Posts
Today one of my professors quoted a story in a "journalistic context" about how when conservatives are given a piece of information they like, they believe it even more when that information is discredited. I had to ask him where he'd read something like that, so I did. He mentioned a magazine that I've heard of a number of times before, and I couldn't quite place it. But I knew when he said it that I wasn't going to like it, once I remembered.
The magazine was The New Republic, of the Stephen Glass scandal fame, the Ruth Shalit scandal fame, and most recently the Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal. This is a magazine that I know best for its repeated publication and intentional support of stories they know to be fabrications and plagarisms. And one of my professors reads it quite intently.
My beef here isn't that they're a lefty publication, that's fair game. What bothers me is that if I were to give you one, single, shining example of the downfall of journalistic integrity and the propaganda games that many media outlets have turned into, I'd have to say it would be TNR under Franklin Foer.
Another win for academics, right?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Junkyard Wars Bicycle
I corrected my previous post; as it turns out there are 435 members of the House of Representatives. It's not because I can't add, it was because I was including Puerto Rico in the population count. I thought it was ok to do that, but apparently they're not really a state yet, sort of the way the U.P. isn't technically Wisconsin.
Anyway, as I mentioned a few days ago, I managed to destroy my bike yet again. So here's what's left:
Between the sticker shock of a new bike, and how very much I enjoy tinkering, I had plenty of motivation to fix the one I had up. And I think there's something charming about having a bike that's got about the same luck as I have.
Anyway, as I mentioned a few days ago, I managed to destroy my bike yet again. So here's what's left:
- Blue Sun Tour frame, old, struts slightly bent from my first crash.
- New, chromed out Sun Tour fork, replacing demolished fork, hacksawed down to fit.
- Original back wheel with a Wal-mart mountain bike sprocket cluster and freewheel.
- Original rear derailluer, put back after a brief flirt with Wal-mart mountain bike derailluer.
- Araya front wheel, replacing devastated original front wheel.
- One brake set (rear) with salvaged mountain bike brake pads.
- No forward derailluer, as the original has been completely destroyed.
- No chain guard, as it was bent beyond use inexplicably.
- Pacific Girl's mountain bike handlebar, replacing roadbike bars.
- Single trigger shifter and brake for rear brakes and derailluer, from previously mentioned Pacific Girl's mountain bike. Works beautifully. Forward brakes removed due to pointlessness.
- Same handlebar wrap.
Between the sticker shock of a new bike, and how very much I enjoy tinkering, I had plenty of motivation to fix the one I had up. And I think there's something charming about having a bike that's got about the same luck as I have.
Bailout Bounce
Let's talk about "expected to pass" for just a second.
This generally means that a bill is expected to pass. I know, I was confused by this concept as well. But precisely how do you get from the minority whip saying "80 votes with good floor energy" and the majority whip saying "120 votes expected" to saying the bill is "expected to pass"?
I realize that I'm not a math major, but unless we've somehow entered the Quantum Mechanics field of vote counting, 200 of 435 is somewhat less than 1/2. To venture a guess, I'd say it's about 45.9%. Maybe this is my inexperience talking, but when one estimates 46% in favor, I wouldn't imagine that it's safe to jump right to "the measure is expected to pass".
According to the Wall Street Journal today, party leadership (especially the democratic leadership) didn't even make an attempt to whip their votes, and let individual reps decide for themselves. So they did, and they based their decisions on what their constituents were saying. Which, for about 36 reps, was "I don't understand this and I'll make you pay for it in a month if you push this through". I get why they voted against the bill, and we can't really fault elected representatives in the house for doing what their constituencies tell them to do. That's why they're called "representatives". If we didn't elect free-market republicans to make free-market votes when we tell them to do it, then there are much bigger problems afoot.
And then of course, you have Pelosi's inspiring little speech on the floor that was every bit as classy as giving a pregnant woman six shots of Absinthe. Way to bridge the divide, idiot. I'm not suggesting that Pelosi has a history that would suggest that being a bipartisan leader when it matters most, but it is just about the pinnacle of tone-deafness when you need to whip votes to your side and you roll out a comment like, "It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies". Yeah, that'll make the friends you need.
