Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘hedge funds’

Monday Morning Links

leave a comment »

* I was delighted to find Octavia E. Butler on Locus’s 2016 Recommended Reading List. And you can vote for it as nonfiction book of the year! Make Ursula work for it.

* Eight works of science fiction that present tyrants (not all of them human).

* To maintain the USA as an integral entity is a constant struggle, with no guarantees of success. Science fiction shows us some of the many ways to fail at the task.

* I’d taken England off my list of countries to flee to, but perhaps I could be coaxed.

* Madness at the National Security Council. The Spy Revolt Against Trump. ‘A Sense of Dread’ for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition. How To Deal with Reichstag Fire Fears in the Age of Trump. Twilight of Mike Flynn. Meanwhile, Trump is doing international diplomacy in the public dining room at Mar-a-Lago. “We have at most a year to defend American democracy, perhaps less.” Trump’s two-year presidency. Two years. Jesus. Shitgibbon.

* This seems fine.

* One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all. The president of a free country may dominate the news cycle many days — but he is not omnipresent — and because we live under the rule of law, we can afford to turn the news off at times. A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene. In that sense, it seems to me, we already live in a country with markedly less freedom than we did a month ago. It’s less like living in a democracy than being a child trapped in a house where there is an abusive and unpredictable father, who will brook no reason, respect no counter-argument, admit no error, and always, always up the ante until catastrophe inevitably strikes. This is what I mean by the idea that we are living through an emergency.

* We have been shy about stating the obvious: that something is terribly and uniquely wrong with this president. His powers weaponise the problem.  We can all see it. We can all feel it, too. Donald Trump is the walking, talking, hate-tweeting embodiment of the howling identity crisis afflicting the entire United States.

* Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement raids in at least six states. What it’s like to be arrested by ICE. Fear and panic. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos’ deportation to Mexico from Arizona this week was the last chapter of a long nightmare for her family. It began in 2008 with a knock on the door by sheriff’s officers. And they finally found an undocumented immigrant who voted. For Abdulkarim Jimale, escape was the only way to survive. Trump’s immigration order means bureaucrats have to decide who’s a “real” Christian. #KnowYourRights. What Geology Has to Say About Building a 1,000-Mile Border Wall. How big a deviation is this from Obama?

* The initial estimate is here: Trump’s wall will cost more than a year of the space program that we’re also not going to have anymore.

* Asylum seekers fleeing the US into Canada. Losing Hope in U.S., Migrants Make Icy Crossing to Canada. Newcomer centre has no more room for border-crossing refugees.

* Revealed: FBI terrorism taskforce investigating Standing Rock activists.

* Shock report: Republicans are completely morally depraved. But don’t worry, the Democrats have got this.

* An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president.

screen-shot-2017-02-12-at-11-05-04-pm* Mr. President.

* Everything is about Trump now.

* Well, it’s come to this: a geoengineering plan to refreeze the Arctic Circle. We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not. Simple equation shows how human activity is trashing the planet.

* Turns out you make more money on university endowments when you don’t sign over all the money to hedge-fund scam artists.

As for hedge funds and other high-cost alternatives, “the whole two-and-20 model” — in which investors typically pay 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of any gains — “is ridiculous,” Mr. Morris said. “The cost structure is outrageous. As they say on Wall Street, ‘Where are the customers’ yachts?’ I’m not going to play that game.”

* A US-born NASA scientist was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone.

* Hello old friends: Foreground objects in adventure game scenery.

* lol x2: Geraldo Rivera quits post after Yale removes slavery supporter’s name.

* Today in “police claim.”

* Amazon now controls 46% of all e-commerce in the United States.

* A brief history of the gerrymander.

* Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married?

* How American women fell behind Japanese women in the workplace.

* A brief history of punching Nazis in Marvel Comics.

* AI and the end of the middle class.

* Rio’s Olympic Park, 6 months after games.

* Reframing Faculty Criticisms of Student Activism.

* Milwaukee offers America’s longest-lived experiment with urban-school vouchers, but their mixed legacy is not a story you’ll frequently hear from lawmakers and advocates currently championing the spread of private school–choice programs across the country.

* A university, attacked by its own malware-laced soda machines and other botnet-controlled IoT devices, was locked out of 5,000 systems.

* Double majoring will not save you. Only the great god STEM will save you. All praise STEM!

* Springsteen shrugged.

* Mark Fisher (1968-2017).

* And this is great, like everything they do: Arnie, Usidore, and Chunt play Gauntlet.

c4enzpyw8aqyn-r

Written by gerrycanavan

February 13, 2017 at 9:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with #NoDAPL, 25th Amendment, abuse, academia, activism, Amazon, America, artificial intelligence, authoritarianism, autocracy, Barack Obama, border patrol, Brazil, Captain America, charter schools, class struggle, collapse, comics, Congress, democrac, Democrats, deportation, Donald Trump, double majors, dystopia, ecology, endowments, England, fascism, FBI, games, Gauntlet, geoengineering, Geraldo Rivera, gerrymandering, Harry Potter, hedge funds, Hello from the Magic Tavern, How the University Works, ice, ice sheet collapse, immigration, Japan, John C. Calhoun, kids, kids today, Locus, Mark Fisher, marriage, Mars, Marvel, mental illness, Michael Flynn, Milwaukee, misogyny, morality, Mr. Me, my scholarly empire, NASA, national security, Nazis, neoliberalism, Octavia Butler, Olympics, ouer space, parenting, podcasts, police, politics, post-truth, protest, rape culture, refugees, Reichstag fire, resistance, Russia, Santa Clarita Diet, scams, science fiction, sexism, Springsteen, Standing Rock, STEM, student movements, the Arctic, the economy, the Singularity, totalitarianism, tyranny, vaccination, war on education, y impeachment, Yale, zombies, zunguzungu

Friday Links!

leave a comment »

* I’ll be speaking at this event on June 4th in DC: Resolved: Technology Will Take All Our Jobs.

* SF-flavored art exhibit at the Racine Art Museum.

* I think it’s fair to say Marquette has had a pretty rough year.

* Mass contingency is not compatible with shared governance.

* How Austerity Killed the Humanities.

* “If Students Are Smart, They’ll Major in What They Love.”

* Why Technology Will Never Fix Education.

* Alex Rivera on Hollywood and the War Machine. See also!

* Games Without Wages. The video game industry has long relied on the unpaid labor of “modders.” Is it ready to finally pay up?

* Nice work if you can get it: Yale Gives Former President $8 Million Retirement Gift.

