1. I like it, although it got too grim partway through.
2. That table of contents that skids down the left side as you scroll drives me nuts.
Pretty good. Still reading and thinking. Anybody want a link to Krugman's chart today of employment to population? Horrible.
that keeps us too preoccupied to develop wider political or social concerns.Social media manages to launder some of that self-scrutiny so that we experience it as narcissistic identity play.
You know, that link to the Times about narcissistic music wasn't necessarily youth
As I was reading, I thought that maybe Neo-Liberalism is the step in which personal identity becomes commodified. According to Marx it was your labor-value; now it's your self.
html fail and failure to preview
s/b "You know, that link to the Times about narcissistic music wasn't necessarily blaming youth"
and "labor-value" should be "labour power"
we may find ourselves archly going through the motions in all aspects of our everyday life, at a contemplative distance from our friends, lovers, and even our own talents, all the passions in which we would ideally lose ourselves.
Neo-liberalism kills love.
I hate this shit. Back to Hirata Atsutane.
A friend of mine asserted recently that THE THING that marked the beginning of the end was when Carter opted to fight inflation over unemployment. I had said the beginning of the end began with Reagan.
I had a professor who blamed LBJ and Charles DeGaulle (a tiny bit). It seemed reasonable at the time.
He also blamed Reagan for making it worse. He didn't seem to pay much attention to Carter.
I blame Lincoln. Total softy on those traitorous rebs, post-war.
Interesting-sounding book, yeah. The review's stated reservations in the last two paragraphs seem right.
The beginning of the end was Fordism! Or Taylorization.
Why did neo-liberalism cross the road?
To suck the souls and kill the dreams of everyone on that side of the road, too.
How much neo-liberalism does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Off Araby did Obam-a
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where cash, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns fitted out for man
Beneath a sunny sea.
Joni Mitchell didn't live in an underwater city.
10: His post-war wasn't long enough for bread to mold. Unless he kept his bread in the shower or something. And why would he do that if he was president?
Stop accusing our greatest president of no knowing how to store baked goods.
16: I liked 15 as it was. I was imagining you as an indeterminately immigrant cab driver, just getting wound up.
I was going for old guy at the barber, so I'm clearly getting close.
I was with him up to the "ideological theatre of employment" part. I'm suspicious that this isn't a particularly rigorous reading of Brecht, but I've had a half glass of wine too many to tease out why I get that feeling. And I've just been sending out job applications, which puts my head in a strange place.
I forgot to buy wine, so we're out except for Marsala (which tastes horrible).
From the linked review:
In other words, we can try to fight alienation with more alienation, deploying inscrutable sarcasm to conform to expectations and mock them at the same time.
Does this seem remotely plausible as a way for making anyone actually feel better about alienating work? I mean, deploying obvious sarcasm, maybe, provided that doing so does not in fact put one at risk of losing a job on which one depends (which is contrary to the analysis described in the review generally). But the mental state described just does not ring true to me.
(Is the joke in fact on the reader of the book? Of the review?)
Ooh, we've been there before. Yuck. Luckily, there's a liquor store just around the block. I was wondering recently at the large number of opaque black bags we have in our plastic bag stash, until I realized those are the ones said liquor store uses.
We have bourbon and sweet vermouth (which I suppose I should have counted in the "wine" category), but the liquor store by my house closes at 7:00 on Tuesday.
I was wondering recently at the large number of opaque black bags we have in our plastic bag stash, until I realized those are the ones said liquor store uses.
Well, and our bookie.
23: So, you could have a Manhattan.
I could. I have bitters and cherries also. However, I'm drinking bourbon and calculating sensitivity and specificity.
I'm depressed to realize that ending my nightly glass of wine really did fix my periodic insomnia. I miss my glass of wine.
I'm at a bar and having a pretty fab Doubel IPA.
28: If it keeps you awake, have it at lunch.
27: And not watching your team go do battle with the Giants as they're tied going into the bottom of the ninth? Does anyone there even pay attention the Pirates anymore?
Someone gave me a hard time at work once for bringing my lunch in one of the liquor store bags (which are also black/grey here). It was really annoying, and yet I never did it again. They're really very nice bags, as bags go.
Hey, Stanley, I forgot to say that I'm mad at you because that plumbing thread let me trust myself to get under the sink, where I both threw out my back and left a tiny drip I don't seem to be strong enough to tighten out of existence.
35: Ouch. On the other hand, once you sell that house, it'll be someone else's problem!
Sounds like someone needs more torque.
Does this seem remotely plausible as a way for making anyone actually feel better about alienating work?
Freedom can be found through the play drive. Read yer Schiller.
Sounds like someone needs more torque.
I always wanted to have two pet inquisitors, Torque and Mada.
Ran out of whiskey. Should probably sleep before I drink the vermouth.
When I was fresh out of high school and in Spain, a friend took me to some sort of religious parade where everyone was drinking vermouth. Or, maybe it was all a cruel joke, and only I was served vermouth and everyone else was drinking something good. Regardless: blech.
Drink it, Moby! Drink it and smoke clove cigarettes and read Camus. And liveblog.
We were served some kind of crazy vermouth at the snazzy, molecular kinda whatever restaurant we went to in new york, and I tell you what? It was damned good. I wish I could find it again.
I think you can find New York pretty easily by going south down I-95 or something.