The issue here isn't that she's not allowed to be partisan, or that republicans voted on the bill and not her speech. The issue is power playing. For the representatives who backed down when they heard those comments, its because up until that comment flew, it was understood by everyone that this was a bipartisan effort - one that included some old-guard republicans, who frequently aligned themselves with the Bush Administration's policies. The speech was viewed by those representatives as an attempt to take what was a bipartisan action of epic proportions, and turn it into a Democratic Party win in the House by way of simple rhetoric.
Republican reps will be damned if they're about to let her do that. 12 lost votes later, the minority whip actually has to say that you can't do stuff that's going to push away the yes votes when you need them.
Its like a really bad ice headache.
Never mind that the bailout package is another economic policy advocated by Bush and a Treasury Secretary that he appointed. While most people would experience some cognitive dissonance when bashing the Bush Administration's economic policies in general in an attempt to push forward one particular Bush Administration economic policy, Pelosi, mercifully free of an understanding of what leadership in congress is, does it without even blinking.
Try it again, this time without a transparent attempt to snatch credit.
This generally means that a bill is expected to pass. I know, I was confused by this concept as well. But precisely how do you get from the minority whip saying "80 votes with good floor energy" and the majority whip saying "120 votes expected" to saying the bill is "expected to pass"?
I realize that I'm not a math major, but unless we've somehow entered the Quantum Mechanics field of vote counting, 200 of 435 is somewhat less than 1/2. To venture a guess, I'd say it's about 45.9%. Maybe this is my inexperience talking, but when one estimates 46% in favor, I wouldn't imagine that it's safe to jump right to "the measure is expected to pass".
According to the Wall Street Journal today, party leadership (especially the democratic leadership) didn't even make an attempt to whip their votes, and let individual reps decide for themselves. So they did, and they based their decisions on what their constituents were saying. Which, for about 36 reps, was "I don't understand this and I'll make you pay for it in a month if you push this through". I get why they voted against the bill, and we can't really fault elected representatives in the house for doing what their constituencies tell them to do. That's why they're called "representatives". If we didn't elect free-market republicans to make free-market votes when we tell them to do it, then there are much bigger problems afoot.
And then of course, you have Pelosi's inspiring little speech on the floor that was every bit as classy as giving a pregnant woman six shots of Absinthe. Way to bridge the divide, idiot. I'm not suggesting that Pelosi has a history that would suggest that being a bipartisan leader when it matters most, but it is just about the pinnacle of tone-deafness when you need to whip votes to your side and you roll out a comment like, "It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies". Yeah, that'll make the friends you need.
The issue here isn't that she's not allowed to be partisan, or that republicans voted on the bill and not her speech. The issue is power playing. For the representatives who backed down when they heard those comments, its because up until that comment flew, it was understood by everyone that this was a bipartisan effort - one that included some old-guard republicans, who frequently aligned themselves with the Bush Administration's policies. The speech was viewed by those representatives as an attempt to take what was a bipartisan action of epic proportions, and turn it into a Democratic Party win in the House by way of simple rhetoric.
Republican reps will be damned if they're about to let her do that. 12 lost votes later, the minority whip actually has to say that you can't do stuff that's going to push away the yes votes when you need them.
Its like a really bad ice headache.
Never mind that the bailout package is another economic policy advocated by Bush and a Treasury Secretary that he appointed. While most people would experience some cognitive dissonance when bashing the Bush Administration's economic policies in general in an attempt to push forward one particular Bush Administration economic policy, Pelosi, mercifully free of an understanding of what leadership in congress is, does it without even blinking.
Try it again, this time without a transparent attempt to snatch credit.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Pen Blogging - I Don't Need A Reason
I spend a lot of my time writing, and my penmanship needs all the help it can get because there are days when I can't read my own notes. I probably failed a test because I wrote a paragraph about the "llack freedom marmot". But when my penmanship is that bad, I generally have the help of a bad pen.
By "bad pen" I mean any pen where the ballpoint is sticky or drags a lot, any pen where the ink skips, or flows so heavily that I smear the words when I write a sentence (I'm left-handed, so that happens a lot). That means that for the most part, the Bic Roundstic medium point is just about as low as I can go without becoming frustrated or poorly educated. The fine points scratch like pencils and skip like schoolgirls, and I just can't tolerate that kind of behavior out of a pen. Similarly, all those needle-fine Pilot Precise-V pens can take a flying leap; they're the worst culprits when it comes to runny, smeary ink. Every time I use one, the bottom of my hand gets so black it looks like I got frostbite from an alpine expedition gone wrong.