* Professors Face Long Odds in Court Battles Over Speech Rights.

* Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding.

* The dangerous trick here goes like this: someone fantasizes about a world in which rape frequently occurs and consistently goes unpunished; to explore this emotional fantasy, they set it in a premodern narrative fantasy world where they can displace their own desire onto “history.” The dark impulse or desire isn’t theirs, then; it’s the world’s. It’s history’s. And once a dark personal fantasy becomes “realism,” gazing upon this dark thought or idea isn’t a kind of humiliating or dangerous self-reflection, it’s laudable: it’s an honest engagement with truth.

* “Most pro-life women oppose abortion with four exceptions: rape, incest, the life of the mother, and me.”

* I suspect even Notre Dame can’t really explain why it’s suing the federal government over contraception anymore.

* The New Mexico Law Review just published an issue dedicated entirely to Breaking Bad.

* Canadian Aboriginal Group Rejects $1 Billion Fee for Natural Gas Project.

* Study Links Record Dolphin Die-Off In The Gulf Of Mexico To Deepwater Horizon Spill.

* They paved built an oil rig in paradise.

* The $10 Hedge Fund Supercomputer That’s Sweeping Wall Street.

* Nearly one in four financial services employees say it’s likely their co-workers have acted outside of the law. Dismaying as that statistic may be, it is nearly double the 12 percent who said the same in 2012.

* This senior level position is responsible for developing and implementing best practices in fostering the development and launch of companies based on innovations generated from University faculty. Percent Effort: 100.

* If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever New Jersey.

* We Are Spending Quite a Bit of Money on Jails.

* A Dishonest History of the Last War. Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened. Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public.

* Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war.

* Here’s the widely available supermarket cheese you should avoid if you don’t want to be complicit in prison labor.

* America Has Half as Many Hypersegregated Metros as It Did in 1970. Somehow, Milwaukee soldiers on.

* Scrabble adds even more garbage words to its dictionary.

* U.S. Releases Contents Of Bin Laden’s English-Language “Bookshelf.”

* Is there anyone who won’t run for the Republican nomination in 2016?

* Why Have So Many People Never Heard Of The MOVE Bombing?

* “We do not think anyone is going to dispute this at all,” he said.

* Uber, but for putting gas in your car.

* I can’t understand why on Earth Marvel wants to emulate the New 52.

* Not the E.T. sequel we need, but the one we deserve.

* Great moments in “our bad”: Norway’s ‘We’re Sorry’ Monument to 91 Dead Witches.

* You say “equality” like it’s a bad thing.

* How The Soviet Union Tracked People With “Spy Dust.”

* A Professor Tries to Beat Back a News Spoof That Won’t Go Away.

* The health insurance regime: still the worst.

* Israel knew all along that settlements, home demolitions were illegal.

* Very surprising, given the lawsuit: Emma Sulkowicz allowed to bring mattress into Class Day ceremony.

* These numbers are horrifying.

* Irregularities in LaCour (2014). Amazing story.

* Does Color Even Exist, Man?

* An oral history of Industrial Light & Magic.

* Western canon, meet trigger warning.

* 9. Should a nuclear apocalypse happen, The Sound of Music will be played on a loop.

* I wish to outlive all my enemies.

* Everything about this pedagogical model is insane.

* Study Suggests Intelligent Aliens Will Probably Be The Size Of Bears.

* Does Shakespeare pass the Bechdel Test?

* Monkey Day Care: Growing Up as a Child Research Subject.

* “Keep Foreskin and State Separate.”

* And Matt Weiner is sick of your bullshit misinterpretations of his genius. Do you hear that, Limbaugh?

1432256591-20150520

Written by gerrycanavan

May 22, 2015 at 8:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with 2012 or never, abortion, academia, academic fraud, academic freedom, adjunctification, adjuncts, administrative blight, administrative bloat, Alex Rivera, aliens, America, art, artificial intelligence, Assata Shakur, austerity, Battle: Los Angeles, Bechdel test, books, Breaking Bad, breastfeeding, Bush, California, Canada, capital, cheese, Cheney, circumcision, class struggle, color, Columbia, contraception, corruption, DC Comics, Deepwater Horizon, do what you love, dolphins, Don't mention the war, E.T., English majors, entrepeneurs, entrepeneurs in residence, espionage, fantasy, film, First Nations, flexible online education, Game of Thrones, games, genies, George Lucas, Gulf of Mexico, health insurance, hedge funds, high-speed trading, history, Hollywood, How the University Works, hypersegregation, IL&M, indigenous peoples, international law, Iraq, Iraq War, Israel, Jeb Bush, labor, lies and lying liars, Mad Men, mad science, Marquette, Marvel, mass contingency, Matt Weiner, military-industrial complex, Milwaukee, monkeys, monkeys' paws, MOOCs, MOVE bombing, museums, my scholarly empire, Norway, Notre Dame, nuclear holocaust, nuclear war, nuclearity, oil, oil spills, Osama bin Laden, our brains work in interesting ways, Palestine, parody, pedagogy, Philadelphia, politics, prison labor, prison-industrial complex, race, Racine, racism, rape, rape culture, realism, Republican primary 2016, Republicans, research, Rush Limbaugh, Santa Barbara, satire, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, Scrabble, segregation, sequels, series finales, Shakespeare, shared governance, single payer, spy dust, spy stuff, Star Wars, teaching, technology, technopositivity, tenure, the canon, the courts, the humanities, the law, the past isn't over it isn't even past, the Singularity, The Sound of Music, the wisdom of markets, trigger warnings, true crime, Uber, USSR, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, war machines, war on terror, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Whole Foods, Wisconsin, wishes, witches, words, work, Yale

Thursday Links!

with 3 comments

* In case you missed it from the weekend: a CFP for a Science Fiction Film and Television special issue on “Star Trek at 50.”

* Call for submissions: Accessing the Future.

* Today’s twenty-first-century political weirdness is the Scotland referendum on independence. The Guardian. MetaFilter. The economic case. Schroedinger’s Kingdom. John Oliver. Why Scotland thinks it can survive as an independent country. I’m Guardian editor Matt Wells. Got questions on Scottish independence? Ask away!

* Alison Bechdel, certified genius. Some professors won too.

* Postdoc of the year: “The Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University invites applications for its 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellowship program. The successful candidates will couple their own research and publishing agenda with their contributions to the Center’s Collective Memory Project, a wide ranging oral history of the George W. Bush Presidency.” Friend, do I have a story for you.