Vermouth is delish. Gin and sweet vermouth is also delish. I, however, am drinking one of the 660-odd bottles of wine we bottled two weekends ago even though it's quite young, because there's nothing else in the house I feel like opening.
there's nothing else in the house I feel like opening
If you didn't leave the lid up, that will make a mess.
The Pirates lost, if you hadn't noticed. (I was checking the news because somebody got shot in the store by my bus stop and that kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here.)
I am drinking beer, in celebration of the ability to drink beer for the first time in eight days.
I've just been sending out job applications, which puts my head in a strange place.
I hear ya. I'm sure my applications are a lot easier to do than yours, but the process is intensely frustrating. Damn neoliberalism.
I did notice. I was watching on my phone as the great bearded one subdued them in the tenth.
Moses did very well with the plagues.
32: Does anyone there even pay attention the Pirates anymore?
33: I think JP does.
That'd be JRoth. Sometimes (like tonight) when I'm leaving work I need to contend with Pirates fans coming to games, so I sort of pay attention to that.
That's just one small line different as far as the first two letters go.
You mean he roots for the πrates?
You wouldn't believe how pleased I am with myself right now.
57: Crazy Rhythms is still pretty hot.
Seeking a way "to articulate negation in a culture from which negativity itself has been banished," he argues that we should disrupt workplace virtuosity by giving our acting a Brechtian turn, making our adherence to employers' expectations strange, hypercorrect.
On the other hand, when I was working seriously marginal jobs, I felt that my most effective acts of resistance were to help my fellow employees write their resumes, navigate the social services system, or learn about their rights under OSHA and Workman's Comp.
I suspect that the author might have a somewhat posh idea of insecure work. Still, the phenomenology of insecurity is a useful thing to document and analyze.
I'm watching what might be the biggest choke ever in the history of playoff hockey (not that anyone cares). Vancouver had best record by far in the regular season and roared out to a 3-0 series lead against Chicago. Chicago won the next 3 (only 3 prior teams have come back from 3-0 down), and now Vancouver dominated game 7 but gave up a *shorthanded* goal with 2 minutes left to allow the Blackhawks to take them to overtime.
Still, the phenomenology of insecurity is a useful thing to document and analyze.
Depressing, though.
62: Or so the moolah would have you believe.
OT, this is such a great line, i would have liked to seen it delivered.
I can't copypaste it but the very first line here
"This student had spelled "citation" as "sightation" in our seminar and thought that it menat "to spot a source somewhere."
60: strip out the slightly high falutin language and what the original author seems to argue, judging from the review, is to work to rule and/or fake sincerity even more so than is expected of you.
Not sure how well this works as a strategy when the average worker more than ever is at the whim of their manager. Modern working life seems to be more post-bureaucratic than bureaucratic: you have to keep to the rules but your superiors don't.
as opposed to the right wing view of "job markets work well when workers beg for work", i like to think in terms of "if a job isn't worth paying a good wage to do, it isn't worth being done"; i think this is doesn't do enough flattery though
Yeah, I have a lot of affection for the output of Zero Books [and I sometimes read Ivor Southwood's blog] but I'm not getting what is new or insightful about the book from that review. Anyone who has worked in a non-'professional' job in the past 10 or 20 years is well aware of the experiences he describes. Although I suppose the more books out there that describe it, the better.
I suspect that the author might have a somewhat posh idea of insecure work. Still, the phenomenology of insecurity is a useful thing to document and analyze.
Interestingly, the author is an ex-nurse. So I wonder if the shift from secure work within the state (broadly conceived) to insecure work in the private sector is partly what is driving it.
Although I suppose Jackmormon's right about the usefulness of the phenomenological description. It's always worth paying attention to the ways in which they attempt to colonize your soul -- as per Southwood's book. When I did low-paid manual jobs -- cleaning, for example -- your mind was your own. You could take the piss with your workmates, goof off, think and talk about more or less whatever you wanted as long as the stuff got done and there was very little micro-supervision of your work. Working in call centres isn't like that at all. You not only have to do the work, you have to continually perform in the ways described, and you are, per Martin's 67, at the whim and under the gaze of cunts.
Anyone who has worked in a non-'professional' job in the past 10 or 20 years is well aware of the experiences he describes. Although I suppose the more books out there that describe it, the better.
Especially since almost no one with real power falls into the category of having had those experiences. Hence the smart strategy of selling the narrative upmarket--nicely designed cover, no doubt printed well on nice paper, half-again the price of a mass-market paperback despite only being 100 pages. It's something that can be proudly added to one's self-presentation, no matter how little one's own circumstances resemble those described. The folks here, for example, could learn a lot from Southwood/Zero's example, though I suspect it would go rather against their ethos.
Which is to say that Jackmormon's 60.1 is almost certainly right in terms of being actively useful to the people in question, but I don't think the book is really aimed at them so much as potential sympathizers who aren't (or don't believe themselves to be!) so threatened.
re: 70
Zero has a whole catalogue of short, smart, snappy books in a similar vein.
Owen Hatherley's Militant Modernism
Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, etc.
They are good. They read like quick accessible polemics; not academic books, but informed by academic writing and 'theory'.
he argues that we should disrupt workplace virtuosity by giving our acting a Brechtian turn, making our adherence to employers' expectations strange, hypercorrect.
Yes, this is just a work-to-rule, isn't it? Working to rule is a very radical concept in itself, as it both points out the degree to which management destroys productivity and the degree to which workers' own autonomous contribution creates it.
