November 2007 Archives

Phone call yesterday afternoon:

"Mommy?  I think I swallowed my tooth."

"The one you wouldn't let me pull out yesterday because it was merely hanging by a thread?"

"Uh-huh.  I went to wiggle it and it was gone.  I felt it in my throat."

"Oh.  Well, we'll just write the tooth fairy a note tonight, then.  She'll probably still give you cash."

"What about my tooth?

"It'll go through your body like food."

"I'll poop out a tooth?"

"Yep."

"So I need to save my poop for the tooth fairy?"

"No, son.  We'll write her a note.  This sort of thing happens a lot."

"Okay, but you write the note and sign it like with notes to school."

So we wrote a note that said, "Sorry, accidentally swallowed tooth!" and put it under The Boy's pillow.  This morning, there was a dollar and a scribbled reply that read, "No problem!  T.F."

And there you have it.  The Tooth Fairy takes signed excuse notes from moms.  No poop-saving necessary, for which I am sure she is thankful.

This week in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, there have been a lot of pixels expended on the role of anthropologists who work with the military in the "Human Terrain" project.  Ostensibly this project exists so that the military can figure out the cultural quirks in a given area before they go barging in there all willy-nilly and offend the hell out of everyone and explosions ensue, etc. etc.

I can see the value in this sort of approach--I've read about American soldiers having to adjust to Iraqi social mores while doing intelligence gathering, and how as small a thing as realizing that in Iraq you spend 2 hours socializing and eating before doing 'business" can affect success in dealing with the populace, leading to smoother relations and decreased violence.

So knowing who you're dealing with should be a good thing, right?  And the anthropologists should be pleased that they can help save lives by avoiding needless misunderstandings, right?

Well, apparently I have once again missed the point.  Because the point, you see, is that the military is EEEEVILLLEE, therefore any anthropologist working with them is in danger of becoming hopelessly morally contaminated and providing the military with psy-ops stuff so they can kill more people more effectively!

Don't believe me?  Here's the premise of an article written for the Chronicle Review - I'll quote the 1st paragraph in its entirety in case it's subscription only, but here's the link:

"Anthropology, long the handmaiden of empires, is once again being called upon to assist with warfare, this time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the "war on terror." The U.S. military, the CIA, and some other government agencies and military contractors are recruiting a small but growing number of anthropologists and other social scientists to provide cultural knowledge and analysis, ethnographic research, and what the military calls "human-terrain mapping" to bolster counterinsurgency and other combat operations. Generally those involved wear military uniforms. Some are armed."

The piece is soothingly titled, "Enabling the Kill Chain."  Note scare quotes around "war on terror."  And the subtly veiled horror at the fact that folks in a war zone working for the military might a) wear a uniform, or b) have a gun.  Horrifying! I KNOW! Also, I was unaware that Genghis Khan, the the British and Hitler had relied so heavily on ANTHROPOLOGY when empire-building. 'Cause all my history profs were saying that mostly they'd relied on guns and money--or spears and fire, whichever came more readily to hand.  You learn something new every day, I guess.

Lest you think I am exaggerating this fellow's position, I'll direct you to this report in today's Chronicle which recounts a recent debate on the subject at their annual conference.  Again, I'll pull quotes, but here's the link.

"The report emphasizes two central principles: Anthropologists should be open and transparent in their work, and they should not harm the people they study. Unsurprisingly, no one at Thursday's sessions objected to such broadly stated principles--but there was plenty of disagreement about how to put them into practice.

Some of the discussion concerned the Human Terrain System, a year-old program in which social scientists embed within military units in Iraq and Afghanistan. No participants in that program, however, were present at either session."

So a bunch of academics will discuss something they have no first-hand experience with?  THIS will be fun!  You think there might be some sweeping judgments about people and institutions they've never bothered to actually learn about, even though they're ANTHROPOLOGISTS? Bring on the quotes!

"A few scholars suggested that the U.S. role in Iraq is so clearly immoral that the Human Terrain System should be plainly condemned. There is no need--at least in the case of that particular program--to have nuanced discussions of ethics, they said.

"I like the call for sharpening the do-no-harm clauses in our code of ethics," said David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University. "But I think there are some forms of harm where we don't need to talk anymore. The military--the U.S. military in particular--is an institution of violence, that kills and has killed. ... What do we do if we find anthropologists who are members of the association committing acts that lead to death or serious injury?" (Mr. Vine wrote about the human-terrain program in The Chronicle Review this week.)"

So even though there's no evidence that the worst case scenario is true, and no one involved in the program is there to tell you what it's like, there doesn't need to be any more debate on the subject. Okay!