* “Debates about the future of the humanities frequently revolve around the suspicion that the humanities might not have one.”

It was Kenneth Burke who said academia is like a party where you arrive late, slowly join the conversation, then declare the end of history.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 16, 2014

* Chris Ware is serializing a novella in the Guardian: “The Last Saturday.”

* Unpopular opinions watch: Carceral progressivism.

* More Weird Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About The Original Star Trek.

Roddenberry believed there was no chest hair in the future.

The dream never dies.

* A day in the life of a data mined kid.

* This Is What Happens To Transgender Kids Who Delay Puberty.

* The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Totally Changed My Perspective On The World.

* World War II and the creation of the paperback industry.

* Cruel optimism watch: Are More MLA Faculty Jobs on the Way?

* Reporting rape at UNC.

* The madness of crowds: Wealthy L.A. Schools’ Vaccination Rates Are as Low as South Sudan’s.

* Despite all evidence to the contrary, blaming black culture for racial inequality remains politically dominant. And not only on the Right.

* Hamburg wants to be the best city in the world in 20 years.

* Burlington nipping on its heels.

* Calvinball in Wisconsin: the rules on voting just changed again.

* Lone Wolf returns!

* Study: 30 percent of former NFL players will get dementia or Alzheimer’s.

* Don’t look now, but the US prison population is growing again.

* The University of California is just literally a hedge fund now.

* What Are the Real Odds That Your Birth Control Will Fail? Pretty frightening.

* A King Kong prequel, because we haven’t even come close to hitting bottom yet.

* Do Animals Cry?

* BREAKING: Naomi Klein Is Right, Unchecked Capitalism Will Destroy Civilization.

* In decades of public debate about global warming, one assumption has been accepted by virtually all factions: that tackling it would necessarily be costly. But a new report casts doubt on that idea, declaring that the necessary fixes could wind up being effectively free. The price is too high!

* BREAKING: Immigrants aren’t stealing your jobs.

* A feminist history of Wonder Woman.

* Every panel of Watchmen, sorted by average lightness, ascending.

* Understanding the Tortoise and the Hare.

* Because you demanded it: “Play It Again, Dick,” the weird quasi-Veronica-Mars nega-sequel, is finally here.

* Necrocapitalism in the Anthropocene: Govt may do away with tribal consent for cutting forests.

* Why we can’t have nice things: Thievery marring Little Free Libraries.

* Anti-monuments in Milwaukee and beyond.

* May 2015 can’t come fast enough.

* And no one could have predicted: Apple releases U2 album removal tool.

AURORA_KIM_STANLEY_ROBINSON

Written by gerrycanavan

September 18, 2014 at 7:33 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, academic jobs, Alan Moore, Alzheimer's disease, America, animals, anti-monuments, Apple, Aurora, austerity, Big Data, birth control, books, Burlington, Bush, capitalism, carceral leftism, cars, CFPs, chest hair, Chris Ware, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, class struggle, clickbait, climate change, comics, concussions, cultural preservation, disability, disease, don't tell me the odds, ecology, energy, feminism, Gene Roddenberry, Hamburg, hedge funds, How did we survive the 2000s?, How the University Works, immigration, ITunes, jail, Kenneth Burke, kids today, Kim Stanley Robinson, King Kong, Lone Wolf, Milwaukee, MLA, Moby-Dick, my media empire, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, NFL, oral history, Play It Again Dick, politics, postdocs, poverty, prison-industrial complex, prisons, puberty, race, racism, rape, rape culture, rich people, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, Science Fiction Film and Television, Star Trek, technology, the Anthropocene, the humanities, The Last Saturday, transgender issues, Twitter, U2, UNC, uncontacted tribes, University of California, vaccination, venture capital, Vermont, Veronica Mars, voting, Watchmen, what it is I think I'm doing, why we can't have nice things, Wisconsin, Wonder Woman, World War II, writing

Friday Links!

leave a comment »

* I’ve pointed out before that even as academic institutions are more and more distrusted, professors oddly retain a good deal of public respect. We have it because we’re free: free to say the unpopular thing, free to teach the passionate course, free to study what we think needs studying. To be free means we have to occupy the whole possibility space that waits for our explorations, and take not just our students but our publics along for the ride. We have to keep a trust as well as walk the paths we see before us.

* Researcher loses job at NSF after government questions her role as 1980s activist.

* On Campus, Grenade Launchers, M-16s, and Armored Vehicles.

At least 60 institutions have acquired M-16s through the program. Arizona State University holds the most, with 70 in its arsenal, followed by Florida International University and the University of Maryland with 50 M-16s each. Central Florida received its grenade launcher in 2008; Hinds acquired its in 2006.

* In a never-before-released thesis, Reagan’s FEMA director discussed the potential internment of millions of blacks in concentration camps.

* The Islamic Roots Of Science Fiction.

* Here’s How Global Warming Is Already Worsening Extreme Deluges In The U.S. Trees Are Dying From ‘No Obvious Cause’ In Rocky Mountains, Report Says. A Major Accounting Firm Just Ran the Numbers on Climate Change.

* On ISIS: Where Is Obama’s Exit Strategy?

Once again our country is invited to support the “long war” described by key Pentagon officials as lasting as long as 50 to 80 years. It’s probably both unwinnable and unaffordable, but no president and few politicians have the political ability to acknowledge failure and end it.

So they escalate enough to pass it along to their successor. War on an installment plan.

* Every American President in the past quarter century has now gone on television during prime time to tell the nation and the world that he has decided to bomb Iraq. Last night was Barack Obama’s turn, and it was a vexing performance.

* What Do We Save When We Save the Internet? We cannot champion Network Neutrality without admitting that the Internet is no Utopia.

* Reddit made over $100,000 off stolen celebrity nudes.

* U2, Apple and rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail. There’s really only one cure.

* Update: All Clear. The suspect has been located and the reported weapon has been identified as an umbrella.

* A Brief History of Typographic Snark and the Failed Crusade for an Irony Mark.

* The kids are all right: Millennials Are Reading More Books Than You Think They Are. Why Indie Bookstores Are on the Rise Again.

* Congressional Hearing Slams Feasibility Of Commercial Asteroid Mining. “The American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space Act.” You dicks.

* Everyone Knows Hedge Funds Are a Ripoff.

* Scientists warn of faulty Wisconsin wolf estimates. Learn to count, wolves!

* “Why English Majors are the Hot New Hires.”

* What Is Hope? Alex Trebek Is Bringing Back His Mustache.