Not to mention the fact that if you have bad paper, these pens turn a notebook into wet toilet paper full of tiny, .5mm holes at all the intersections in your lettering.
As a result of the pen industry's general failure to produce a pen that doesn't scratch, skip or bleed without costing eight thousand dollars or being made with such a wide barrel that you have to write with a clenched fist, I usually retreat to using automatic pencils - the technology seems more complicated than that used in a pen, but for some reason they're far less frustrating, and at least there's a point to it when they scratch.
But, there is one pen that I can write with that doesn't give me any of the usual inky hell, and it's not shockingly expensive and the barrel is only a little bit larger than strictly necessary. May I present to you, the UniBall Jetstream Sport.
When I went to England, I got two plain Jetstream pens with retractable points before I left, and I took literally all of my notes with them for four classes, for the duration of my three-month stay. They didn't run out, and they very rarely skipped (I had some Jetstreams before, but they were the plain capped-type and had some skip issues). They wrote so smoothly that I could actually hear my lecturers over the sound of them writing, the points didn't drag at all, and the ink dried fast enough that I never had to worry about smearing.
My only complaint was that the barrels were pretty big, and that made an otherwise very graceful pen feel a little clunky. They were covered in black rubber from point to tail, they had big clear logo windows on them, and were generally wasteful of petroleum-based resources.
The Jetstream sport is a very happy step away from that nonsense. They write with the same smoothness and the same non-smearing ink, and they feel a shade more graceful because the barrel doesn't feel like it's wearing a wetsuit. Now, if I could just get a whole pack of black or blue Jetstream Sports, instead of just getting one black in a fivepack of rainbow-colored pens with pastel pink and green inks, probably for the purpose of celebrating Easter and Diversity at the same time.
Now, take all of the above for what it's worth. I just hope that I haven't convinced too many fringe lunatics that I'm actually a corporate whore for Big Ink.
By "bad pen" I mean any pen where the ballpoint is sticky or drags a lot, any pen where the ink skips, or flows so heavily that I smear the words when I write a sentence (I'm left-handed, so that happens a lot). That means that for the most part, the Bic Roundstic medium point is just about as low as I can go without becoming frustrated or poorly educated. The fine points scratch like pencils and skip like schoolgirls, and I just can't tolerate that kind of behavior out of a pen. Similarly, all those needle-fine Pilot Precise-V pens can take a flying leap; they're the worst culprits when it comes to runny, smeary ink. Every time I use one, the bottom of my hand gets so black it looks like I got frostbite from an alpine expedition gone wrong.
Not to mention the fact that if you have bad paper, these pens turn a notebook into wet toilet paper full of tiny, .5mm holes at all the intersections in your lettering.As a result of the pen industry's general failure to produce a pen that doesn't scratch, skip or bleed without costing eight thousand dollars or being made with such a wide barrel that you have to write with a clenched fist, I usually retreat to using automatic pencils - the technology seems more complicated than that used in a pen, but for some reason they're far less frustrating, and at least there's a point to it when they scratch.
But, there is one pen that I can write with that doesn't give me any of the usual inky hell, and it's not shockingly expensive and the barrel is only a little bit larger than strictly necessary. May I present to you, the UniBall Jetstream Sport.
When I went to England, I got two plain Jetstream pens with retractable points before I left, and I took literally all of my notes with them for four classes, for the duration of my three-month stay. They didn't run out, and they very rarely skipped (I had some Jetstreams before, but they were the plain capped-type and had some skip issues). They wrote so smoothly that I could actually hear my lecturers over the sound of them writing, the points didn't drag at all, and the ink dried fast enough that I never had to worry about smearing.
My only complaint was that the barrels were pretty big, and that made an otherwise very graceful pen feel a little clunky. They were covered in black rubber from point to tail, they had big clear logo windows on them, and were generally wasteful of petroleum-based resources.