Reality, please?

"Mr. Rubinstein studies international peacekeeping operations, and he often works as a consultant with military and intelligence agencies about how to improve such operations. Two of his former students, Kerry B. Fosher and Brian R. Selmeski, spoke about their recent experiences instructing military and intelligence officers. This week Mr. Selmeski joined the faculty of Air University, which trains officers in the U.S. Air Force. Ms. Fosher is a command social scientist at the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where she instructs case officers about anthropological concepts.

"I have complete academic freedom, I have tremendous autonomy, and I have fantastic students," Mr. Selmeski said.

The military is "not particularly interested in anthropology per se," he continued. "They are interested in what anthropology can do for them. Now, we can lament that, or we can see it as a window that's opening and try to force that window open a little further."...

For now, however, Ms. Fosher said that she has been surprised and pleased by her Marine Corps colleagues' openness to "uncomfortable" concepts about culture. "We were successful in getting a much more sophisticated and robust definition of culture" into her agency's curriculum, she said."

So the military wants to know about other cultures because it might help them not get their asses shot off, AND they're pretty open to the information?  Sounds like it:

As for whether their instruction will help the military target and kill individuals more effectively, the two scholars offered divergent thoughts. Mr. Selmeski said, "I have not found any individual student--I'm not talking about policy makers, but students--who has asked to learn about culture concepts in order to target. What I have heard is, 'We would like to minimize violence when possible.'"

But this is an academic conference, so the word of grad students who are actually working with the killbots must necessarily take a backseat to the bloviations of PhD's who Know Better and will invoke the Semiotics of Absence to Prove They Know Better:

Most members of the audience had apparently not had time to read the committee's report. But one scholar raised a criticism: Daniel A. Segal, a professor of anthropology at Pitzer College and the association's secretary, suggested that the report's authors were too quick to infer that no anthropologists were doing certain kinds of ethically dubious military activity, simply because the authors were unable to find any such anthropologists.

"I'm concerned about how you're interpreting these absences," said Mr. Segal, "given that we have an administration that never acknowledged prisons that it's running in other countries. ... It seems to me that when we don't find something in this context, to interpret it as not being there, as opposed to our not knowing whether it's there, is a mistake."

Haven't read report?  Check.  Ignoring actual evidence in favor of conspiracy theory based on the fact that you "know" the military is evil because of random factoid that has nothing to do with your discipline?  Check.

Irony offers you a six-pack and a salute, anthropologists!

My sinuses have precluded me from being at all interesting this week.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

And also, thanks, Hublet, for sharing the germs with me that have led to my sinus trauma, a surfeit of phlegm, and my total inability to think or amuse!  Yep, I'm blaming you for my shortcomings.  Because it's easier than trying to, you know, overcome them.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ask those of you on our Christmas card list to please keep in mind that the photo adorning your card was selected by The Boy.  Because he is VERY VERY PROUD of the fact that he recently lost a tooth.  Which explains his expression in the photo.  And also?  The top of Hublet's head was totally there when I looked at the online proofs.  And that the misshapen lumpy thing that appears to be the left side of my hairdo is actually my folks' Christmas tree.  I know it doesn't seem like it at first glance, but please do me the favor of looking more closely.  I don't have a tumor, and was having only a moderately bad hair day.  Finally, no, I don't know why Hublet appears to be leaning to the right.  It was an awkward pose, and I'm thinking he might have been about to fall over.  But I do love the way that Hublet's smile totally mirrors The Boy's, even though Hublet hasn't recently lost a tooth.  If nothing else, you may want to keep this photo as irrevocable proof that I was merely a mode of transport for The Boy during his gestation, as he looks NOTHING like me.

Or maybe you can file it under "Failed familial experiments - why having Christmas card photos made two mornings after a bloat-inducing Thanksgiving dinner while hopped up on decongestants and trying to get ahead of the travel rush" is perhaps not my best idea ever.

I've been meaning to update all you kind folks on the state of the postcard project - The Boy's memory is getting a little better now that he knows to look out for random postcards addressed to him and his classmates.

He was especially impressed with "Texas Tom," because he came home and announced, "Mommy!  I got a postcard today but I don't think it's from our family!  It's from Texas!"

Because everyone knows Texas is way too exotic to hold any of our familial clan, I suppose.  So to all of you who sent a card, rest assured it was received - thanks again.

