning shows, and Hardball, O'Reilly, Hannity, have opposing positions even if, first, the framing of the opposing is crass and not likely to persuade the audience, who is ideologically committed prior to watching and, second, these shows fail to act like news organizations and discover "truth" such as whether or not Iraq possessed WMDS.

It seems that the pure ideology shows always existed and will exist so long as there is a market for them regardless of whether or not Jon Stewart criticized the format of these shows. But who knows. I have not watched Stewart or Colbert since moving to the East Coast.


Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

The Complications of Parenting

I came across this story today while I was eating my lunch: "She adopted a child--and then gave him up." I really want to write something thoughtful and considered about this story, but as usual of late, I'm too tired to think. I'm posting this though, in the hopes that I will be able to write something tomorrow.

The Left Better Learn to Love the Second Amendment

In a class on rights today, we discussed the notion that only a third of the people in the American Colonies wanted revolution while a majority preferred revolution. Luckily, the third of the country who wanted revolution also owned land, controlled the press, and possessed the artillery.

Over at Newsmax, a site that praises Glen Beck, John L. Perry wrote a column titled, "Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention." Here is the beginning of the column:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to "obey the orders of the president of the United States."

# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

# They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

# They can see that the economy -- ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation -- is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

# They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

# They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America's troop strength is allowed to sag.

# They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

# They can see the nation's safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

While Newsmax pulled the article, you can read the entire column here.

Seriously?

Check out this story at MSNBC on a mother ordered to stop watching her friend's children for less than an hour every morning. I'm all about protecting children, but this seems to be a bit much. Most of us at TRS have watched one another's kids at some point in time--always without pay. What do we, as parents, think of this? Is this a case of too much government involvement? Yes, I did just write that.

Tired

I wanted to check in with my fellow Rhetoricians. Given our continued absence on TRS, I'm assuming everyone is as tired as I am. That is all. I will now go back to preparing job materials.

In honor of Facebook; in memory of TRS