The Jetstream sport is a very happy step away from that nonsense. They write with the same smoothness and the same non-smearing ink, and they feel a shade more graceful because the barrel doesn't feel like it's wearing a wetsuit. Now, if I could just get a whole pack of black or blue Jetstream Sports, instead of just getting one black in a fivepack of rainbow-colored pens with pastel pink and green inks, probably for the purpose of celebrating Easter and Diversity at the same time.
Now, take all of the above for what it's worth. I just hope that I haven't convinced too many fringe lunatics that I'm actually a corporate whore for Big Ink.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The Presidential Debate
Ok, so I didn't actually watch it, I was at work. But I did read a whole bunch of news stories about it, every live blog on Instapundit, and watched some snippets of video from CNN, and I think that qualifies me to evaluate this particular event, for all it's actually worth.
Which isn't that much. All I can really say for it is that it was ever so slightly less ridiculous than just watching a long string of competing campaign ads back-to-back, for the most part. But there were useful nuggets in there.
Impressions
Both candidates carried themselves very well, so huzzah for that. As several livebloggers noted, Obama's pronunciation key seems to have been misprinted and he sounded just a shade less informed than usual on foreign policy. My girlfriend pointed out that Obama sounds a lot like Dave Chapelle, when Chapelle impersonates a white person. For McCain's part, I'm tempted to agree that he spent too much time letting Obama chew him up without inflicting some consequences. And as far as his extensive trips to the middle east, that's great, but there are these people out there called Foreign Service Officers who can do that for you. Good on him for having those experiences, but let's keep the utility of those experiences in perspective.
I suppose I should mention that those weren't the useful bits.
Numbers
At Instapundit, 73% said McCain won, and 9% thought Obama won. There's no poll at DailyKos, but the liveblogging was overwhelmingly positive for Obama, and they link to an external poll where Obama landed 78%. At AOL, the split is a little more even, 46% saying Obama over 44% McCain. I can't call this anything but a draw. Interestingly enough, while Obama is generally talked about as the favorite handler for the economy (in every news story I read, especially at Kos), McCain is still leading him on the AOL polls of that question by 6%.
I've actually wondered about the AOL demographic for a while, because every week or so I check their straw polls, and the only electoral vote that Obama wins there is D.C.; it's usually 63% or 64% in favor of McCain for president, and that number hasn't really fluctuated, even with Palin being added to the ticket. I wonder if AOL frequenters are diverse enough to be considered a random sample.
Content
The only thing that stands out as a statement from either candidate is Obama saying that he'd dispatch troops across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to hit militants if need be. McCain was absolutely right; you don't say something like that out loud. I'm even pretty perturbed by the idea that we let it slip that we were doing it a couple weeks ago. That's an operation that's dangerous enough that it should be understood policy for pretty much everyone that you just don't ever talk about it until it's all over, and the people who were doing it are old and gray and can write books about it with supremely macho titles (like "Havoc Wind: The Ssgt. Max Fightmaster Story").
I have no problem with candidates talking tough about exercising our full range of powers to keep American interests safe. But I don't think it's prudent to ignore the political realities of being a third party in an unstable and very hostile region. You have to work quietly, or you're dead. Obama may have been trying to appeal to the more hawkish in the audience, but I think he ended up looking a little more like a novice as a result. What you're willing to do in a covert manner, you don't mention in public. If you mention it in public, you sound like you're willing to do it overtly, and it's assumed that you understand the consequences that might have.
Overall Reaction
Kos posters seem to be convinced that McCain is a flyweight when it comes to economics, but that's definitely not the whole story. With Wall Street in the condition that it's in, and knowing that he's going to have to beat Obama on economics in the future, I think it'd border on profoundly stupid to suggest that McCain can't or won't learn enough to win out. McCain knows what the important issues are, even if they're not his favorites, and for the record, he has economic advisors for pretty exactly this reason. If this debate was a tie, then I strongly doubt that it's as damaging for McCain as the Kos folks would like to believe.
And as for the Livebloggers linked at Instapundit, McCain isn't a foreign policy heavyweight. He's a juggernaut, and for him to not have absolutely and mercilessly crushed Obama in that exchange is a failure. He should have shot back more and played off less. There was no reason for him to play softball there.
