Academic Transgressions

Transgression is a prerogative of rank. We in the lower orders have to obey. Sometimes it just gets a little frustrating. – Confessions of a Community College Dean

This wonderful line is in response to a post from Easily Distracted on re-imagining the liberal arts curriculum (this discussion also continues on Reassigned Time as well). CCCD notes that his own community college isn't free innovate or experiment with ways to reinvent the college curriculum because of its place within the academic food chain. Instead, it is constrained to fill the requirements set by four year institutions. CCCD is exactly right: "Transgression is a prerogative of rank."

But this insight holds true not only between institutions, but also within institutions.

At my own Bizarro University, we are currently in the midst of a "reorganization" which has meant that faculty who for decades had been able to envision and implement an interdisciplinary program of study not unlike the one imagined by Easily Distracted, have instead been disbanded. The ability to transgress and innovate has been moved higher up the chain of command and is now the demesne of Provosts and Vice Chancellors. This is simply one of the most recent manifestations of the corporate university structure as it is being played out on my campus. Now, rather than curricular decisions about interdisciplinary programs being made by the faculty and implemented by the administration, the order has been reversed. The administration decides, and the faculty is supposed to implement.

The problems with this structure will no doubt plague us for many years to come. And as CCCD correctly notes: "Sometimes it just gets a little frustrating."

Hope

Now that grades are finished and classes are over, I've become interested in a closely related topic – the subject of "Hope."

It's in the news almost constantly, and even otherwise safely sane and cynical folks are starting to show signs of occasional outbursts these days, so I feel the need to do some studying up on the subject.

My plan is to start with Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope and see if that helps. I've never made much progress with this work in the past, since given the density and size of its three volumes, I've always taken the title to be somewhat ironic. I have a good working grasp of the the principle of irony, though. But the principle of hope remains a more obscure and alien concept to me. However, I'm willing to learn.

Wish me luck.

Mother's Day Peaches

Happy Mother's Day! Some music of the day, "Peaches En Regalia" from the Mothers of Invention.

All Downhill

This was one of the LumpenProf's birthday presents today. I like it lots.


There is one song on the CD that struck me as a fitting birthday post, so here is Lyle Lovett performing an acoustic version of "All Downhill." Although, personally, I think probably the best is yet to come...

Lyle Lovett, All Downhill

Life’s been good to me
I thank the good Lord for the way things are
Good friends and family
Well God is good as good can be

I've had an excellent time so far
There's only one thing that I fear
I've been up so long on this lucky star
It could be all downhill from here
It could be all downhill from here

Well I've been the whole world 'round
I've been up and I've been down
I've been good and I've been bad
Mostly I've been bad

I've had an excellent time so far
There's only one thing that I fear
I've been up so long on this lucky star
It could be all downhill from here
It could be all downhill from here

I ride a good horse
Well, I like him, of course
I've got a beautiful girlfriend
Sometimes we stay in

I've had an excellent time so far
There's only one thing that I fear
I've been up so long on this lucky star
It could be all downhill from here
It could be all downhill from here

Obscene Interiors

I find this project bizarrely funny so, therefore, I must share it with you. It's a book and companion website entitled Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor, by Justin Jorgensen, and consists of "a collection of real online male personal ad photos and my critique of the decorating found within" with the provocatively posed male bodies tastefully photoshopped out. Amazing.

From the tiny mid-century modern bed to the craftsman lamp to the neo-classic chair this room is a mish-mash of styles. Sometimes that works, this time it didn't.

Meme: Passion Quilt

Read More Marx!

Philosopher's Playground tapped me for this quick and easy blog meme:

Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt."

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

I've been looking for an excuse to post this picture. It's from Hugo Gellert's 1934 Marx' 'Capital' in Lithographs – an early graphic novel retelling of Capital, Volume I through Art Deco prints – a marvelous artifact. Perhaps one day I'll break down and have this picture done as a tattoo.

By far the most important public service I do for my students is to make them read Capital, Volume I. I've come to find that whatever else they may be studying or thinking about, it is helped along by a liberal dose of Marx. And, evidently, some of that passion seeps into my lectures.