* Dutch Girl Fakes a Trip to South East Asia.

* Archaeologists Have Made An Incredible Discovery At Stonehenge.

* The Cold War University is back! The Real Story Behind Canada’s Sudden Interest In Arctic Archaeology.

* The Soviets sent stray dogs to conquer space. This is what happened next.

* China Is Mass-Producing Islands To Extend Its Strategic Borders.

* What Happens to “Holdouts” Who Refuse to Sell Their Homes to Developers?

* Here’s What’s Becoming Of America’s Dead Shopping Malls.

* Wearable tech as triumph for bosses.

* Interview With a Time Traveler.

* So, ironically, if we had done absolutely nothing in response to 9/11 aside from hold funerals and shake our heads in disbelief, we would have been no less safe than we are now after two useless wars, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, and a decade of taking off our shoes for domestic flights.

* Another roundup of all the many things that are more likely to kill you than a terrorist.

* And Comedian Joe Mande remembers brands remembering 9/11. Never forget.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 12, 2014 at 8:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with 9/11, academia, academic freedom, activism, Alex Trebek, America, apocalypse, Apple, archaeology, asteroids, Barack Obama, books, brands, Canada, capitalism, China, class struggle, climate change, Cold War, college, Comedy Bang Bang, concentration camps, cosmonauts, Don't mention the war, don't tell me the odds, Earwolf, ecology, empire, Facebook, FEMA, finance capital, forever war, Google Glass, guns, hedge funds, How the University Works, Iraq, irony, ISIS, Islam, iWatch, Jeopardy, Laika, malls, military-industrial complex, millennials, mortality, mustaches, National Science Foundation, never forget, outer space, podcasts, police state, police violence, politics, race, racism, rape culture, Reagan, real estate. America, Reddit, Russia, science fiction, Scott Aukerman, short film, social media, Stonehenge, tenure, the Arctic, the Internet, time travel, trees, typography, U Talking U2 2 Me?, U2, war on terror, We're screwed, wearable tech, Wisconsin

Sunday Links!

leave a comment »

* “Are your parents upset by your liberal-arts degree? Show them this chart.”

BvuZsIbCYAAD74b

* Weird, wild coincidence: Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities.

* Exactly the headline you want to wake up to when you’ve got a transatlantic flight in a few hours: Eruption under ice-cap sparks red alert. Luckily I seem to have snuck out of Europe in time…

* If they don’t shape up soon they could have a blue-ribbon commission on their hands: Jolted by images of protesters clashing with heavily armed police officers in Missouri, President Obama has ordered a comprehensive review of the government’s decade-old strategy of outfitting local police departmentswith military-grade body armor, mine-resistant trucks, silencers and automatic rifles, senior officials say.

* Ferguson’s Schools Are Just as Troubling as Its Police Force. Of course the wealth transfer dreams behind “school choice” politics miraculously get “waived” when it comes time to apply it to nonwhite and urban poor populations:

Michael Brown graduated from Normandy High School, which was located, until recently, in the Normandy School District. The facts here are a bit complex, but note that I said “until recently.”  That is because the Normandy School district lost its accreditation in 2012 due to dismal standardized test scores. (Normandy was one of only three out of 500 school districts in Missouri to lose its accreditation.) The state school board took over the Normandy School District and renamed it the “Normandy School Collaborative.” By 2013, though, the new district also had lost its accreditation. Missouri law allows students of failed districts to transfer to higher-performing schools in surrounding suburbs, but the failing school district has to pay tuition and transportation costs to get the kids to their new schools. The 1,000 transfer students of Normandy obviously had no desire to remain in the “new” failed district, but the cost was high, so, incredibly, the state board voted to waive accreditation of the Collaborative rather than classify the new district as unaccredited. Ferguson’s teenagers were therefore trapped in a failed school because state politicians didn’t want to pay for them to transfer out.

* ‘Normal birth’ and ‘breast is best’: the neoliberalisation of reproduction.

* Mugabe and the hedge funds.

* Pay It Forward is dead in Oregon.

* ‘Sex Box,’ a reality show where people have sex in a box on TV, is a real thing for 2015.

* How Do We Get Our Students to Become Cops?, asks the Chronicle. How? How?

* Cornel West vs. Obama.

* This Soviet spy created the US-led global economic system.

* Where were the people who live in your state born?

* And Massachusetts man fears his horns, ’666′ forehead tattoo will make a fair trial impossible.

Written by gerrycanavan

August 24, 2014 at 11:45 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, airplanes, America, Barack Obama, Bardarbunga, blue-ribbon commissions, breastfeeding, Bush, charts, childbirth, class struggle, college, Cornel West, demographics, employment, espionage, Europe, Ferguson, hedge funds, How the University Works, Iceland, IMF, juries, kids today, maps, Massachusetts, Michael Brown, military-industrial complex, Missouri, Mugabe, No Child Left Behind, Oregon, parenting, Pay It Forward, pedagogy, police, police brutality, police violence, politics, race, racism, reality television, school choice, school vouchers, Sex Box, Soviet Union, spies, St. Louis, the courts, the humanities, the law, tuition, volcanoes, war on education, World Bank, Zimbabwe

Closing All My Tabs Friday Morning Links!

with one comment

* The first review I’ve seen of Green Planets says “it was just okay for me dog.” Hopefully the praise in the next one will be a little less qualified…

* The “decent Left” was wrong: a blood soaked occupation did not lead to a promising post-Taliban future.

* How much does it cost to recruit a single college athlete?

BpS613aCEAE0Co1

* The results are readily apparent. The overwhelming number of retractions due to flawed methodology, flawed approach, and general misconduct over the last decade is staggering. Stories in almost every field have seen a rash of inaccuracies. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased tenfold since 1975.

* When Samuel R. Delany wrote Wonder Woman.

* A brief history of a Title IX.

* Da Vinci’s CV.

* Ask An Elderly Black Woman As Depicted By A Sophomore Creative Writing Major.

* But the biggest fundamental problem with the administration’s proposed ratings system is that it presents market principles as the cure for an illness that is itself caused by the indiscriminate application of market-mad nostrums to a context (education) where they don’t belong.

* ‘There Will Be No World Cup’: Brazil on the Brink.

* Norfolk, Virginia could be the first city we lose to climate change. Vox voxplains and revoxplains why we’re doomed, but never gets around to considering that flogging away uselessly in the same failed institutions might not be the answer.

* The coming grim death future has given us one gift, though: Darren Aronofsky Adapting Futuristic ‘MaddAddam’ Book Trilogy As HBO Series.