The public opinion on this debate shook out pretty predictably: everyone thought their guy won it, had the facts on his side, looked more poised, acted more gracious, burned more calories. Check out the Instapundit live blogs and the Kos posts and tell me otherwise. It will be interesting to see if these debates have any measurable effect on public opinion come November.
Anyway, I broke a pedal off my bike (no, I don't know how) and I need to think about fixing it.
Which isn't that much. All I can really say for it is that it was ever so slightly less ridiculous than just watching a long string of competing campaign ads back-to-back, for the most part. But there were useful nuggets in there.
Impressions
Both candidates carried themselves very well, so huzzah for that. As several livebloggers noted, Obama's pronunciation key seems to have been misprinted and he sounded just a shade less informed than usual on foreign policy. My girlfriend pointed out that Obama sounds a lot like Dave Chapelle, when Chapelle impersonates a white person. For McCain's part, I'm tempted to agree that he spent too much time letting Obama chew him up without inflicting some consequences. And as far as his extensive trips to the middle east, that's great, but there are these people out there called Foreign Service Officers who can do that for you. Good on him for having those experiences, but let's keep the utility of those experiences in perspective.
I suppose I should mention that those weren't the useful bits.
Numbers
At Instapundit, 73% said McCain won, and 9% thought Obama won. There's no poll at DailyKos, but the liveblogging was overwhelmingly positive for Obama, and they link to an external poll where Obama landed 78%. At AOL, the split is a little more even, 46% saying Obama over 44% McCain. I can't call this anything but a draw. Interestingly enough, while Obama is generally talked about as the favorite handler for the economy (in every news story I read, especially at Kos), McCain is still leading him on the AOL polls of that question by 6%.
I've actually wondered about the AOL demographic for a while, because every week or so I check their straw polls, and the only electoral vote that Obama wins there is D.C.; it's usually 63% or 64% in favor of McCain for president, and that number hasn't really fluctuated, even with Palin being added to the ticket. I wonder if AOL frequenters are diverse enough to be considered a random sample.
Content
The only thing that stands out as a statement from either candidate is Obama saying that he'd dispatch troops across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to hit militants if need be. McCain was absolutely right; you don't say something like that out loud. I'm even pretty perturbed by the idea that we let it slip that we were doing it a couple weeks ago. That's an operation that's dangerous enough that it should be understood policy for pretty much everyone that you just don't ever talk about it until it's all over, and the people who were doing it are old and gray and can write books about it with supremely macho titles (like "Havoc Wind: The Ssgt. Max Fightmaster Story").
I have no problem with candidates talking tough about exercising our full range of powers to keep American interests safe. But I don't think it's prudent to ignore the political realities of being a third party in an unstable and very hostile region. You have to work quietly, or you're dead. Obama may have been trying to appeal to the more hawkish in the audience, but I think he ended up looking a little more like a novice as a result. What you're willing to do in a covert manner, you don't mention in public. If you mention it in public, you sound like you're willing to do it overtly, and it's assumed that you understand the consequences that might have.
Overall Reaction
Kos posters seem to be convinced that McCain is a flyweight when it comes to economics, but that's definitely not the whole story. With Wall Street in the condition that it's in, and knowing that he's going to have to beat Obama on economics in the future, I think it'd border on profoundly stupid to suggest that McCain can't or won't learn enough to win out. McCain knows what the important issues are, even if they're not his favorites, and for the record, he has economic advisors for pretty exactly this reason. If this debate was a tie, then I strongly doubt that it's as damaging for McCain as the Kos folks would like to believe.
And as for the Livebloggers linked at Instapundit, McCain isn't a foreign policy heavyweight. He's a juggernaut, and for him to not have absolutely and mercilessly crushed Obama in that exchange is a failure. He should have shot back more and played off less. There was no reason for him to play softball there.
The public opinion on this debate shook out pretty predictably: everyone thought their guy won it, had the facts on his side, looked more poised, acted more gracious, burned more calories. Check out the Instapundit live blogs and the Kos posts and tell me otherwise. It will be interesting to see if these debates have any measurable effect on public opinion come November.
Anyway, I broke a pedal off my bike (no, I don't know how) and I need to think about fixing it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Do A Good Job
The last few weeks have been ridiculous when it comes to economic policy. Until pretty recently, Wall Street was something that I thought I could pretty safely ignore; I figured "It's the market, it can handle itself, we're not in the 1930's anymore".