(I remember a few years ago the German railways were affected by a work-to-rule - Dienst nach Vorschrift in German - and I wondered how they could tell.)
re: 73
Heh, yeah. There's a colleague here at work engaged in a unilateral work-to-rule. She's taking early retirement and one of the conditions of the early retirement deal is that she can only get it if her post is eliminated, rather than replaced. And, since she's been told a fair bit that her position is redundant, she's refusing to train her 'replacement'.
It's been quite an amusing exercise, as it's suddenly become apparent to her bosses that her apparently minor clerico-academic job, while on paper unimportant, in practice acts as a hub facilitating a lot of other people's work because she does a shit lot more than she's nominally supposed to, and once she goes along with her years of acquired institutional knowledge and practice, they are in shit.
74. Yes, a lot of us are basically doing this. In at 8:00, out at 4:00, stuff left to do or not. They don't want us, fine, they don't get us.
re: 75
Yeah. I'm fairly easy; my boss is an excellent guy and cuts me a _lot_ of slack when I need it, so I'm happy to return the favour as and when he needs it, but those on the receiving end of management shit are often responding in that sort of way.
A big part of the problem is that senior management don't give a shit. It's all 'Potemkin projects'; they don't give a shit if everything falls apart in 5 years as long as their CV is suitably burnished and they are off to pastures new.
One hears a lot about the baleful effects of IBGYBG incentives in finance, but I do wonder whether there's been much appreciation of possible downsides to increased labor mobility in academia, both at the management and at the academic (which is partly management, too) levels. Hm.
Or rather, duh, there's been a ton written about the effects of adjunctification. I think what I meant was that I haven't heard much about possible downsides to increased movement among TT professors. But I haven't looked, either!
re: 77
IME, I expect sometimes the management are perfectly right to knock together some projects as quickly as possible, get the appearances right and fuck the rest, as no-one will give a shit in a few years time, and a best-practice effort would be wasted work on the part of everyone involved. Academics, broadly defined, often ask for things that aren't realistic given time and budget constraints and are often surprisingly work-shy when it comes to providing their end of the bargain. But sometimes in my experience it's really not that way at all, and projects are under-resourced and badly managed precisely because the management involved have no long-term investment either in the outcome or the people working on it. Their primary project is their own CV; much of the time the only reason things work at all is precisely because of what Alex describes above: "the degree to which workers' own autonomous contribution creates it."
... where, to further clarify, what I'm really asking is whether people have bothered putting concerns of this sort into a language that those with power deem worth taking Seriously.
re: 78
I work in an 'academic related' post, so I'm talking primarily about people engaged in quasi-academic work, rather than lecturers/professors.
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Conversation just overheard between two call centre people: "It gets a bit ridiculous when you're asking them what sex their daughter is..."
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...especially when you're selling them a Sham-Wow.
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In a senior level class:
On the last homework, Students A and B turned in identical answers. I gave them both 0s for cheating, (although students are encouraged to work together.) Student A stayed after and told me he was livid at Student B, who'd asked if he could look at his work because he had trouble understanding.
I generally like Student A, and Student B has pissed me off MANY TIMES over the past four years.
Now, on the very next assignment, Student B and Student C have turned in identical answers. Student C did the problem with me, in office hours.
I'm so irate at Student B I want to spit. Mostly I just detest this person.
Heebie U does not have a culture of cheating the way other schools do; I know this is not the biggest sin ever. But man to I want to just fail this student for the semester.
(Instead I wrote that I was giving him a zero for his semester homework grade. I can't tell if this is reasonable or not, since I'm primarily just furious.)
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Isn't giving him a 0 for his homework grade going to effectively fail him anyway, unless he's a stone genius who gets straight As on everything else, which seems unlikely.
84: Nope, screw him. Totally reasonable. I'd be ok with you outright failing him, too.
Fail him and put a dead mouse in his blue book when you return it.
Isn't giving him a 0 for his homework grade going to effectively fail him anyway,
Most likely. Homework is probably around 20% of his grade, and he hasn't aced the tests.
I just occurred to me that he turned in the second instance of cheating as I passed back the first 0. So he didn't get the zero, and then turn around and do it again. He found out he was busted, and turned it in anyway. Still can't stand him.
So he didn't get the zero, and then turn around and do it again. He found out he was busted, and turned it in anyway.
Whichever. He belong dead. If that's too extreme he belong checkout clerk, not college.
In the long run, we all belong not college.
In the long run, we all belong dead (Keynes).
In the long run, my feet get all tingly. I bought new shoes, so I'll see if that helps.
Plus, seriously, this kid makes me irate. He's a goddamn senior, and I had to email him this semester and tell him to eat less disruptively during class, for christ sakes. Like, don't crumple noisy foil and spread your arms and yawn/groan and rub your belly while I'm talking, jackass.
95: are you sure he's actually human? This sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect from some sort of lower primate.
Furthermore, he's in the teacher training program.
82: The NYC birth certificate form I had to fill out asks what gender the mother is. I thought that was kind of cool.
Furthermore, he's in the teacher training program.
Fail him now.
Student A is also in the teacher training program, and that detail - that B is in the program, too - particularly pissed him off about getting a zero because of Student B.
Student C, who is a very diligent student, vouched for Student B. She swore up and down that they worked on the problem together before and after she came to office hours, and that he had explained parts of it to her, although she doesn't know why he turned in what she emailed to him.