* “Fixing” America’s schools “means changing America.”

* In other words, Louie is sketching out the psychology of an abuser by making us recognize abuse in someone we love. Someone thoughtful and shy, raising daughters of his own, doing his best. Someone totally cognizant of the issues that make him susceptible to the misogyny monster. Someone who thinks hard about women and men and still gets it badly wrong.

* Obama won’t take simple anti-corporate tax reform action he could institute unilaterally today. I suppose it’ll probably always be a mystery.

* Today in the rule of law: Attorney for teen set up by FBI in terror sting kicked out of courtroom while secret evidence is discussed. Judge Threatens, Allegedly Attacks Public Defender During Hearing. The public defender is very happy that cops are being sent to harass people who request public defenders.

* LAPD’s new air drone program will respect privacy. Well , that’s a relief!

* Prosecutors say two 12-year-old southeastern Wisconsin girls stabbed their 12-year-old friend nearly to death in the woods to please a mythological creature they learned about online. The two girls will be tried as adults because they’re making such mature, clear-headed decisions.

* Elsewhere in Wisconsin justice: this twenty-five-year sentence for a woman who smothered her toddler will send a strong message of deterrence for any other mothers who want to murder their kids.

* Toddler Burned by SWAT Grenade After Raid On Home.

* My beloved alma mater in the news! Judge Orders Case Western to Grant Diploma to Medical Student.

* The Secret Service wants to build a computer that can detect sarcasm. Maybe the computer could then explain it to Twitter users?

* Football Hall of Famer Dan Marino sues NFL over concussions.

* LEGO to launch female scientists series after online campaign.

* This seems so nutty to me. I think I probably spent half my childhood wandering around in the woods without supervision and the other half in the back seat of a locked car.

* Solving the Fermi paradox: Sufficiently Advanced Civilizations May Invariably Leave Our Universe. Or maybe they’re hacking reality and we can’t understand that’s what they’re doing.

* A Hong Kong VC fund has just appointed an algorithm to its board.

* “Ann B. Davis stood, walked over to the trash can, and emptied her tray. She walked out of the cafeteria and into a small, gray town near Pittsburgh. I wanted her to *be* Alice. I wanted her to smile as if she loved me. I wanted her to say, ‘Buck up, kiddo, everything’s going to be all right.’ And what I’m trying to tell you now is this: I grew up in a split-level ranch-style house outside a town that could have been anywhere. I grew up in front of a television. I would have believed her.” RIP, Ann B. Davis.

* Steven Moffat hires zero female writers for Doctor Who — for the fourth season in a row.

* Loaded Handgun Found in Target Toy Aisle.

* (Even More) South African Genre Fiction.

* About 10% of them, yes.

* The government plans to fix the NSA scandal by making it all legal.

* What is even the payoff for shining a laser at a plane? That’s bananas.

* Europe has thought it over, and they’re sticking with kings.

* The kids are all right: Two sixth grade math classes lost an entire week’s worth of instruction taking a trial run of a new test and now they want payment for their time.

* On Sept. 13, 1848, at around 4:30 p.m., the time of day when the mind might start wandering, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage filled a drill hole with gunpowder and turned his head to check on his men. It was the last normal moment of his life.

* Cleveland Politician Proposes Tying Stadium Money To Wins.

* Life as a spousal hire.

* I can’t imagine how colleges could do mandatory mental health screenings right, but less how badly they’d screw it up by trying to do it on the cheap.

* There are dozens of us! The AV Club rediscovers The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

* A cultural history of time.

* And George R.R. Martin says Game of Thrones was always intended to be 3 5 7 8 12 books.

Written by gerrycanavan

June 6, 2014 at 8:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with abuse, academia, academic jobs, Afghanistan, aliens, America, Ann B. Davis, artificial intelligence, austerity, Barack Obama, Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Brady Bunch, Brazil, capitalism, charter schools, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Cleveland, climate change, college sports, concussions, creative writing, cultural relativism, CVs, CWRU, Dan Marino, Darren Aronofsky, Doctor Who, Don't mention the war, donestic violence, drines, ecology, Edward Snowden, Europe, Fermi paradox, film, football, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, Green Planets, guns, HBO, hedge funds, Hong Kong, How the University Works, kids today, Kim Stanley Robinson, LAPD, lasers, LEGO, Leonardo da Vinci, Louie, Louis CK, Maddaddam, mental health, military-industrial complex, Milwaukee, misogyny, monarchy, murder, my media empire, NCAA, neoliberalism, NFL, Norfolk, NSA, Oryx and Crake, our brains work in interesting ways, parenting, Phineas Gage, police state, police violence, politics, prison-industrial complex, public defenders, race, rape, rape culture, rule of law, Samuel R. Delany, sarcasm, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, scientific fraud, Secret Service, sexism, South Africa, spousal hires, stadiums, standardized testing, Steven Moffat, surveillance society, surveillance state, Target, taxes, television, the courts, the law, the Left, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, time, Title IX, tried as adults, true crime, Twitter, Virginia, war on education, Wes Anderson, Wisconsin, wisdom of markets, Wonder Woman, World Cup

Sunday™ Reading™ Accept No Substitutes®

leave a comment »

* Put the Student Union of Michigan in charge! In the end, the university’s rationale for the campaign relies heavily on a narrative of state defunding. For example, as a Detroit News article relates, “President Mary Sue Coleman called the campaign ‘audacious’ and said no gift is too small since universities need philanthropy with states no longer able to support them to the degree they must for schools to be globally competitive.” This narrative seems difficult to square with the actual role of the endowment in funding university operations. The endowment contributes only 4.5% (of its total holdings) to the general operation funds of university each year. The principal stays invested. Thus, if we look at the breakdown of revenue sources at the university in 2010 the endowment contributed only $253 million. Student tuition however generated over $1 billion, while state funding totaled $315 million. The endowment clearly has very little to do with making up for lost state funding. Its purpose lies elsewhere. And that elsewhere is in the university’s move to behave more and more like a hedge fund, mobilizing donated capital to secure new revenue streams. It does this by taking advantage of its tax-exempt status to build up a hoard of money that it then invests around the world in shady funds and places it would rather the university community did not know about. In so doing, the university is slowly becoming an important player on Wall Street but to play with the “big boys” it needs more and more capital, which requires constant fundraising campaigns. This money is destined for investment not students. Little of it will ever reach students in the form of scholarships or be used to offset increases in tuition. (via)

* Meanwhile: The University of California Invests in Prisons.