Now I get to inflict this meme on five unsuspecting victims, so I will tap:

1. The Doctor Isn't
2. Rough Theory
3. Professor Zero
4. Citizen of Somewhere Else (again)
   
5. A Gentleman's C (just to see what happens)

People of Corn

An inadvertent birthday present for the LumpenProf:

I've just started reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I've enjoyed his opening riff that the real people of corn are no longer the Maya, but those of us who live in the US and subsist on an industrialized monoculture diet based almost solely on processed corn. Pollan writes:

When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain – the one that now feeds most of us most of the time and typically culminates either in a supermarket or fast-food meal – I expected that my investigations would lead to a wide variety of places. And though my journeys did take me to a great many states, and covered a great many miles, at the end of these food chains (which is to say, at the very beginning) I invariable found myself in exactly the same place: a farm field in the American Corn Belt. The great edifice of variety and choice that is the American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn.

Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia, and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, typically come from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn.

Head over to the processed food and you find ever more intricate manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do most of a nugget's other constituents, including the modified corn starch that glues the thing together, the corn flour in the batter that coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive golden coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget "fresh" can all be derived from corn.

To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all of the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for your beverage instead and you'd still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. (17-18)

That even beer has been sucked into the corn-industrial-complex seems like adding insult to injury. What ever happened to those German purity laws of 1516 where: "the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water" and that "Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities' confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail." Surely there are some authorities out there who would love to confiscate all the barrels of Budweiser some weekend to protect the sanctity of our beer.

A Farewell Yodel

Eddy Arnold passed away today. I confess a weakness for cowboy yodelers and I'm saddened to hear that he's gone.

THE CATTLE CALL
Recorded by Eddy Arnold
Written by Tex Owens

CAPO: 1ST FRET KEY: Eb PLAY: D
Refrain
[D] Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
[A] Woo - hoo - ooo - oop - i - de - de
[D] Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
[A] Yod-el - od-el- lo - ti - [D] de.

[D] The cattle are prowlin' the [G] coyotes are howlin'
Way [A] out where the dogies [D] bawl
Where spurs are a-jinglin', a [G] cowboy is singin'
This [A] lonesome cattle [D] call.

Refrain

He [G] rides in the sun 'til his [D] days work is done
And he [E] rounds up the cattle each [A] fall
[D] Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
[A] Singin' his cattle [D] call.

For hours he will ride on the range far and wide
When the night winds blow up a squall
His heart is a feather in all kinds of weather
He sings his cattle call.

Refrain

He's brown as a berry from ridin' the prairie
And he sings with an ol' western drawl
Woo - hoo - woo - ooo - ti - de
Singin' his cattle call.

Refrain

Excellent News!

Baudrillard's Bastard has favored Lumpenprofessoriat with the coveted, viral E for Excellent award for my provocative blogging. I am touched. Truly. Thank you. Given the source, I will display my E with pride.

I get to pass on the award now and I'll follow Ortho's example and select four, rather than the original ten, excellent blogs that I read and enjoy.

1. Limited, Inc. who is still the smartest man I know.
2. Amitava Kumar who's writings I've been a fan of long before there were blogs.
3. LesobProf for sanity and clarity.
4. Citizen of Somewhere Else for managing to post on both Hawthorne and anime.

Black President

Wouldn't this photo be a great starting point for the official portrait of our next President?

Meme Chain

Excellent! As I prowl around blogs searching for something to post, I see that Baudrillard's Bastard has tapped me for blog meme. That will make today's post much easier.

The rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was unemployed and filing for unemployment insurance. This was following a dispute with a department chair over a one-year position for which adjuncts were not being considered since the department "couldn't afford" to replace us. omfg.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Vote! Grade. Deal with Emails. Write a recommendation letter. Blog. (At least two of these will get done today.)

3. Snacks I enjoy:

edamame, chocolate covered espresso beans, krispy kremes (damn it).

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Ha ha ha ha! Good one.

5. Three of my bad habits:

playing the banjo, procrastinating, answering blog memes.

6. Five places I have lived:

Texas, Texas, New York, Maine, Saudi Arabia.

7. Five jobs I have had:

TA, Adjunct Faculty, Visiting Assistant Professor, primary childcare provider, unemployed.

8. Six peeps I wanna know more about:

I tap the first six to volunteer for this meme in the comments below. Don't be shy.

Cinco de Mayo

Some music for the day from Los Lobos. Mas y Mas...