(I made the mistake of emailing him, and he talked to her before I could talk to her. So she knew what I was bringing up.)
I really do trust her. But I'm not sure how to proceed with him.
But I'm not sure how to proceed with him.
I don't understand your uncertainty. What's wrong with failing him? Administrative hassle?
Just zeroing out his homework grade seems way too easy on him, if it's only 20% of the grade.
The main uncertainty I see in the situation you've described is whether student A out to have his "0" rescinded.
I hadn't penalized Student C, since she had done the problem in office hours with me, and, if Student A's experience was repeated, then she'd emailed her answer so that he could see if he'd done his right. Or something.
What is the nature of the 'work together but no copying' rule, exactly? If it's a bunch of proofs, and they do the whole thing as a twosome, wouldn't they have the same answers? I'm a bit confused.
"Working together" means you're allowed to solve the problem together, and then go to your separate computers to type up your answer formally.
Their assignments are identical down to typos,
formatting, spacing, etc.
109: Sort of. It seemed you'd confused Students A and C.
Mostly I don't have an answer except that I'm a softie?
That if it occurred as Student C claims it did, should B really fail the class?
It seemed you'd confused Students A and C.
No. I was wondering if student A's "0" should be rescinded, since it now seems very credible that that A hadn't intended to cheat, but that (as A said) B had asked to look at A's work because B said he had trouble understanding.
I'll probably drop A's 0 if he's on the border between two grades, and not mention it either way.
I'm not sure how what to do with B, though, and class is in 45 minutes.
Here, you've heard unanimous advice to fail him. Have you heard conflicting advice anywhere else?
I've had similar situations a few different times, and I ended up with a blanket policy of "duplicate work gets zeros for all parties" because it's too annoying to try to sort out the different stories/excuses.
It's rough on the student who actually did the work, but I tell myself that it provides a good life lesson about something or other.
Have him stay after class for 30min, and if he can redo the homework alone, he doesn't flunk automatically, but if he can't he does?
111: A more generous but still fair approach might be to assign a weight of 0 to Student B's HW when calculating their weighted average score.
Though scoring all the homework at 0 sounds quite reasonable. If it seems a little harsh, just remember that not all cheaters get caught, and not all teachers pay attention, so this may do something to improve non-cheaters' morale. My senior year in college, lots of us were very distraught that someone had plagiarized his senior essay (and stupidly, too - he copied a previous prizewinning essay!). The administration was pretty opaque about it and for quite a while things just went on as normal. It made the whole enterprise of academic recognition seem pointless if there were people who were going to get it without being fully engaged in the process. It was quite a relief to find out that he was not graduating with us.
115: That's fine as long as you don't care about encouraging students to work together. Never affected me since it's faster and easier just to work alone.
Students are allowed to work together (same as Heebie's); but they are not allowed to turn in identical assignments. There's a big difference between two people saying the same thing/using the same examples, and two people turning in exactly the same document. "Write your own sentences" is how I generally phrase it.
116 seems more unfair than just failing him. If he's cheating he deserves to fail the class. (That's the minimum punishment at most colleges. Egregious cheating doesn't get you an "F" for the course, it gets you thrown out of the school.)
Whereas even someone who did the homework themselves might not be able to reproduce it on the spot, if they struggled to do it in the first place. And those are the sort of arguments the game in 116 seems to invite.
I would certainly be able to tell from 116 if he's thought about the problem before. I would be watching closely how he approached the problem and whether he could talk about it, or whether he was cold on the problem. I would not be grading him for accuracy.
That's the minimum punishment at most colleges.
That's sweet that you believe that.
Although, I really have no idea how it's done at most colleges. You hear a lot of bitching about how soft everyone is on cheaters, though.
116, 121- also, even if he can do the work now, it's still wrong/against the rules to copy work. Right?
At my school, at least, just copying one homework assignment doesn't get you thrown out of anything- it usually gets either a zero for that assignment or a forced redo. Recidivism (or a plagiarized term paper or exam or something) would be a bigger deal.
Probably 125 was without seeing 122, but anyway, the point 116 would be added detective work to determine whether they really had worked together. Not to check his understanding of the material.
I did get a student thrown out of a program (at a different school) two years ago. But that was a stupidly egregious example, where he turned in another student's work as his own, and I gave him a 0 and a stern lecture, and then he did it again (with the same other student!), and THEN his final paper involved cut-and-pasted sentences and paragraphs from multiple published work.
That was for an MA in education. Hm.
126- yes, it was. And the testimony of Student C makes your situation more complicated than mine, but that's basically why I would probably just give them both 0s and tell them to be more careful about writing up their own work next time. Because I'm lazy and dislike arguing with people about their inner selves.
123: I should have said "minimum official punishment. I understand that most people in practice do mostly nothing about it.
120: What I meant was that any sufficiently risk-averse student (e.g. me) is not going to want the burden of policing their study partners if they check results against each other, so you're discouraging the marginal cooperator from helping other students.
I have very little direct experience of this as I never voluntarily collaborated, but my hunch is that of the students who do collaborate, the ones who least need to collaborate are the ones who benefit the others the most.
Of course you have to weigh that against the real cost to you of figuring out who really did the work.