* Yanis Varoufakis on ponzi austerity.

Whereas in standard Ponzi (growth) schemes the lure is the promise of a growing fund, in the case of Ponzi austerity the attraction to bankrupted participants is the promise of reducing their debt, so as to liberate them from insolvency, through a combination of ‘belt tightening’, austerity measures and new loans that provide the bankrupt with necessary funds for repaying maturing debts (e.g. bonds). As it is impossible to escape insolvency in this manner, Ponzi austerity schemes, just like Ponzi growth schemes, necessitate a constant influx of new capital to support the illusion that bankruptcy has been averted. But to attract this capital, the Ponzi austerity’s operators must do their utmost to maintain the façade of genuine debt reduction.

* “I am as American as April in Arizona”: Nabokov interviews at The Paris Review.

* Student Debt is Crushing the Economic Future of the Young.

* Joyless Nihilism: Adam Kotsko on the Abramsverse Star Trek, Family Guy, and zombie postmodernism.

* The Life and Times of an Aging Superhero Captured in Oil Paintings by Andreas Englund.

* In education, the problem is still poverty.

* America is a country made possible by hucksterism and carnival buncombe.

* Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt.

* The environmental scandal that’s happening right beneath your feet.

* And the Philippines estimates at least 10,000 died from super typhoon. No words.

englund-3

Written by gerrycanavan

November 10, 2013 at 1:45 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, America, austerity, class struggle, climate change, David Graeber, ecology, endowments, Family Guy, flexible accumulation, hedge funds, How the University Works, hydrofracking, Lolita, Nabokov, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, nihilism, pastiche, politics, Ponzi schemes, postmodernism, postmodernity, poverty, prison-industrial complex, revolution, scams, science, Star Trek, student debt, student movements, superheroes, superstorms, the Philippines, University of Michigan, war on education, zombies

All the Midweek Links

with 3 comments

* CFP: The Problem of Contingency in Higher Education. CFP: Anthropocene Feminism at the Center for 21st Century Studies.

* By now my students were getting a bit restless. The confidence with which they had gone into this testing situation was beginning to dispel. Just a bit. There were still 102 questions left to answer.

* Exclusive Gyms For Members Of Congress Deemed ‘Essential,’ Remain Open During Shutdown. Amtrak Is in Trouble, But Congress Won’t Care. Government shutdown ends North Carolina WIC benefits. Social Security Warns Benefits Could Get Cut. DC Can’t Spend. Here’s how it’ll mess up higher ed (including freezing student loans). Secession by other means. Back Door Secession. Avenging the surrender of the South.

nbt.2706-F1

* The horror: New faculty positions versus new PhDs.

* Former Graduate Student Collects Placement Data He Wishes He’d Had.

* (Another) Intern Couldn’t Sue For Sexual Harassment In New York Because She Wasn’t Paid.

* A recent report shows that graduate students generate nearly a third of all education debt.

* Pay It Forward is a bad idea that doesn’t seem to make sense even in its own terms.

* “Exploitation should not be a rite of passage.”

* Using survey data collected from PhD students in five academic disciplines across eight public U.S. universities, the authors compare represented and non-represented graduate student employees in terms of faculty–student relations, academic freedom, and pay. Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect. Union-represented graduate student employees report higher levels of personal and professional support, unionized graduate student employees fare better on pay, and unionized and nonunionized students report similar perceptions of academic freedom. These findings suggest that potential harm to faculty–student relationships and academic freedom should not continue to serve as bases for the denial of collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees.

* How to Kill a Zombie: Strategizing the End of Neoliberalism.

* How Investors Lose 89 Percent of Gains from Futures Funds.

High fees and black boxes are just part of the story. Some funds also allow their managers to make undisclosed side bets by trading ahead of or opposite to the fund’s trades.

Chicago-based Grant Park Futures Fund LP, which is marketed by Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), says on page 90 of a 180-page, April 2013 prospectus that David Kavanagh, president of the $660.9 million fund’s general partner, may place such personal trades. “Mr. Kavanagh may even be the other party to a trade entered into by Grant Park,” it says.

* Adam Kotsko’s Contribution to the Critique of White Dudes.

* Rebecca Solnit, The Age of Inhuman Scale.

* Cropped Out: Environmental History Through a Car Window.

* Joseph Stalin, Editor.

* Vulture has an excerpt from Matt Zoller Seitz’s The Wes Anderson Collection.

* Sports Illustrated has an excerpt from League of Denial, on the NFL’s concussion denialism. You can also watch the Frontline documentary here.

* Soviet board-games, 1920-1938.

* In the days of the Soviet Union, the country boasted that all its citizens shared the wealth equally, but a new report has found that a mere 20 years after the end of Communism, wealth disparity has soared with 35% of the country’s entire wealth now in the hands of just 110 people.

* The rise of the portmanbro.

* Within 35 years, even a cold year will be warmer than the hottest year on record, according to research published in Nature on Wednesday. The L.A. Times will no longer publish letters from climate cranks.

* But the kids are all right: Arin Andrews and Katie Hill, Transgender Teenage Couple, Transition Together.

Written by gerrycanavan

October 9, 2013 at 2:40 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, academic jobs, actually existing journalism, adjuncts, Amtrak, bros, capitalism, cars, CFPs, charts, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, class struggle, climate change, concussions, Confederacy, conferences, contingency, denialism, ecology, editors, environmentalism, feminism, film, football, government shutdowns, grad student nightmares, graduate student life, hedge funds, How the University Works, hyperobjects, income inequality, interns, kids today, labor, male privilege, neoliberalism, NFL, North Carolina, Oregon, over-educated literary theory PhDs, Pay It Forward, pedagogy, politics, Russias, scale, scams, secession, sexual harassment, Society Security, Soviet Union, Stalin, standardized testing, student debt, superexploitation, teaching, the Anthropocene, the kids are all right, transgender issues, tuition, unions, war on education, Washington DC, Wes Anderson, white privilege, WIC, words, zombies

Monday Morning Links

leave a comment »

Building on last night’s late-night Sunday links:

* Adam Kotsko with my secret work history revealed.

* Because every cop is a criminal: The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation’s top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

* The UK is the most unequal country in the West. They’ve got a pretty huge gender wage gap, too.

* Malcolm Harris on Shakespeare behind bars.

* And you’re in luck: the fratbros are hiring.

