And As 2009 Draws To A Merciful Close...

Some appropriate music: Auld Lang Syne

I could go Old English on everyone and wait until January 16th (or even March 25th) to declare the New Year begun, but I'll go with the flow and declare January 1st the start of 2010.

2009: I have a bad way with odd years. Yes, this was the year that saw my long sojourn through Adjunct Hell come to an end. Even so, this was not a very good year. The summer drought pretty much ruined most of my tomato and vegetable harvest, to say nothing of my lawn. There was almost no time for fishing after early June, and water levels were so low as to render most local venues near-unusable. Financially, summer was as close as I've ever come to going completely broke (zero liquidity) --and in fact, I had to admit that I had a problem with playing too much poker when I had no business doing so. (Not very proud to say it in public, but there it is...)

And did I mention the country is now officially careening toward a complete and utter repeat of the Seventies combined with the Thirties?

Thusly I rank this year right up with 2003 (my true anno horribilis) as a year to whom I will gladly and proudly and eagerly show my Hairy Backside come Thursday night. I will smoke a clay pipe, as is the traditional English custom, and smash it in the fireplace before midnight. I will go outside my house (in my totally unincorporated subdivision) and chase away the evil spirits with large amounts of pyrotechnology. I will kiss my wife at midnight and play a copy of "The Blue Danube" to celebrate 2010's arrival. Friday morning I'll prepare black-eyed peas and cabbage and jerk pork (the Mrs. hates ham) and get ready to watch the Neujahrskonzert from Vienna.

And on your behalf, anno horribilis 2009, I invoke Cromwell:

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately...

Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!



Now therefore let us welcome 2010.

Proßit Neujahr!!

Technorati Tags: business, economy, Great Depression, News I Can Use, relationships

In Hoc Anno Domini - WSJ.com

In Hoc Anno Domini



So the light came into the world

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster and has been published annually since.

In my class, this would be academic dishonesty...

Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming – Telegraph Blogs: "On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data."

Read all of it. I'm all for reducing pollution and cleaner energy. But the people who are supposed to be at the forefront for making the case are really looking like con artists trying to hustle governments into huge research grants, allied with enviro-nuts who want us all to return to a Luddite paradise. And if any of my students pulled this crap, I'd throw them out of my class so fast their heads would spin like tops.

Technorati Tags: climate change, News I Can Use, revisionism

Oh Brave New World! (or, Then And Now)

CARPE DIEM: Christmas Shopping for a TV: 1958 vs. 2009:

In 1958, American holiday shoppers paid $269.95 for Sears’ “best 24-inch console TV” (Update: black and white) in its Christmas catalog.... [I]t would have taken 136.34 hours of work at the average manufacturing hourly wage then of $1.98 to earn enough income (ignoring taxes) to purchase the TV.



Today you can purchase a Sansui 26-inch widescreen LCD high-definition TV on the Sears website for about $350 (or chose from the several hundred other TVs available), which would be a “time cost” today of only 19.03 hours of work at today's average hourly wage of $18.39, and this represents an 86 percent reduction in the cost compared to the 1958 TV. 

Lessons Learned

I have been winding down the semester, putting out fires of various kinds. This term has led me to re-evaluate some of my practices, and there will be some changes next time out.

For starters, I am going to be far less charitable in my attendance policy: hey, the college's handbook says X absences and you cannot pass the course. If that much else is going on, then you need to focus on that. Your grades will improve when you're not distracted, and we'll all be happier with that.

Next, I am revising my bonus policy for very good attendance. The current system can be streamlined very quickly into one-size-fits-all. I want my students to come to class, but I'm going to cut out the penalties for excessive absences below the college limit, relying instead on the system policy of "X misses and you're done."

Third, I am going to really take more advantage of the "hybrid" category and give more online work, especially for materials that I don't like to emphasize in lecture. The students are supposed to be picking up some of the slack, anyway.

I will not be taking a full break over Christmas. I will be teaching a mini-term --the money is good and it will get me out of the house and out from underneath the Mrs.'s feet.

Technorati Tags: academia

ATTACK OF THE CUTE!

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

A Funny Thing Happened to Me Today...

I had a student tell me "I lost respect for you a long time ago." Thankfully this had nothing to do with my mastery of the material. It had everything to do with interpersonal issues. I will not violate FERPA here and now; suffice to say there was an issue and the student did not feel I was being "appropriate" in my response.

Still, the idea of a student losing respect for me... Should I care? In this one case, the answer is definitively "NO." But in general, I do want to be seen at the minimum as someone who is consistent. No one will accuse me of favoritism. In that, at least, my conscience is clear in the present circumstances.