It just struck me that I've never had a real Manhattan. The closest I came was a "Southern Comfort Manhattan" once on a plane flight in 1977. I actually bought Angostura bitters a while back even though SNAP didn't cover it (it was beside the Bloody Mary mix, dammit), so all I'd need to add to my regular stock is the sweet vermouth. Well, okay, I don't usually keep maraschino cherries etc. around either: I usually think "class" is not swigging Old Crow straight from the bottle.
I'm sorry, what was this thread about again?
131- yeah, probably. I care more about whether each student learns the material than about whether they all learn how to work in groups, so that doesn't really bother me as a side effect.
One of the classes I'm currently teaching (for which I did not design the curriculum) includes a mandatory group project where each group turns in one assignment and all members of the group get the same grade. This, predictably, always results in some group members being penalized for shoddy work by other group members, and/or doing way more than their share. The person who is in charge of that class claims that this is meant to impart some lesson about choosing your work partners wisely and also teamwork. I'm not very convinced that it's beneficial and I would have hated the requirement when I was a student. It does mean less grading for me though.
I should have said "minimum official punishment. I understand that most people in practice do mostly nothing about it.
This does not correspond with my experience working with (our really lovely!) student ju/dicial affairs. It takes a lot to earn an F.
So, I was all prepared to be a softie. After class, I gave him a steely look and asked him "what happened?" He gave me a bald-faced lie about how he had his answer all written out, and then had looked at hers, and used that to fix up the portions of his answer that she'd gotten help with in office hours. This infuriated me, because really? You copied typos into yours? You chose to inexplicably italicize the same random heading words?
I said, "This calls into question all homeworks you've turned in all semester."
He started to look panicked and said he could show me the scratchwork he'd done with Student C. He did show it to me, and it included the type of detail that students wouldn't think of if they were recreating such a thing to fool the teacher.
So I relented and went with: Your homework grade will not contribute to your semester grade. Your grade will be based entirely on your tests. Which does not leave him in a very good position, but hey. Don't cheat.
Certainly in the plagiarism cases I dealt with as a TA, my professor's position was basically, "what punishment can we impose that doesn't involve an administrative hassle for us?" - which typically wasn't much.
Of course, if it turns out that B is cheating on the rest of the graded work as well, then for consistency you will have to calculate 0/0 to figure out what grade to give.
Am I correctly understanding 135 to say that: he originally legitimately worked on the problem with student C, but then after student C came to your office hours and did the problem with you, he just copied and pasted her whole answer verbatim and turned it in as his own.
And in your mind this was... partially exculpatory?
A final grade of 0/0 = NULL would be a pretty drastic punishment, actually. No matter how well they do in an arbitrarily large number of other courses, their GPA is still NULL.
140: It does at least suggest that B was unconfident, rather than just cynical and lazy. Still unscrupulous, but I'm not as enraged by someone who does the work, but still thinks they will do badly unless they cheat, as I am by someone who is just lazy and cynical and thinks, 'why should I work when I can just cheat?'. The former shows at least some respect for the material and the learning process.
Still very, very bad, but I can at least have a little sympathy for someone who tried doing it the honest way first.
And in your mind this was... partially exculpatory?
No...it was more that he was fighting tears. Which, he is one of the most insincere jackasses I've ever known, and I believe he would try to manipulate me in a heartbeat, but I was uncomfortable and changed my mind because of it.
Also, depending on whether you are punishing the plagiarist to improve the plagiarist, or to improve the school, it might matter that this is a senior. For the integrity of the school and the grades, this was probably too light a punishment, but it's probably too late to correct this kid's academic behavior or get him more genuinely involved in his studies. So you might only have harmed B by punishing him more than you did.
Now I'm trying to find a TED talk for math club tonight, and I do not have the patience whatsoever to wade through these.
Does it have to be math related?
I've watched this TED talk a couple of times and find that it bears re-watching.
It's interesting to watch someone try to make art using electronically mediated communication as one of the key elements of the artistic process. I think he does a good job.
It should be math related. I found two that look interesting to me; I just can't sit down and watch videos by myself very easily. So I think I'll just force them to watch them, sight unseen.
No...it was more that he was fighting tears. Which, he is one of the most insincere jackasses I've ever known, and I believe he would try to manipulate me in a heartbeat, but I was uncomfortable and changed my mind because of it.
Sucker. T other student lied and he only cried because he got caught.
but it's probably too late to correct this kid's academic behavior or get him more genuinely involved in his studies. So you might only have harmed B by punishing him more than you did.
He's probably already permanently fucked in the head. The only real question is who's going to let him get away with it and who's going to give him the deserved kick in the teeth.
Without actually watching it, I'm betting this TED talk by Steven Strogatz would be interesting.
142
No...it was more that he was fighting tears. Which, he is one of the most insincere jackasses I've ever known, and I believe he would try to manipulate me in a heartbeat, but I was uncomfortable and changed my mind because of it.
Good grief. This is why most people are suspicious of liberal judges.
Sucker. T other student lied and he only cried because he got caught.
That was my conclusion. Including the part about me being a sucker. If it's any consolation, he got 50s on the two tests that now make up the whole of his grade going into the final.
149: Quick, let them know that I'm not a judge.
We ended up watching Margaret Wertheim on coral, crochet, and hyperbolic geometry. It was a very good choice.
I wonder what Shearer's ideal judge might look like. I'm guessing something like the drug court judge from this TAL episode.