Luckily, due to the tough job market, my dad has agreed to let me access my trust fund early (mid 7-figures) to start a relatively small hedge fund, ___ Ventures, after graduation. I’m emailing you guys today to let you know that, for the rest rest of the year, I will be recruiting 2 full-time employees and 1 intern to help me get this off the ground…

Written by gerrycanavan

August 5, 2013 at 8:17 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, FBI, fraternities, hedge funds, income inequality, informants, labor, my life as a manchild, prison-industrial complex, Shakespeare, true crime, trust funds, United Kingdom, work

Tuesday Links

leave a comment »

* “A higher education system worth defending or reclaiming has never existed”: Education’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” Moment.

* This piece is admirably forthright about what’s at stake with MOOCs.

How can this lead to cost reductions? The savings can accrue rapidly if the course is massively enrolled and subsections are taught by less well-paid individuals; or if the course lasts several years and the designers and lead professor may be paid over time.

* For the love of the game: The other day, Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Kirk Ferentz decried the spreading influence of money in college athletics. This is funny for several reasons, but you don’t really need to go past the fact that Ferentz is paid $3.8 million a year to coach Iowa’s football team, and does so while providing a comically small return on investment. In situations like this, schools would normally cut bait and fire the coach, but Ferentz is protected by a buyout that makes his contract look downright reasonable. … If Iowa were to fire Ferentz today, the school would have to pay a buyout of $17,531,360.

* ‘Achievement gap’ between older, younger kindergarten students persists into high school.

* Wisconsin City Fines Parents If Their Kids Are Bullies.

* I’m sure that academics will have ­objections, although Whedon has stood up to far worse than the Shakespeare (or Earl of Oxford) mob. He has been to Comic-Con. When Shakespeare’s done right, you can’t ­imagine him ever being done wrong. The clarity is blinding.

* Hedge fund manager suggests just firing all the teachers and just buying kids iPads. That’ll solve it.

* Third graders will now officially assess NYC teachers. Foolproof! What could go wrong?

* Billions of Dollars Wasted on Racially Biased Marijuana Arrests. No! It can’t be! That’s impossible!

Marijuana usage rates are comparable among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are over 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

* If Comedy Has No Lady Problem, Why Am I Getting So Many Rape Threats?

* And Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes. Let’s go.

Written by gerrycanavan

June 4, 2013 at 6:38 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, austerity, bullies, class struggle, college football, college sports, comedy, education, hedge funds, How the University Works, iPads, Joss Whedon, kids, kids today, kindergarten, many worlds and alternate universes, marijuana, MOOCs, Much Ado about Nothing, NCAA, neoliberalism, New York, pedagogy, police state, politics, race, rape, rape culture, Shakespeare, teaching, teaching evaluations, that'll solve it, war on drugs, war on education, Wisconsin

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

with 2 comments

* Aaron’s latest Sunday Reading has a special section devoted to what’s going on in Turkey, if like me you haven’t been following as closely as you’d like. There’s lots of other good links too, of course.

* It also reminds me that I never got around to linking to this massive map of Arrested Development running gags.

* It really seems to me that Detroit will declare bankruptcy either way. The role of the emergency manager is to facilitate bankers’ looting the city first.

* Bottom line? Student evaluations are of questionable value.

* Ten Year Chicago Hotel Strike Ends in ‘Unconditional’ Defeat. Orbitz booked me at this hotel a few years ago and I was furious. I’d had no idea about the strike.

* Genetically modified wheat goes rogue in Oregon.

* Hedge fund’s wild side: The man who lost $8 billion.

* And God closes a door, opens a window.

Written by gerrycanavan

June 2, 2013 at 9:44 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, Arrested Development, bankruptcy, Chicago, class struggle, community, Congress Hotel, Detroit, Doctor Who, genetically modified foods, hedge funds, jokes, labor, looters, Occupy, Oregon, pedagogy, politics, spoilers, states of emergency, strikes, student evaluations, television, Turkey, unions

Procrastination Won’t Procrastinate Itself

leave a comment »

* 1959 memo lists government regulations for Yeti hunting.

1. Royalty of Rs. 5000/- Indian Currency will have to be paid to His Majesty’s Government of Nepal for a permit to carry out an expedition in search of ‘Yeti’.

2. In case ‘Yeti’ is traced it can be photographed or caught alive but it must not be killed or shot at except in an emergency arising out of self defence. All photographs taken of the animal, the creature itself if captured alive or dead, must be surrended to the Government of Nepal at the earliest time.

3. News and reports throwing light on the actual existence of the creature must be submitted to the Government of Nepal as soon as they are available and must not in any way be given out to the Press or Reporters for publicity without the permission of the Government of Nepal.

* What was neoliberalism?

* What could possibly go wrong? We Need To Start Running Schools Like Hedge Funds.

* The SAT never failed; why, it’s never really been tried!

* The Unbearable Lightness of Precarious Employment.

* Sarah Kendzior vs. the Boomers.

* Campus is about to be completely taken over by March Madness.

* And what could possibly go wrong? Billionaire unveils new ‘Titanic II’ cruise ship design.

Written by gerrycanavan

February 26, 2013 at 6:42 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with academia, Baby Boomers, Big Government, billionaires, capitalism, college basketball, cruise ships, hedge funds, How the University Works, hunting, intergenerational warfare, March Madness, Marquette, memos, NCAA, neoliberalism, Nepal, precarity, regulation, SATs, standardized testing, the economy, Titantic II, What could possibly go wrong?, Yeti

The Charter School Scam

leave a comment »

Under the New Markets program, a bank or private equity firm that lends money to a nonprofit to build a charter school can receive a 39% federal tax credit over seven years.

The credit can even be piggybacked on other tax breaks for historic preservation or job creation.

By combining the various credits with the interest from the loan itself, a lender can almost double his investment over the seven-year period.

No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.

Open Left links to a column from Juan Gonzalez (with more at Democracy Now) explaining how a Clinton-era tax credit makes investment in charter schools a guaranteed return for big banks and hedge funds—which may be part of the reason we’ve seen such a big policy push in that direction in recent years, with predictable results:

In Albany, which boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

The Albany Community School’s rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000.

Meanwhile, all the Albany charter schools haven’t achieved the enrollment levels their founders expected, even after recruiting hundreds of students from suburban school districts to fill their seats.

The result has been less money in per-pupil state aid to pay operating costs, including those big rent bills.

Written by gerrycanavan

May 9, 2010 at 1:02 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with banking, capitalism, charter schools, education, hedge funds, politics, privatize everything, scams, vampire squids, Won't somebody think of the children?

