* Welcome to My Massive Open Online Cult!
Welcome to my MOOC—Massive Open Online Cult—a 10-week course based on the revolutionary educational models of Coursera and edX. Due to the “massive” nature of this course, I am unable to interact with prospective cult members individually. Though I am acutely aware that the most fulfilling cult leader/acolyte relationship arises from months of sustained and deeply personal psychological manipulation, this is simply not an option with the MOOC format. However, I will do my best to break down your resistance mechanisms throughout the taped lectures.
* Alex Kudera considers adjunct misery. Treating graduate students as people, not just scholars in training, will make them better professionals. Our Dirty Little Secret.
Now that three-quarters of college teachers are contingent faculty members like Duffleman, the depiction of professors as tweedy, pipe-smoking dons or turtlenecked, bearded radicals with actual authority is inherently reactionary. It paints all faculty members as a pampered elite, disconnected from the “real world,” ignoring the reality that most of them have more in common with Wal-Mart employees than they do with the one-percenters who preside over Kudera’s urban academic hellscape of poverty, terrorism, outsourcing, deskilling, externalization of costs, and privatization of profits.
* Hollis surveyed administrators in higher education, with the somewhat startling result that “close to 62% of respondents . . . confirmed that they had been bullied or witnessed bullying in their higher education positions in the last 18 months” (36). And while “African Americans, women, and members of the LGBT community experience proportionally higher levels of bullying,” Hollis found that men in higher education still reported rates of bullying higher than the national rate (41, 42). Hollis argues that these differential rates demonstrate that there is considerable intersection between bullying and harassment, which may expose colleges and universities to legal jeopardy.
* University of California – Diploma Mill.
(1) The New University of California shall provide no instruction, but shall issue college credit and baccalaureate and associate degrees to any person capable of passing examinations.
* As the debate about the drone and the war on terror in America emerges, these are the voices that are not heard—those of the victims and the targeted communities.
* Salesmen in the Surgical Suite.
* SCOTUSblog menu of today’s coverage of the Proposition 8 argument. Emblazoned in red, same-sex marriage dominates social media.
At this blog, Lyle Denniston observes that, with the Justices so clearly split along ideological lines, focusing on Justice Kennedy to predict an outcome was an “even more reliable approach this time” than usual, and Justice Kennedy appeared strongly tempted to conclude that the case was improvidently granted. Thus, as Amy Howe observes in her review of the arguments “in Plain English,” “the real question before the Court is not whether it would strike down Proposition 8, or what the broader effect of such a decision might be, but whether it is going to reach the merits of the case at all.” Tom Goldsteinexplains that if these indications hold true, the Court’s ruling will take one of two forms: Either the Court could conclude that the proponents of Proposition 8 lacked standing to bring the claim, in which case it would “vacate the Ninth Circuit opinion but leave in place the distinct court decision invalidating Proposition 8,” or “the Court may dismiss the case because of an inability to reach a majority. . . . The upshot of either scenario is a modest step forward for gay rights advocates, but not a dramatic one.”
* Atheism as the next civil right issue? We shall overcome…
* Robots Have Taken All the Good Jobs, Report Economists.
* Aaron Bady vs. magical realism. Aaron vs. the Great American Novel.
* Google Objects To Existence Of New Swedish Word.
* John Brunner accurately predicted 2013.
* Rand Paul continues his hard pitch at the readers of this blog: Sen. Paul: Obama, Bush ‘lucky’ they weren’t arrested for smoking pot as kids.
“Look, the last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Look what would have happened. It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky. But a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, don’t get lucky. They don’t have good attorneys. They go to jail for these things. And I think it’s a big mistake.”
* And another great what if: With today’s technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I?
