Posts from — January 2005

Boston.com / News / Local / Sale of spanking tool points up larger issue: “On a spring day, Susan Lawrence was flipping through a magazine, Home School Digest, when she came across an advertisement that took her breath away. In it, ”The Rod,’ a $5 flexible whipping stick, was described as the ”ideal tool for child training.’”

(Via .)

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interesting concept….. training children, not teaching children. sure… there is some training involved i suppose.

Joel on Software – Advice for Computer Science College Students: “Without further ado, then, here are Joel’s Seven Pieces of Free Advice for Computer Science College Students (worth what you paid for them):”

(Via .)

worth a glance.

A natural, low-tech solution to tsunamis: mangroves: “The coastal trees and shrubs saved hundreds of lives in India by protecting villages from the waves.”

(Via Christian Science Monitor | World.)

hah, i was just thinking about this last night…. well something very much like it.

Paris fights for its game sector: “In the anarchic world of video games, unusual international juxtapositions are actually the norm.”

(Via IHT.com: Technology.)

where will ubisoft land?

Indian Larry: “”

(Via .)

Publishing crisis: “

The MLA’s Profession 2004 features four essays on the ‘crisis in publishing’ by Judith Ryan, Philip Lewis, Jennifer Crewe, and Domna C. Stanton. All of the essays converge on a number of key points:

——-snip———

• Tenure requirements need rethinking. Somehow.

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jeremy:
i think this isn’t the place for intervention. the place for intervention is the production of ph.d.’s, the use of ph.d. students as a labor force and parallel to that the adjunctification of the humanities. The overproduction of ph.d.’s will keep the requirements for tenure high. the growing research competition will also likely increase the requirement on the humanities and humanities departments. why would you tenure a humanities person with only one book? when your standards in engineering are one patent or more…? it is a losing game of increasing expectations.

——

Missing from this discussion, as far as I could tell, were the $20,000 questions: why publish? To what end? Would the quality of academic scholarship go up if we expected books later in a career, instead of sooner? If scholarship is a conversation, with whom are we conversing? And to whom are we speaking? To what extent do ‘hot topics’ have an academic audience? How can we determine what scholarship has lasting merit, when it’s often the case that we won’t be able to tell for years (or decades?)? Who determines what constitutes ‘quality’? How well does peer review succeed in its aims? And, to bring in rational choice for a moment, will academic publishers who expect us to buy their books ever start pricing books cheaply enough for us to buy them–without foregoing that month’s gas bill, that is? Merely adjusting the numbers required for tenure–numbers of books, numbers of articles–leaves the core issues untouched.

“

(Via The Little Professor.)

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we publish to compete. as for cost, the costs for publishers will skyrocket because everything is pushing them that way.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Three storms threaten to strike U.S. at once: “Moisture-laden storms from the north, west and south are likely to converge on much of America over the next several days in what could be a once-in-a-generation onslaught, meteorologists forecast yesterday.”

(Via .)

i’ve not heard of it yet…

Jared Diamond interview: “

There’s an excellent interview with Jared Diamond in Salon—I’m definitely going to have to buy his new book, Collapse.

Toward the end of ‘Collapse’ you describe two crucial factors for determining whether or not a civilization will survive, and one of them is whether there’s a willingness to discard unhelpful values. Clearly we have some values in this country that are very important to us, but some of them, like anathematizing family planning, aren’t very helpful in this day and age.

—snip—-
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Foolish Jared, expecting people to do the reasonable, rational thing.

“

(Via Pharyngula.)

yep, foolish…. sarcasm prevalent.

riverfronttimes.com | Eat More Beaver | 2005-01-05: “For 69-year-old Lorraine Wells and her husband, Joe, barbecued coon is the only way to go. The Wellses soak the creature in a mixture of vinegar, water and salt overnight, and then parboil the carcass with seasoned salt, garlic and pepper. When the meat is tender, Joe tosses the carcass on the grill and smokes the meat for a few hours. They insist raccoon tastes better than roast beef.”

(Via .)

this traditions seems to me, to be more real than most.