132 - about whether i should listen to the hangover or my urge to try out rye
That was actually Buck's nickname within IBM for a while. He'd been writing some unpleasant things about them.
Then they started calling him the Unabomber.
Rye = bourbon =Tennesee Whiskey
NO, YOU STUDENT, I'M NOT GOING TO FALL FOR THE BANANA IN THE TAILPIPE.
157 seems extraordinarily loose in its definitions.
RYE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS BOURBON MOTHERFUCKER. I SENTENCE YOU TO A VIEWING OF BEETHOVEN'S FOURTH.
Man, I hate when students cry at me. It basically only happens when they obviously fucked up, and I catch them, and they didn't expect it, and they are obviously wrong but I still feel so guilty and on-the-spot anyway. It's very hard to stick to anything in those meetings. Stop crying and go away! Please!
It's sort of continuously alarming to me to try to wrap my head around how much of a power disparity there is between me and the students. From my end, I don't feel it, and have many internal reactions of irritation/sarcasm/sternness where my instinct is to treat them like peers who are being annoying. But I totally remember how I felt being on the other side of it, and how freaked out I got even as a grad student when it seemed like a professor was even a little bit irritated with me. Terrifying! Don't yell at me!
Reining in my annoyance and acting calm and unemotional during all the completely aggravating meetings about why people are failing is very difficult.
Bourbon = Tennessee Whiskey I could kinda see where you're coming from, but Rye? It doesn't have remotely the same ingredients. Weirdo.
152 We ended up watching Margaret Wertheim on coral, crochet, and hyperbolic geometry. It was a very good choice.
Oh, fun. I saw an exhibit of that work at the Smithsonian natural history museum a month or so ago.
If it's any consolation, he got 50s on the two tests that now make up the whole of his grade going into the final.
It is! I'm sending bad vibes his way for the final.
I look forward to Tweety's forthcoming treatise The Kvetcher and the Rye.
164: I'd associate bourbon with a corn-based whiskey from Kentucky but I understand the geographic region isn't a strict legal requirement in thesee days of bastardized culture.
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<FirstWorldProblems>
Our expensive bathroom remodel on our new house is almost done. After a surprising degree of aggravating wrangling and delay, the correct countertop material is obtained. We go to look at it today after they've installed it and discover that they've screwed up one of the few bits that is going to be very difficult to fix - they drilled holes for the wrong-size faucet, in such a way that there will be nice big openings in it if they go ahead and install the correct faucet (which is sitting there, in a box, at the site).
I'm currently trying to figure out if we can demand that they supply an entire new countertop to fix this, or if that's out of the question, how much we knock off the bill for installing completely the wrong thing (besides the noticeable price differential between that and the right thing).
(Several other bits of hardware, like the showerhead and toilet flush lever, also had the wrong version installed, and we found the boxes containing the right ones in the trash. But at least those are straightforwardly fixable.)
</FirstWorldProblems>
|>
169: Ethical obligation number one: contact urple and let him know you've located his wayward contractor.
if we can demand that they supply an entire new countertop to fix this
Yes.
You can turn the old countertop into a bidet if you google the plans.
169: I think I've already made clear my position that you should pay them nothing until it's all fixed.
the noticeable price differential between that and the right thing
What's the noticeable price differential? The right thing is more or less expensive? Not following that part.
The right faucet is about $150 more than the wrong faucet. That's clearly an absolute minimum of the possible differential. The real problem is that the countertop is something like $1500-$3000 (hard to be sure what replacement would cost, because we got a remnant piece, and if there doesn't happen to be another one of those in the stoneyard, a full slab would have to be purchased).
Huh. A dilemma. How big is the installing company? (Just kidding, mostly.)
Finding the correct showerhead and toilet flushing doohickey in the trash is pretty annoying, to say the least; I'd probably put up a stink about the whole thing initially and see what they say. Maybe the boss will immediately be pissed about his staff's behavior and offer to correct the situation completely.
I'd probably put up a stink
If they don't install the bathroom fixtures correctly, you may not have any other choice.
153
I wonder what Shearer's ideal judge might look like. ...
I thought Rehnquist was pretty good (although he should have resigned when he got mortally ill). I didn't really understand heebie's earlier anger with student B either, it seemed like dispassionate judgement would be more appropriate.
So (and this applies to urple, too) I thought the usual deal with contractors was that, at the point that they reach substantial completion (according to them), you make up a punch list and present it to them, and they have to either fix or make up an excuse (which is to say, negotiate whether it can be done without additional cost) for not fixing everything on the list before the contract is complete. Is that not the case with home renovation?
Certainly, I think that if you were to say to them "are we at substantial completion? Because if so we have the punch list here to talk about", and hand them some, you know, vaguely official-lookin' thing, they'd at least talk to you about it.
169: I'd be super annoyed. As far as patching together a solution, I'd probably try to find a faucet I liked at the bigger hole size, and make them cover all substitution costs.
In practice, when it comes up for us, we just email JRoth and he makes it all better.
181 cont'd: the nice thing about that system is that you don't have to start the negotiations. You give them a list of everything that's wrong, and then they say "but that would cost three thousand dooooolllaaaaaars", and you say "okay, what's your idea?"
184 cont'd: and obviously they won't fix everything, or even most everything, but at least then you're starting from the premise of "all of these things have been left undone, but rest assured you will eventually get paid, once we've worked through this last document here of shit you didn't do right."