I'm just hoping this gets The Boy a better education in American geography than the one I had, because my 5th grade teacher was teaching a 5th/6th grade combination class, and she was a 6th grade teacher by trade, which meant that the 5th graders kind of did their own thing for much of the year.  And as you may expect, our "own thing" did not include learning the whereabouts of any of the states not located on the East coast.  So my knowledge of my own country's geography has been along the lines of "If I've been there, I know where it is, and if I haven't been there, Google is my friend."  Pitiful, I know.  So I bought one of those U.S. Map puzzles in the hopes that if I go on the show about being smarter than a 5th grader and I get a geography question I'll be able to answer it...

But I digress.  The Boy's class still has a few states to go, if anyone out there is willing to send a postcard - and according to my Uncle, who is traveling the Gulf states just now, it can actually be a bit of a problem to just FIND a postcard if you don't live in a touristy town.  So I appreciate the effort.  Here are the states:

Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming.

Email is bigarm at bigarmwoman dot com if you can help out.

So Hublet and I were going to go see No Country for Old Men on Friday, but all the showings were sold out.  Since this was our only opportunity to see a movie for the foreseeable future, we were determined to See A Movie, Dammit!  This, coupled with my Medievalist roots, explains how we ended up seeing Beowulf.

I am torn.  I know what Gaiman was probably going for with the screenplay, but he ended up with Danes and Geats as a bunch of frat boys with better tats and leathers, and he fell into the po-mo trap wherein a simple tale of heroism and human foibles leading to a great king's downfall and ultimate redemption isn't good enough - we need a naked water demoness!  And a magic cup!   And a mysterious open ending in order to drop the anvils of  "temptation never dies" and "heavy is the crowny cranium" with a dash of "who are the real monsters" hoo-ha onto the heads of our unsuspecting audience!

That said, it was visually interesting, although CGI people are still creepy with their dead, dead, eyes and jumpy movements.  Really.  We just haven't got the hang of CGI people yet.  Although the Angelina Jolie character was the least artificial looking one.  Not sure if that means that the effects people were unduly obsessed, or if Ms. Jolie's facial characteristics are scarily artificially smooth in real life.

Bottom line - this movie will make it REALLY easy for teachers of Beowulf to tell who's actually done the reading and who cheated by watching the film.

I must admit I was sort of looking forward to drop-off this morning, and yes!  I was amply rewarded!  Hat lady was sporting a giant stuffed turkey on her noggin.  It looked as though someone had misplaced a muppet.

I'm interested to see what comes forth post-Thanksgiving - a 3 foot felt tree with velcro ornaments?  A giant menorah?  Rudolph?  A Yule log complete with faux-felt flame?

I'll be very disappointed if I just end up with a set of fake antlers.

And now your WTF moment for the day:

Former BYU Professor Tasered in Court During Suit Against Mormon Group

A few questions I had when I saw this are:

1. Why was this man suing the Mormons, and why was he representing himself in court?
2. What, exactly, is stress-induced disability, and how does it cause "mania?"
3. How are 5 grown men incapable of taking down one stressed out prof with "disabling mania" without resorting to high voltage?
   

Also, I love the way that the media folks, in the interest of "getting to the truth," show the clip over and over, and even in slow motion, so that you, dear viewer, can "decide for yourself."  There's nothing gratuitous to see here, folks!  Move along!

Let me see if I've got this straight.  A professor at Brandeis with 47 years of experience attempts to define a racial slur thusly:

"When Mexicans come north as illegal immigrants, we call them wetbacks," he told the Brandeis student newspaper, the Justice, in describing his comments. He says he wasn't saying that's what they should be called, but what many Americans do call them.

So two students didn't see it that way, and complained.  Then what happened?  A meeting?  An attempt to discern what actually happened in the classroom, facilitated by administrators? 

Not exactly.

Cue sanctions and classroom monitoring, lest this obviously crazed racist do something else, like read the definition of "niggardly" aloud in class!  Good God.

Via.

And a follow-up, here.

For Wuthering Heights:  "Heathcliff was an ass and they all died of colds."

Yep, that about sums it up. 

I found this sentence:

Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on Mills or McCartney. It can't be easy for her having one leg; it can't be easy for him being the first person held to ransom by an uniped since old-fashioned pirates were around in the seventeenth century.

Absolutely hilarious.

Actually, the entire rant is funny in that unhinged British way.

Yay!  So now the pressure is off and The Boy can ask Santa for a Wii with impunity - and I will need to make sure The Boy doesn't read my blog for the next several years...