Needless to say, I've been putting a lot of effort towards trying to understand what happened, why it happened, and whether or not this bailout plan will fix it. Since I've been reading the Wall Street Journal to do that, I've had to take a crash course in economics, which I've really never been good at because, as I've said, up until recently I was pretty safe in ignoring it.
Long story short, when it comes to this, is that I don't have enough time to get to know what's going on in time to have an educated opinion on this. I know a little about markets, a little about what happened and what the idea behind the proposed fix is, but that's it. I have to trust our elected representatives to do what's right, and hope they do a good job.
This was a very bad time for me to re-engage in politics, but there's nothing for it now.
Needless to say, I've been putting a lot of effort towards trying to understand what happened, why it happened, and whether or not this bailout plan will fix it. Since I've been reading the Wall Street Journal to do that, I've had to take a crash course in economics, which I've really never been good at because, as I've said, up until recently I was pretty safe in ignoring it.
Long story short, when it comes to this, is that I don't have enough time to get to know what's going on in time to have an educated opinion on this. I know a little about markets, a little about what happened and what the idea behind the proposed fix is, but that's it. I have to trust our elected representatives to do what's right, and hope they do a good job.
This was a very bad time for me to re-engage in politics, but there's nothing for it now.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Professors
So far, classes are going as well as can be expected. My "Energy and the Environment" course isn't really much about energy or the environment, it's really a remedial physics course that so far has taken four weeks to explain how conservation of energy works. I suppose you have to teach this stuff to somebody, but it's pretty aggravating to have to go through this kind of high-schoolish course again this late in the game.
Actually, I'm reasonably sure I did more complicated experiments in high school, where I was graded on my understanding of the subject matter and not how well I laid out an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. What's the difference between a 14 point font header and a 16-point font header? 3 points off your lab grade, according to the professor.
My professors are pretty uniformily and predictably liberal here, but it's better than Ken Barrett back in Madison. At least these guys are happy to run with the Sarah Palin rumors without issuing corrections instead of going full-on crazy. One has to wonder what posesses such supposedly smart people to latch on to such ignorant and obvious rhetoric. When a guy who writes a book called "Bureaucracy and the Policy Process" gets onto a five-minute tangent with some ham-handed joke about McCain's VP pick, I can't help but wonder if his mental faculties haven't seen some sort of decline in the intervening period.
These really are smart people. They're experts in their field, they write decent books and one of them writes for the Wall Street Journal four times a week. So why do these guys get sidetracked and feel the need to regurgitate rumors about banned book lists? I actually have a theory about this.
My Bureaucracy professor said last week that being able to teach is like being able to write your own script, direct your own cast and perform in your own movie five days a week. I doubt that many lecturing professors would disagree with that. There most definitely is a theatrical element to a lecture, and its pretty likely that anyone who has ever lectured knows it. And the most popular type of movie on earth is one where you give the audience what it wants, and there's really no question as to what that is when it comes to college kids taking care of the general education credits with a political science course.
They'd almost be stupid not to do it, especially if it meant their students disengaged from the subject matter. If you're going to teach people anything, you have to hold their attention, and objectivity and neutrality gets you no attention at all.
Actually, I'm reasonably sure I did more complicated experiments in high school, where I was graded on my understanding of the subject matter and not how well I laid out an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. What's the difference between a 14 point font header and a 16-point font header? 3 points off your lab grade, according to the professor.
My professors are pretty uniformily and predictably liberal here, but it's better than Ken Barrett back in Madison. At least these guys are happy to run with the Sarah Palin rumors without issuing corrections instead of going full-on crazy. One has to wonder what posesses such supposedly smart people to latch on to such ignorant and obvious rhetoric. When a guy who writes a book called "Bureaucracy and the Policy Process" gets onto a five-minute tangent with some ham-handed joke about McCain's VP pick, I can't help but wonder if his mental faculties haven't seen some sort of decline in the intervening period.
These really are smart people. They're experts in their field, they write decent books and one of them writes for the Wall Street Journal four times a week. So why do these guys get sidetracked and feel the need to regurgitate rumors about banned book lists? I actually have a theory about this.