Oh, and no good turn goes unpunished, I have learned.

[Post redacted from earlier version out of concern for FERPA. I never use names, ever; still, no sense being any more than appropriately vague on the specifics]

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy

Why Johnny Can't Add

Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway? by Sandra Stotsky, City Journal 13 November 2009: read all of it. When education professors tsk-tsk me for being so instructor-centered, I silently resist the urge to find a more appropriate use for the paper on which their diplomas are printed. Constructivist approaches have their uses, but they never should have been allowed to take center-stage. Long live Ausubel! (oh just go look it up already...)

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy, unintended consequences

'Equalizer' star Edward Woodward dies at 79

'Equalizer' star Edward Woodward dies at 79

"The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" cried the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

Remembering Our Vets

Remembering Communism

Paul Hollander - Remembering communism - washingtonpost.com:

In the aftermath of the fall of Soviet communism, many Western intellectuals remain convinced that capitalism is the root of all evil. There has been a long tradition of such animosity among Western intellectuals who gave the benefit of doubt or outright sympathy to political systems that denounced the profit motive and proclaimed their commitment to create a more humane and egalitarian society, and unselfish human beings.

We could go all the way back to Lord Chesterfield, if we wished, to see the source of this emotion. I see many of my colleagues as his misbegotten intellectual children: railing not for progress but to a return to a sometimes-idealized-sometimes-actualized past where an oligarchic few exerted control over what they feared to be an over-energentic and far-too-clever-for-their-own-good movement of entrepreneurs and optimists --in other words, a form of aristocracy is what they wanted to perpetuate. Dress it up in whatever language you wish: communism, socialism, progressivism, they all inevitably have at the root a small group of people who really want to control a much larger group of people, weal or woe being beside the point.

I will not mourn the fall of the Soviet Union, and I hope to live long enough to see the history community join me whole-heartedly in that.

UPDATE:

Technorati Tags: academia, Cold War, revisionism, Soviet Union

Sweet Jeebers! Is This Person Secretly Enrolled In My Class?

Investors.com - The Ghosts Of '38: discussing the impact of the New Deal agenda on the actual Depression, the author makes three points:

1. Amity Schlaes in The Forgotten Man demonstrates FDR's own version of "trickle-down" economics centered on giving union workers higher wages to stimulate consumer spending, which did not work.


2. Recent scholarship, led by Cole and Ohanian strongly suggests the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression; and


3. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy argues that the Fed's actions made the Depression worse, not better, particularly in regard to the "depression-within-the-Depression" of 1937-38.

I discuss every single one of these points in my New Deal lectures. Man I'm good!!!

Technorati Tags: business, economy, News I Can Use, Great Depression, revisionism, unintended consequences

Views: Is Tenure Conservative? - Inside Higher Ed

Views: Is Tenure Conservative? - Inside Higher Ed: while nodding my head in agreement (even though I'm at an essentially non-tenure institution), I had to laugh out loud at this, because it's so true:

[M]ore slyly, what possible objection could there be to speaking frankly about topics in which most people have utterly no interest? Most academic work, especially in the humanities, is published for an audience smaller than a successful cocktail party..."

[Emphasis added, because it's so true...]

Again: Everything You Know About The Great Depression Is Wrong!

Hu versus Sarkozy | Steve H. Hanke | Cato Institute: Commentary:

"There is no more reliable rule than the 95% rule: 95% of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant. Just reflect for a moment on the most frequently repeated lessons drawn from the Great Depression (1929-33). According to most accounts, the stock market crash of October 1929 was the spark that sent the economy spiraling downward.

"How could this be? After all, by November 1929, the stock market had started to recover, and by mid-April 1930, it had reached its pre-crash level. Contrary to the received wisdom, massive government failure — not the stock market crash — pushed the United States into the Great Depression. It was the Federal Reserve that ushered in that terrible nightmare. During the course of the Great Depression, the money supply contracted by 25%. This sent the economy into a deflationary death spiral, with the price level falling 25%."

Read all of it --it's not that long.

Technorati Tags: bailout, business, economy, News I Can Use, revisionism, unintended consequences

Charter Schools Help PUBLIC School Students!? Wow!

Charter Schools Help Public School Students - WSJ.com: wherein we read about something that, if causation were firmly established, completely obliterate one of the strongest arguments against charter schools --that they take away bright students from struggling public schools and make those schools look worse. To the contrary, charter schools may actually help local non-charter public schools! Again, I would like to examine this more closely; correlation does not necessarily indicate causality. Still, wow....

Technorati Tags: education and pedagogy, unintended consequences