Or perhaps sooner, if this conversation is any indication:

Boy:  Mommy, guess what?
Me:  What?
Boy:  Aaron doesn't believe in Santa Claus!
Me:  Really?
Boy:  Yeah!
Me:  What do you think of that?
Boy: I think he's crazy.  I believe in Santa Claus.
Me:  Did you tell him that?
Boy: (shaking head and waving hands around) Oh, no!  Aaron's really big.  I don't ever tell him anything!

Sigh.  Better make the most of these next couple of Christmases, I guess.

Okay, you know what?  I am fairly certain that someone, somewhere on planet earth does indeed KNOW Led Zeppelin better than you do, 100.7 The River.  I am also pretty sure that the previous statement also applies to knowledge about the Rolling Stones, Cream, or Insert 70s Band Name Here.

So please do me a favor and stop with the self-important droning declarations of nostalgia coupled with faux documentary-type footage in your advertising.  No one believes that you're serving an important public function by playing Immigrant Song every 3 hours. 

Seriously.  Knock it off.

Love,
BAW

Every day at 8:03 a.m. The Boy and I leave the house.  We're aiming for  7:55, but no matter what I do, we always end up in the car at 8:03.  No earlier, no later.  It's kind of odd, actually.

Anyway, the reason that we aim for 7:55 is because leaving at 8:03 puts us smack dab in the middle of the 8:10 dropoff rush in front of the elementary school, and for reasons elucidated earlier, the dropoff rush is really something best avoided if I have any hope of making it to work in the general vicinity of on-time.

The 8:10 dropoff rush is always further complicated by the fact that it coincides with a ginormous blob o' traffic on the 2-lane road in front of the school.  Usually, this means that the line of cars waiting to turn left onto the 2-lane road gets backed up into the dropoff lane, making everything even slower and more confused and - yeah.  Late to work.

So today The Boy and I hop into the car at - you guessed it - 8:03, and I resign myself to 10 minutes of frustration and coffee sipping.

Except there was no traffic today.  None on the 2-lane road.  The dropoff lane was mostly deserted, although Traffic Lady was sporting a bright yellow cowboy hat cum straw fedora contraption, so school was obviously in session.

Most people, when confronted with a surprising lack of traffic, will respond with a hearty "woo-hoo!" and continue on their merry way.  I am not most people, and my response to this unusual state of affairs was suspicion, followed by paranoia.  Where was everyone?  Did something happen?  Like, say, a mass exposure to a deadly virus?  Have the body snatchers started their nefarious work?  Is it the beginning of The Stand - do I need to haul butt to Colorado and prepare for a nuclear showdown with the anti-Christ in Las Vegas?

Sigh.  I probably need to lay off the Sci-Fi channel for a while.

The Fabulous Moola is no more.  I remember watching her on GLOW, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, way back in the 80s.  Recently a friend of mine was involved in making a documentary in which she was featured.  And I seem to remember a segment for the Daily Show several years back in which Moola discussed training female midget wrestlers in her S.C. home...I believe the phrase, "that's my damn midget" was bandied about, which is why it has stuck in my memory. 

Because I totally am.  A big, fat, unapologetic snob who is of the opinion that any humanities-focused niche discipline created after 1940 is just a huge load of crap. 

Example? The whole University of Delaware kerfluffle would probably have been avoided if no one could get a Ph.D. in student affairs (read the comments thread on the linked article for a good time!).

Hyperbole?  Not much. I worked in the student life area of the university for a while after completing my MA (in English, a broad, real by-God discipline, she says snootily), venturing briefly into the first dot com bust and finally retreating to academia, and I was consistently horrified by the sloppy writing and slipshod logic that passed for  "research" in the area of student affairs and higher ed. Sure, the folks involved were all earnest and bright-eyed, but they were always one small step away from crossing the line between, "We should tell students about this," and "We should convince students of this," and that's how the concept of individuality tends to get eroded.

This is not to say that the intentions behind creating the discipline were bad, or stupid, or slipshod, or any of the above; rather, I think the failure of this discipline is mostly due to the fact that there was never enough "meat" to sustain it as a discipline in the first place.  Student affairs is a narrow field, which concerns itself with a fairly narrow goal - or at least it did at first - helping students adjust to the university and university living, so that they might focus on getting their education, and offering opportunities for students to enhance their education outside of class.

So how did we end up with "dorm curricula" and the inevitable slide toward indoctrination?  I'm thinking it's simple mission creep brought on by attempts to fill the research vacuum created by making a small area of concentration big enough to allow folks to matriculate with a degree in student affairs.

