Sadly, I have no evidence that he ever read the Peter Principle, either....

The Galbraith Revival by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Winter 2010: (which is worth a complete read, by the way...)

There remains, however, an astonishingly gaping absence in Galbraith’s worldview. While he is perfectly able to see the defects of businessmen—their inclination to megalomania, greed, hypocrisy, and special pleading—he is quite unable to see the same traits in government bureaucrats. It is as if he has read, and taken to heart, the work of Sinclair Lewis, but never even skimmed the work of Kafka.

For example, the chapter entitled “The Bureaucratic Syndrome” in his book The Culture of Contentment refers only to bureaucracy in corporations (and in the one government department he despises, the military). Galbraith appears to believe in the absurd idea that bureaucrats administer tax revenues to produce socially desirable ends without friction, waste, or mistake. It is clearly beyond the range of his thought that government action can, even with the best intentions, produce harmful effects.

I have a very good friend, sadly a convinced neo-Keyensian, who starts with my same basic premise, i.e., most people simply aren't that smart, and comes to the completely opposite conclusion about the nature of government and economics. Sad, really. He, as Galbraith does, fails to see the very nature of the beast, even as it is so eloquently described.

Technorati Tags: economy, revisionism, unintended consequences

Why I Must Never Commit A Crime and Go To Prison in the 7th Circuit

The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » 7th Circuit Upholds Prison Rule Forbidding Inmates to Play Dungeons and Dragons. I must remember to use my Ring of Invisibility while there...

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

Jeez, I've only been at this a couple of years...

....and I could've written this piece: Reflections of a Community College Professor. Listen to this:

So what else do I know? I know that I still give tough exams. Or at least I know that some students think that I give tough exams. One of the reasons I know this is because students have told me as much. Others tell me this less directly by writing me notes at the end of exams. In fact, sometimes their notes are a good deal longer than their essays. I won’t go so far as to state that I have experienced an epidemic of such communications, but there certainly has been a trend. Sometimes these notes are actually apologizes for their poor performance. More often than not, they are not so veiled attacks on yours truly...
Yes, I still do have students who will do very well on my exams. But in recent years I have had far too many who do—let’s be honest—abysmally. They simply don’t have a clue. And there are many more in this category than in my A category. What’s almost worse is that I also don’t have what was once that critical mass of average students, those good old-fashioned C students, those decent, if less than fully committed/engaged students who did a middling amount of work, maybe even a less than average amount of work, and who nonetheless got that average (but now disdained) “C” grade.

This is worth a thorough read. Once college becomes like high school in toto, the separation of society into the proleteriat and the ruling elite will have taken a huge leap forward. Technocracy here we come!

Who Am the Middle Class?

The Context Of Middle-Class Frustration:

It’s clear that the middle class is the great enemy of collectivism. Only they have the combination of voting power, money, and economic self-interest to see the growth of government as undesirable, and provide effective resistance. They generally view their interactions with government in a negative light – they’ve all spent time in the Department of Motor Vehicles mausoleum, spent hours wrestling with tax forms, or been slapped with a traffic citation they don’t think they deserved. They understand the inefficiency and emotional instability of government, and instinctively resent its intrusion into their lives. A health-care takeover is the best chance collectivists will ever have of persuading the middle class to vote itself into chains… but for the better part of a century, they’ve been able to hear the hammers of the State ringing on the metal of those chains, in the forges of taxation and regulation.

This is an awesome article, and I thusly repost it.

Technorati Tags: economy, health care reform, Tea Party protests

My Kind Of Conference

The Cronk of Higher Education » Conferences:

Higher Ed Tech Conference 2010: Networking for a Better Tomorrow
February 29, 2010, Maui, Hawaii

Do you spend most of your office time online? Are you surrounded by technophobes at work? Do you need to work on your tan? We have the conference for you!

Pre-Conference Program:
“How to Look Like You’re Doing Work When You’re Really Doing Facebook.”
Learn to download applications that disguise social networking sites so your nosy boss will think you’re working on this year’s learning-outcomes assessment report.