This Morning’s Must-Listen Economic Podcasts

leave a comment »

…are Frontline‘s “The Warning” and “The Card Game.” Both are from earlier this fall.

Written by gerrycanavan

January 3, 2010 at 12:47 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with Alan Greenspan, America, Ayn Rand, Bill Clinton, capitalism, collapse, consumer debt, credit cards, crisis, hedge funds, liquidity crisis, podcasts, politics, Reagan, recession, scams

Happy Saturday

leave a comment »

Happy Saturday. You’ve earned it.

* On the Yankee payroll. Via Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

In 2002, the Yankees spent $17 million more in payroll than any other team.

In 2003, the Yankees spent $35 million more in payroll than any other team.

In 2004, the Yankees spent $57 million more in payroll than any other team. I mean, it’s ridiculous from the start but this is pure absurdity. Basically, this is like the Yankees saying: “OK, let’s spend exactly as much as the second-highest payroll in baseball. OK, we’re spending exactly as much. And now … let’s add the Oakland A’s. No, I mean let’s add their whole team, the whole payroll, add it on top and let’s play some ball!”

In 2005, the Yankees spent $85 million more than any other team. Not a misprint. Eight five.

In 2006, the Yankees spent $74 million more than any other team.

In 2007, the Yankees spent $40 million more than any other team — cutbacks, you know.

In 2008, the Yankees spent $72 million more than any other team.

In 2009, the Yankees spent $52 million more than any other team.

Congrats again on that World Series.

* Ryan recommends Paul Fry’s literary theory course from Yale Open Courses. I’ve downloaded all the lectures and they’ll be joining me on my run tomorrow.

* First, Let’s Kill All the Credit Default Swaps. Related: an NPR interview on The Greatest Trade Ever, which tells the story of how a middle-of-the-road hedge fund manager made billions during the financial collapse.

* Al Gore, revolutionary.

When making his Oscar-winning 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore arguably had it easy: it’s fairly straightforward to grip an audience when you’re portraying scenes of apocalyptic destruction. The new book pulls off a considerably more impressive feat. It focuses on solving the crisis, yet manages to be absorbing on a topic that is all too often – can we just come clean about this, please? – crushingly boring. Importantly, it seeks to enlist readers as political advocates for the cause, rather than just urging them to turn down the heating. “It’s important to change lightbulbs,” he says, in a well-burnished soundbite, “but more important to change policies and laws.” Or perhaps to break laws instead: peaceful occupations of the kind witnessed recently in the UK, he predicts, are only going to become more widespread. “Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it.” People sometimes express incredulity that Gore, who was groomed for the presidency almost since birth, seems so resolved that he’ll never return to electoral politics. But here’s a vivid example of the benefits of life on the outside: how many serving politicians would feel able to come so close to urging people to commit trespass?

A friend reminds me that Al Gore was elected President of the United States 9 years ago today.

* And Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book argues that positive thinking is destroying America.

Written by gerrycanavan

November 7, 2009 at 3:43 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with 2000, Al Gore, America, Barbara Ehrenreich, baseball, civil disobedience, hedge funds, liquidity crisis, optimism, over-educated literary theory PhDs, podcasts, recession, sports, the power of positive thinking, theory, World Series, Yale, Yankees

« Older Entries


Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction

 

The Cambridge History of Science Fiction



Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler Archives – Resources


Extrapolation 58.2-3: Guilty Pleasures: Late Capitalism and Mere Genre



Paradoxa 28: Global Weirding


Metamorphoses of Science Fiction


The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction


Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction


American Literature 83.2: Speculative Fictions


Polygraph 22: Ecology and Ideology

Editor at Science Fiction Film and Television

Editor at Extrapolation

Recent Comments

  • Amélie Gourdon on Thanksgiving Links!
  • Trapper on Hate the Enlightenment? Blame Don Quixote
  • Chris Weber on ‘"The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior’
  • Nicholas Andriani on Revised Game Studies Syllabus for Spring 2023 (“Oops, All Disco Elysium”)!
  • keebslac1234 on Ring in the New Year the Gerry Canavan Way with New Year’s Eve Eve Eve Links!
  • C. on new fall course: “Histories of Anti-Capitalism”!

Recent Posts

  • SFFTV open call for submissions and special issue proposals, as well as books for review
  • Revised Game Studies Syllabus for Spring 2023 (“Oops, All Disco Elysium”)!
  • Ring in the New Year the Gerry Canavan Way with New Year’s Eve Eve Eve Links!
  • Thanksgiving Links!
  • Fall Break Links? In This Economy?
  • Fall 2022 Syllabi! “J.R.R. Tolkien” and “Histories of Anti-Capitalism”!

Popular Posts

  • To Understand Literature, Moretti Argues, We Must Stop Reading Books
  • Understanding Nuclear Weapons
  • Teaching PARASITE!
  • The Rules of Picross
  • Crochet Your Own Ostomy Bag
  • Fall Syllabus #1: Afrofuturism!
  • Dr. Seuss Explains Assessment, Metrics, Administrative Blight, and Pretty Much Every Aspect of the Contemporary Education System
  • Grown-Up Calvin and Hobbes
  • Who mourns for Bobby the Jew?
  • This is a land of peace, love, justice, and no mercy

Contact

gerryblog@gmail.com

faculty webpage

personal webpage

curriculum vitae / CV

online articles

syllabi

Feeds

Twitter
Tumblr
FeedBurner RSS
WordPress RSS
Comments RSS
RSS on Twitter
Flickr
YouTube

Amazon Associates Referral Link
Amazon Wish List
PayPal Donate

Archives

Blogroll

  • Marquette University English Department
  • Marquette University English Department Blog

Popular Tags

academia academic jobs actually existing media bias adjuncts America apocalypse art austerity Barack Obama books Bush California capitalism CFPs class struggle climate change comics Democrats Donald Trump Duke ecology feminism film futurity games general election 2008 guns health care Hillary Clinton How the University Works immigration John McCain kids today labor literature maps Marquette Milwaukee misogyny music neoliberalism New Jersey New York North Carolina nuclearity outer space over-educated literary theory PhDs pedagogy politics polls prison-industrial complex race racism rape rape culture Republicans science science fiction sexism Star Trek Star Wars student debt Supreme Court teaching television the courts the humanities the law the Senate unions Utopia war on education Wisconsin Won't somebody think of the children? writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Gerry Canavan
Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • Gerry Canavan
    • Join 1,154 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Gerry Canavan
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...