If you get your niche elevated to the level of discipline, you've gotta keep convincing folks of the need for that discipline, and you do that by constantly producing new research, and round and round we go.....makes you dizzy, frankly, and in a niche, your opportunities for "discovering the new" are somewhat limited, as is your circle of peers, and - well, I think you can see where this ends up, with the "Insert argument about isolated, out of touch academics stuck in an intellectual circle-jerk" here.

In other words, the normal progression of specialization that takes place as a student moves from BA to PhD within a discipline is occurring earlier, and the focus now can be much narrower, which leads to intellectual myopia, sweaty palms, and madness of the RA - led "treatment" variety.

I'm not arguing that no one should be able to take courses in these areas, but I do think that quite a bit of fat could be trimmed by demoting some of these niche PhD's to "concentrations," and letting a little more of the "big picture" filter through.

Yes, I know.  I've just suggested syllabus and canon wars, and things that eliminate grant money - in short, Academic End Times.  Sorry.  Not my job to fix it, just to point out that sometimes, more isn't always better.

Not that I'm bitter.  But I am a snob.

Yeah, so yesterday was out of control and I spent most of my afternoon with a funny, erudite, British scientist who is working on cancer and dog genomes. He's also savvy enough to come ready-made with analogies that make genetics easy!  Did I mention how much I generally enjoy self-promoting scientists?  They may drive their fellow academics nuts at parties, but I don't have to share the lab with them and they're a p.r. department's dream.  And exotic accents?  Bonus, especially when you're dealing with T.V. and radio.  Well, except for the one scientist we have with a really thick accent punctuated by a lisp and the tendency to whisper, but you can't have everything, I guess...

AOG has asked about the postcard project - we're entering the home stretch, folks!  Thanks to those of you who sent in postcards - The Boy would come home and say, "I got one today!" And I'd ask him which state, and he'd say something like, "The one with a C!" And I'd ask him, "Colorado?" And he'd say, "No."  And then I would name every state in the Union that contained a C or a C sound anywhere in it, and he'd finally say, "No, I think it was Canada." So there you go.  And then I'd ask, "Do you remember who it was from?" and he would say, "Maybe it was a blog person."  So again, The Boy proves himself to be not so much with the helpful intel.

Which means that I have no real idea which of the postcards you've sent have been received, thus I haven't been able to thank you personally for your help. But the ones that The Boy has gotten absolutely made his (and his classmates') day.  There's really nothing cooler than getting mail that's actually addressed to you, after all.  I still get all tickled about cards and letters. If you ever need a postcard from NC, just let me know and I'll be happy to return the favor!

I did get a list of the states we still need yesterday, so I'll probably post that here.

Not much going on here lately, and for that I am extremely grateful.  Although, I can vouch that the Wii shortage is real, at least in this neck of the woods.

Hat Watch, Day Whatever - A giant ear of corn.  She looked like an agrarian unicorn.  I can't WAIT until Christmas season...

This will horrify Marc, but Hublet and I Netflixed the Schama-fest "Power of Art," and have been rolling on the floor laughing at the History Channel style re-enactments, ham-fisted soundtrack, overwrought Schama-prose--seriously, who else would call Rembrandt a "Mr. Clever-Clogs?"--and thin Marxist veneer.

However, I'm still enjoying the series - it's like a Behind the Music for great art.  Plus, I find I am much more able to appreciate the skill and genius involved in these creations now.  I'd recommend the series just for the really beautifully lit masterpieces - you can always mute the Schama!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!  The Boy racked up the loot, and I handed out a metric ton o' candy - the good stuff, too, so there.  Also watched 1408 with John Cusak.  Meh.  I was curious as to how they would translate this Stephen King short story into a film.  Worked well with Stand By Me, not so well here.  Samuel Jackson's character was the best one in the movie, and he was in it for all of 15 minutes.  Sigh.

Sorry that posting is sparse this week, but work is raging out of control.  Note to all of you university development types out there - no one cares about departmental awards for alumni.  Seriously, I promise.  For that matter, no one cares about university awards for alumni, but occasionally it's a slow news day, so they get covered. Do not ask for a news release about these awards.  I will tell you "no."  If you argue that you're "special" or that the recipient is "special," I will tell you "no" and direct you to a news tips website where you can just go nuts. 

In short, I am not in the business of promoting your department.  Perhaps you should have thought of that BEFORE you FIRED the person you had hired to promote your department.  Have a nice day.  Love, BAW.

And I haven't linked the The Fire lately, mainly because it's been the same old, same old.  But here's a case that's pretty dang impressive, with talk of "mental footprints" and whatnot.  Read the sordid history.  Somebody got a bit, erm, overzealous in the student affairs department.