My Bureaucracy professor said last week that being able to teach is like being able to write your own script, direct your own cast and perform in your own movie five days a week. I doubt that many lecturing professors would disagree with that. There most definitely is a theatrical element to a lecture, and its pretty likely that anyone who has ever lectured knows it. And the most popular type of movie on earth is one where you give the audience what it wants, and there's really no question as to what that is when it comes to college kids taking care of the general education credits with a political science course.
They'd almost be stupid not to do it, especially if it meant their students disengaged from the subject matter. If you're going to teach people anything, you have to hold their attention, and objectivity and neutrality gets you no attention at all.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Horror Writer Needed
I just finished H.P. Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness, and I really don't think I fully understand the horror. It was interesting enough, but the suspense and actual scare factor never materialized. All I'm really left with is a desire to read more of his work to learn more about the imaginary world he created, which was pretty interesting. But I'm a long way from scared of it.
Maybe it's a matter of timing, but then again Bram Stoker still scares people and so does Edgar Allan Poe, so I don't think the antique factor is enough to exonerate Lovecraft.
So the question is, who are the classic horror writers who are still scary, and not just listed on the Required Reading lists at high schools?
Maybe it's a matter of timing, but then again Bram Stoker still scares people and so does Edgar Allan Poe, so I don't think the antique factor is enough to exonerate Lovecraft.
So the question is, who are the classic horror writers who are still scary, and not just listed on the Required Reading lists at high schools?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Blog Comments
I was surfing a few of my usual political blogs today, and I decided against my better judgment to read the comments that were made on one of the posts. It's really too bad that the intelligence level of most internet commentators doesn't match that of the original poster.
It'd be a beautiful world if people could add something useful in comment sections more often. Or just shut up. But this guy can rant about it much more capably than I can.
It'd be a beautiful world if people could add something useful in comment sections more often. Or just shut up. But this guy can rant about it much more capably than I can.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Colors
Quick note before I leave: you should know that I was deeply conflicted about the color scheme. I'm not entirely sure there's a more gay set of school colors I could really pick aside from purple and yellow, but they are the school colors here and I feel strangely obligated to include them.
My apologies, I didn't mean "gay". That was inappropriate. I meant "alternatively lifestyled".
My apologies, I didn't mean "gay". That was inappropriate. I meant "alternatively lifestyled".
The First Week
Here's my first post, shortly before a few friends and I walk to the bar for some celebratory first-week-of-class drinks.
For anyone stopping by this blog at random, this blog will contain lots of things, and absolutely none of them will be useful to you in any way. With any luck at all, that means you might come back here. A lot.
I haven't actually gotten much of anything done yet. I did manage to decide to blog about my experiences at University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, but other than that, I'm still working on it.
Thus far, I've really only managed to secure a job, get acquainted with the syllabi for all of my classes, and lob myself headlong over the handlebars of my bicycle. The blue fleece I was wearing even left a skid mark on the sidewalk, which I'm weirdly proud of.
This blog won't have any particular focus aside from that of my major, but I won't spend a lot of time getting very militant about the politics that I'm studying - if I've chosen a side so quickly, I'm not studying very honestly. In other blogs I've focused very specifically on American strategy in Iraq, but you won't see that so much here. This will be more of an experiential exercise, and the content is going to be whatever it will be.
Anyway, it's just about time to get intemperate, so that's where I'll leave it for now.
For anyone stopping by this blog at random, this blog will contain lots of things, and absolutely none of them will be useful to you in any way. With any luck at all, that means you might come back here. A lot.
I haven't actually gotten much of anything done yet. I did manage to decide to blog about my experiences at University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, but other than that, I'm still working on it.
Thus far, I've really only managed to secure a job, get acquainted with the syllabi for all of my classes, and lob myself headlong over the handlebars of my bicycle. The blue fleece I was wearing even left a skid mark on the sidewalk, which I'm weirdly proud of.
This blog won't have any particular focus aside from that of my major, but I won't spend a lot of time getting very militant about the politics that I'm studying - if I've chosen a side so quickly, I'm not studying very honestly. In other blogs I've focused very specifically on American strategy in Iraq, but you won't see that so much here. This will be more of an experiential exercise, and the content is going to be whatever it will be.
Anyway, it's just about time to get intemperate, so that's where I'll leave it for now.
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