Morning Keynote:
“I used to be a Twit, and now I’m a consultant!”
Motivational speaker and pretty boy Brad Spader tells how he rose from a tenure-rejected professor to a higher ed hero by writing 150 tweets per hour and presenting at every higher ed conference in existence. Brad will be signing his new book, Be Almost as Blond and Good as Me, at lunchtime.

Afternoon Roundtable:
“Networking 2.0”
Bring your Blackberry! We’ll drink coffee, exchange Twitter names, FB friend each other and talk about how lame MySpace is.

Each conference attendee will receive a certificate that says you’ve won a prestigious award for “Progressive Use of Technology to Improve Higher Education” in case your supervisor ever questions the amount of time you spend on AIM.

Make your reservations now. Conference programs are only one day, but we will provide publications that list a 3-day schedule so you can feel free to book extra time for additional “professional development.”

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use, humor

AIYEE!!! Leave My Schedule Alone!

Being "full-time" means being able to shape my schedule with more-or-less a sense of impunity. I no longer have to grovel for courses, and I am at liberty (to a point) to grab courses that aren't already assigned to more senior staff. However, the one thing to which none of us has a defense is enrollment. Overall we're doing quite well. However, individual sections do suffer.

Such has been the fate of two of my classes. I was told yesterday that they had vanished. POOF! "But it's early in registration! Those classes will make!" But to little avail. I was able to retain my local history section on the grounds that it is a "required" course that is not taught every semester --and I'm the only instructor on-site who teaches it (heh...). That worked for that one section. Alas, however, I will be teaching the Dread 8AM lecture two days a week. At least it's not all the way across town, like the Dread 8AM from the fall.

I know that being in academia can spoil you: "Oh how horrible, Mojo, you have to be at work at 8AM and you only have three hours between sections to get to the gym and back again. Boo hoo hoo..." Why, yes, I can hear the World's Tiniest Violin playing just for me! But I do try to schedule things so that I can actually see my family in the morning and at night, and still have time to hit the gym. I do possess the right to jack adjuncts out of their sections, but being not so far removed from that place myself, I try hard not to do it.

It's a mantra of mine: Always Remember The Adjuncts. They carry the loads, they get squat for pay and recognition. Bless each and every one of 'em, they need it!

Technorati Tags: academia, News I Can Use

Feisty and Irascible

So I was at a meeting of my fellow historians within the system. And we were Debating Great And Weighty Matters. And one of my colleagues (at a different branch) remarked on the importance of content-based knowledge thusly: "I watch Glenn Beck every day and I know we need to teach content to correct the misinformation that's out there, especially from that man!"

And I muttered sotto voce, "I feel the same way listening to NPR!"

One of my mentors did a spit-take and leaned over and said, "Mojo, remember that you're outnumbered here..."

"That's okay, there's only nineteen of them and one of me, and I'm being laid fifty-to-one. I'll take it all day long!"

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy, media, News I Can Use

Maybe I Ought To Have Gone Into Coaching...

On Letting Education Interfere with Football « NAS Blog: "[If] athletic programs are autonomous businesses, then the NCAA is nothing other than an illegal cartel designed to suppress the pay of athletic workers (aka “college athletes”). If, alternatively, college athletics are an integral part of the university’s mission, to be justified solely in terms of their contribution to the education of students, then there can be no rationale for paying coaches and trainers more than full professors — indeed, more than the president of the University."

How Professor Mojo Took Off 7-10 Years In About 40 Seconds

Combined, not sequential (but occurring within 24 hours of each other):

1) Using new beard trimmer, thinning mustache and reducing beard length to 1/4" from 2"; approximately 30 seconds elapsed time;

2) Going to gym, ran into an acquaintance whom I had not seen in some time, who remarked, "Man, you're getting really ripped. What's your secret?" Ten seconds.

If I had had a coed make a pass at me today (happens about twice every three years, on average), I'd have made it 10-15 years. But as Mrs. might not have approved, I'll be content.

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

How Professor Mojo REALLY Grades Exams

Concurring Opinions » A Guide to Grading Exams. I make printouts of my students' test forms for this method.

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