Weekend Links!

Seeing nonsense about the humanities as a luxury again. The humanities are a cheap profit center that subsidize other university operations.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 21, 2015

* If I weren’t going to DC on June 4th, I’d be going to this in Madison: Undercommoning the University: A Workshop.

* How writers of endangered languages are embracing sci-fi.

* Yeah Ireland.

Ireland hasn't just said "Yes"… Ireland has said: "F❤️CK YEAAHHHH"

— Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD (@AodhanORiordain) May 23, 2015

* With the recession over, are states investing in higher ed? Oh, honey.

* This Is What Happens When You Slash Funding for Public Universities.

lol at this article that completely erases liberals' active participation in slashing budgets for public higher ed: http://t.co/nhkCib0RNS

— reclaim UC (@reclaimuc) May 23, 2015

* A local-interest explainer: Assata Shakur was convicted of murder. Is she a terrorist?

* New York University’s labor record epitomizes everything wrong with the neoliberal university.

* Report Blasts ‘Fantasy World’ of Presidential Benefits.

* Enter Rand Paul (again).

Stuff like the Rand Paul filibusters scrambles the usual moralism of Republicans vs Democrats so deliciously. I wish it happened every day.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 23, 2015

P.A.T.R.I.O.T. ACT F.R.E.E.D.O.M. ACT T.H.I.S. D.E.M.O.C.R.A.C.Y. I.S. A. S.H.A.M. ACT P.U.P.P.I.E.S. ACT I.C.E. C.R.E.A.M. ACT

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 23, 2015

* FBI admits no major cases cracked with Patriot Act snooping powers.

* TIE Fighter and American Exceptionalism.

* The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

I have to believe that in 30 years all these "Centers for Innovation" on campuses will be thought of like we think of Cold War bomb shelters

— John Pat Leary (@JohnPatLeary) May 23, 2015

ie, like 1950s bomb shelters "innovation centers" are ostensibly practical, obviously ideological, & indices of the anxieties of their age

— John Pat Leary (@JohnPatLeary) May 23, 2015

* While 45 percent of the roughly 1,000 respondents said they feel “somewhat prepared” to begin a career after college, slightly more than half said they did not learn how to write a résumé. And 56 percent did learn how to conduct themselves in a job interview.

* Theses on Postpartum.

* The Myth of the Garbage Patch.

* Up to 90 per cent of the world’s electronic waste, worth nearly US $19 billion, is illegally traded or dumped each year, according to a report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

* 7 in 10 schools now have shooting drills, needlessly traumatizing huge numbers of children.

* North Carolina receives NCAA notice of allegations in academic fraud case.

* New Study on Suicide Among College Athletes.

* Medieval culture and rape.

* BREAKING: Being competent is bad for you.

* io9 says the Supergirl pilot isn’t as bad as you’re expecting.

* This 85-Year-Old Nun Just Spent Two Years In Prison For Protesting Nuclear Weapons.

* Does Mike Huckabee Know Where the Ark of the Covenant Is Buried?

* A Handful Of Bronze-Age Men Could Have Fathered Two-Thirds Of Europeans.

* Home, the latest animated kid flick, is actually about colonialism. No, really.

* Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade?

* Modernism is back, baby! A Plea for Culinary Modernism.

* Friends from grad school still tease me about the day I basically went off on this rant in a seminar day discussing Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals.

* #abolishmen: Men get into fatal car crashes twice as often as women.

* And another round of gender-swapped Disney characters.

Thursday Morning Links!

* In Landmark Decision, U.S. Patent Office Cancels Trademark For Redskins Football Team. So the Redskins will be forced by lost revenue and unrestrained anti-Redskins bootlegs to change their name — at which time bitter Redskins dead-enders will be able to sell each other Redskins-branded merchandise in protest…

* In praise of Diplomacy.

* We Have No Idea If Online Ads Work.

* That plan goes something like this: maximize constrained educational choices that are a function of labor market changes; commodify inequality by organizing for the highest need students; extract guaranteed funds from public coffers; call it access; wash and repeat.

* Guernica‘s special issue on class, including a report on adjuncts.

* BREAKING: The U.S. Has the Most Expensive, Least Effective Health Care System. BREAKING: Guns kill children. BREAKING: The American prison system is a nightmare. BREAKING: Capitalism is insanely corrupt. BREAKING: Uber is a scam.

* Schools and/as prisons.

* Self-plagiarism is a really weird concept to pin down.

* When innocent people are exonerated after wrongfully spending time in prison, some states pay money to the accused for their trouble. As data from NPR and the Innocence Project show, those payouts are often despicably low. 

* This Is How Much More States Spend On Prisoners Than On Students.

* Does the alternatives-to-incarceration industry profit from injustice?

* The economics of nuclear war.

* When Presidents Get Bored.

* Things instructional staff aren’t paid enough to do.

* The logic on display here shows the toxic self-justifying nature of American military adventures. If a war accomplishes its stated objectives, that goes to show that war is great. If a war fails to accomplish its stated objectives — as the Bush-era surge miserably failed to produce a durable political settlement in Iraq — then that simply proves that more war was called for.

* And they say America’s best years are behind it.

* How the West was stolen.

* How ISIS Games Twitter.

* Münchausen syndrome by proxy, mommy blog edition.

* The horror of postpartum psychosis.

* Against the GRE.

* Against the simplicity of “born this way.”

* It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt… also a woman first.

* Louie. Louie. Lou-eeeee. Louie. Louie. Lou-iiiiiii.

* You can kill anyone with your car, as long as you don’t really mean it.

* Walker said it was important to have a smooth-running highway system to avoid gridlock “that would choke off the ability of businesses to come in and out of Milwaukee.” “I think the last thing you want to do is have employers look to go bypass the city of Milwaukee when they’re talking about jobs and commerce here,” he said. “So you’ve got to make sure there’s a good transportation system.” And just wait until he finds out human beings use roads too!

* My brilliant wife has a poem in TAB.

* How to Catch a Chess Cheater.

* Elon Musk “Hopeful” First People Can Be Taken To Mars in 10-12 Years.

* And even Colbert Report writers have to form tech startups now.