But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this stuff? Maybe this is more something that happens with larger contractors on larger jobs?
Sometimes I think we should redo our bathroom, but then I remember how long it took to get the toilet seat with the goldfish and I don't want to go through that again.
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Parliament is debating amending the rules so that men do not come ahead of women.
Good luck with that, Britishers.
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At Britain's age, I'd think they'd have fewer problems like that anyway.
We're definitely in punch list territory. I may just be doing the bad thing of starting to negotiate with myself because I know that totally replacing a whole bunch of existing work in order to drill holes on 8" centers instead of 4" centers seems petty, even if it is, in fact, what we specified. The fact that I don't know of acceptable middle-ground solutions exacerbates this.
(I'm secondarily annoyed by the prospect of not having a fully functional bathroom when I move in on Saturday, but I shouldn't let that be a significant factor in the negotiations).
because I know that totally replacing a whole bunch of existing work in order to drill holes on 8" centers instead of 4" centers seems petty, even if it is, in fact, what we specified
When you start thinking that way, the terrorists contractors have won. You specified what you wanted, they fucked up. Too bad for them.
I know that totally replacing a whole bunch of existing work in order to drill holes on 8" centers instead of 4" centers seems petty
No, it really doesn't. It's not like they didn't know they were drilling into something expensive to replace when they sailed blithely in and got it wrong.
Re working to rule, the French customs service was forbidden to strike, so whenever they got into a labor dispute they would initiate a 'greve de zele' which amounted to actually checking everybody's documents and doing a set amount of random searches for smuggled goods, as opposed to simply eye motioning everybody through as they slowed down a bit at the border. There was something quite impressive about a traffic jam going from the border all the way through the center of the city and on to the border on the other side of the canton.
Sounds like HG is having some regrets at her relative leniency. But if this guy has an average of 50 and hasn't really been doing the homework, he's unlikely to ace the final.
On a related note, I've heard of a subtly horrible technique for nearly untraceably playing favorites (or in this case, disfavorites). The professor gives a blisteringly difficult final, and is generous with the partial credit to everyone but the target. There is collateral damage in terms of the other panicked students, but all is forgiven when they receive their surprisingly good final grade. And what does the target have to complain about? - they demonstrably failed it fair and square.
Don't construe that as actual advice, by the way. I can't even tell you firsthand whether it will work as advertised.
Come on, the target will have friends in the class and see that they all got partial credit on answers for which he or she got none.
This also seems more like a method of playing anti-favorites than of playing favorites.
I've been thinking recently that ttaM is right and grading/evaluation should be done by someone other than the teacher. You don't really want teachers to be dispassionate about their students, but then that makes the grading situation fraught.
The faucet drilling is definitely not a punch list item. Punch list implies that they've done everything roughly right and want to collect their 10% retainage for cleaning minor things up, but they shouldn't have been paid anything yet on the stone fabrication. Assuming they had the right specs, it's their obligation to buy new stone and drill it properly.
196: How many people compare answers on the final? I can see how this would blow up in the prof's face on something like a mid-term. I am sure that sometimes (though probably a minority of the time) students don't even *see* the final post-grading.
198: Yes, that is the obvious control. Plenty of evil schemes can be prevented with adequate controls. But of course it is difficult to devise sufficiently comprehensive controls to frustrate a sufficiently clever and motivated schemer.
BTW I only put a probability of 25ish percent of this technique working well on anything like a regular basis, or being anywhere near common. I heard about it from someone who does tend to be pretty cynical, though not always wrong.
197: The favorites are the complement of the anti-favorites.
Back in high school a friend and I would sit next together in chemistry, do the tests ourselves and then compare answers. If they were different we would each go over them again. It was an excellent way of avoiding silly mistakes.
I like Karin Vogel: "It is really very comforting that one doesn't have to worry about Great Britain." I also envy her. I do have to.
Also, I don't know if she was actually interviewed in English, but she seems to have one's "one" down pat.
Why I have to worry about Great Britain.
I've been giving some thought to wandering into town tomorrow to take some photographs, and then thought that no; it's going to be royalist madness, everywhere.
re: 204
Jesus, fuck! I can't unread that.
No...it was more that he was fighting tears. Which, he is one of the most insincere jackasses I've ever known,
Student B is John Boehner!
204: it happens. A friend of mine worked at the Treasury some years ago and apparently most of the women there (including her) were having the occasional romantic dream about Gordon Brown.
191: Like everyone else said, it's not petty. Now, if they can come up with some clever solution that genuinely hides their error and gives you a bathroom that looks like you wanted it to without screwed-up holes, you might let them get away with it without getting you a new countertop. But only if the solution really does work -- if they make a proposal, think about it for a bit before you take it.
177, 191: I'm at the stage where people are asking me about when/if I plan to buy a place, and this is the kind of thing that makes me glad I'm not. No, of course it's not petty. You got holes three times bigger than you wanted in a one-of-a-kind piece (If I read 177 and 191 correctly, but even if I've got the details wrong, no, it's not petty). I almost want to say that if they don't give you something functionally identical to exactly what you wanted at no additional cost, you should take them to court. I have no idea how rational that is, but still.
As for the cheating thing, Shearer is a disingenuous asshole (there's a mountain of unexamined assumptions in an analogy between opinions of judges and this instance of this teacher handling this discipline problem, and most of them are so ridiculous it's hard to believe they're sincere), but being stricter seems like it would have been justified. Academic honesty policies in general are complicated, but this instance seems simple. Let's hope Student B does indeed fail even with the new plan as outlined.
On the stone slab thing, if they ruined the piece for NW's job, it may still be salvageable for another of the contractor's upcoming projects. Which is to say, if you're feeling bad that it's going to go to waste: don't. They can very likely make use of it and, having basically bought it from you, re-sell it to their new customer for whom they're doing a satisfactory thing with it.
We took your countertop to a farm where it can run free and will be happy.
"Never again will anyone take your countertop for granite."
Rye is NOT bourbon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_whiskey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_whiskey
On the other hand, "Tennessee whiskey" is a subtype of bourbon that's filtered through maple charcoal as opposed to whatever charcoal they drip other bourbons through. And "wheated bourbon" is bourbon with wheat as a second major ingredient while regular bourbon does that with rye. But there's also wheat whiskey now that's made mostly from wheat (really!) but I haven't tried any because they tends to be 3 or 4 times the price of my usual stuff. It's on my bucket list though, along with the 13 year old rye I fell in love with in 2001.
(IK,IK,IHBT,BS.)
Speaking of which, I never had to cheat. Hell, till I started taking college courses (at 13) I seldom even had to come to school to pass; I just read the textbooks, kept up somehow with the homework, and showed up for the tests -- after which I'd get excused to go potty & read instead of having to sit still wait for everyone else to finish. It was boring as hell. So of course I never had to learn how to TRY, so when I finally got them to let me take college courses I got confused and wussed out. (It didn't help that I as too obsessed with sex & drugs & rock-&-roll either: Phil 101 was hilarious I was stoned on PCP.) So I'm a MAJOR underachiever.
Do most of the good K-12 teachers and principals still work in suburban and/or private schools? In middle school I got a kick out of correcting the English teacher's spelling, grammar and punctuation, while the kids I knew who went to Catholic or private schools were already on Moby Dick (at least) with teachers who'd apparently memorized it.
And by the way, let's forget about forcing kids to go to school when they'd rather be second-class semi-citizens. Somebody has to work at Wal-Mart to save up for tractor-pull tickets, right? If they still can't read at a 6th grade level by the end of 8th grade and if they can't be bothered to show up except to be disruptive then spend the money on kids who want to be there and get something out of it; the wash-outs can fix potholes or set up wind farms or something. Combine that with literacy and reading-comprehension tests for EVERY potential voter and we might turn this Society around eventually. What good is demanding to see somebody's birth certificate when you can't read the damn thing? What America needs is more "elitism," not less. (But requiring Heidegger might be stretching it.)
And now I'll fade away again.
Defunkt provided enough material to bring this thread to 1000, people, and we're ignoring it? It's like I don't even know you all any more.
It's like the entire blog in a single comment--but seen through a mirror, darkly.
Literacy tests to buy tractor pull tickets?
No no, you goof. Literacy tests to establish by the end of 8th grade whether you ... wait. Never mind.
Literacy tests for qualifying to be registered to vote. Seriously. It could also be done orally for smart people who haven't learned how to read; I've met a few, it takes a good memory and/or a voice recorder. (Remember, Socrates thought literacy would cause stupidity.)
I don't see how we can let someone vote when s/he doesn't even know what the three branches of government are or how a bill becomes law. This does not require an extensive background in constitutional law; they taught me this in a big-city public middle school. It would also help to know what the Bill of Rights is and what it says and does -- e.g., that the U.S.A. is not and never was a Christian country should be obvious from the first ten words of the first amendment.
Nothing is stopping people from learning this stuff. An I'd want it taught in free public classes at convenient times and places, and if you don't pass the test the first time you can keep repeating the course and the test year after year till you get it right. People have to pass a test to be licensed to drive, don't they? Nothing fancy, just the stuff immigrants have to learn before they become citizens.
Although I don't see why we'd require any of this to be in English; we have no established language either. For that matter why does the citizenship test require that one "write one out of three sentences correctly to demonstrate an ability to write in English?" Again, I see no reason why an "illiterate peasant" from Chiapas or Guangzhou can't learn what "veto" means.
(For extra bonus points, such as to qualify to teach and register fellow citizens, one might be asked to define "socialism" without reference to Kenya or "sharia law," whatever that is.)
Like I said: free, public and convenient courses for those who didn't learn it in school, with no barriers because of race or economics. If one can't take a course in person one can watch on TV, listen on the radio, study a written text or listen to an audiobook. And the tests would also be free, public, and convenient.
I call it "elitism" to be facetious; I think in a functioning democracy this should be a basic skill. If someone disagrees please explain why it's bad to require people to know what voting is before they do it.
As for my other raving about tractor puls and Wal-Mart, well, feel free to ignore and/or piss on that. That really has nothing to do with voting. And, as you've seen, I've rethought the relationship between full-fledged citizenship and literacy: obviously someone can be brilliant but illiterate or literate but a complete dope. (My personal experience of course concerns the latter, as eloquently evinced by comment 214.)
By the way, bourbon hangovers suck. It doesn't matter how much the bourbon cost either.
Oh and scratch "literacy" tests, it's "civics" really.
Of course, that doesn't mean literacy and IQ tests should not be required before attending a tractor pull in a Wal-Mart lot. Naked. In the snow.
Okay, I've done my bit. There are 777 comments left to make here, so let 'em rip.