Why Politics is Dull

I read this quote in this article at NPR:

“Congressional Republicans have stood up for American consumers’ being able to make the choice of what lighting products they wish to use,” said Frank McCaffrey, a commentator with the advocacy group Americans for Limited Government.

followed by this:

The association’s Joseph Higbee said its representatives would hook up two incandescents side by side — an old 100-watt bulb using argon gas and a new 72-watt bulb using halogen.

“And you can’t tell the difference. We wanted to make sure every congressman and congresswoman understood that they and their constituents would still be able to purchase an incandescent light bulb,” Higbee said.

The association’s member companies long ago started changing their product lines from traditional incandescents to halogens, compact fluorescents and LEDs, Higbee said.

“Delaying enforcement undermines those investments and creates regulatory uncertainty,” he said.

Well, politics isn’t really dull but it can be silly. The question of lighting is pretty simple as a matter of quantitative reasoning: if I was offered a choice between an incandescent and equivalent LED at 1000 hours and 40,000 hours life respectively as a choice and the LED’s cost was, say, 4 or 5 times more expensive, which would I choose?

End of Semester Review: the Story Continues

It’s that time of year for an end of semester review. Spring 2011 and a few prior to that were dispiriting times in my career. Just after I was hired at the college full time in 1998, I had my first experience of walking into a writing classroom with about seven or so people in it on “paper due” day, wondering where all the students were. Turns out all other students had either dropped or stopped attending (I’ve entered classrooms where one or two students were there, with absolutely no plan B). This was a class of 24 students to start and it hit me that something had changed about the ethos of that particular classroom. It’s became habitual for writing classes to dwindle after about the fifth week from full to half, give or take a few people. Spring 2011 was no different. I even thought that it might be time to quit.

I took on a summer course and changed a few things. I provided students with what I call practice lessons in paragraph copying, grammar, and analysis work, real by the numbers stuff: do this, do it again, do it again, now do it again. By analysis I refer to the act of applying evidence and reasoning standards and interpreting ideas for significance. This gave the summer students more intensive work, but more students completed the course–and I responded with a “hm.” I tried the same this semester, but finding practice for students to do beyond paper development was difficult in the extended semester (so much space in between things), which I now consider too long. We should move to eight week semesters.

This semester, I developed fairly straight-forward assignments and have more completers, this despite Storm What’shisname, and the intensified load. Yet, I find the end-game grading more difficult, not because of the pressure of getting them done, but because the matter for grading is becoming stranger: as in what I read as “final drafts” often doesn’t reflect a semester’s worth of specific learning technique. Most of the students in our classes are moving to college with the baggage of NCLB around their necks and were little more than toddlers when G.W. Bush became president. Their centers of gravity are very different from students I saw in the early nineties and early twenties. Their frames of reference are difficult for me to understand, as I don’t necessarily know what they interpret when I say things like “context,” “conclusion,” “analysis,” and “deadline.” In many ways this reflects no difference between a college freshman experience of any other representative time. But, then again, years ago, the audience hadn’t yet been split into its several cultural fragments.

One element I must cope with in the future is the question of requirements and standards and being mindful of the purpose of the college classroom. At the college, I’m an interdiscipline person, a generalist, with a principle interest in new media I hope that’s not a contradiction). But the notion of an academic discipline is still severely important in the context of knowledge interpretation, development, and creative problem solving, and from a discipline perspective, the college classroom is in many respects bent on expressing a coherent and precise history of a discipline, providing a framework for its genre of questions, and opening doors for supplementation. We can never know enough about any one thing.

My job isn’t all that hard, and my subject matter is graspable by majorities. But I often wonder as I read student work whether the subject matter to them has become peculiar, frustrating, and strangely disaffecting. It’s no longer a question of “why should I know this” but “what is this stuff you’re talking about?” Sometimes I wonder if certain student have a notion or a conception of the subject at hand given their histories, their backgrounds, and their habits, and this is a remarkable turn of events.

The Common Questions
Students come to my office with grave concerns and sincere questions. Even this video which as seen its rounds misses something keen in the elastic relationships of teacher/student. That the student is, indeed, sincere in their concern about grade. Moreover, the discipline required to demonstrate honest learning may be absent in the students’ methods and process. I see too many students who simply don’t understand that what is said in the classroom requires practice outside the classroom to engender development of mind. I see too many students who simply think that they can memorize on the spot and transfer later. I don’t doubt that this is a sincere “belief” because I haven’t the evidence to think differently. But I can, from my conversations, conclude that many of the people I work with have very little exposure to the debates and ideas of the day and don’t really involve themselves in them.

Throughout the semester, students expressed real shock at their early scores on our colleges standards of evaluation, which are meant to be low to give students means of improvement. They visited my office and informed me that they’d always received Bs or As and so what was up with me and my grading. This was always supplied in a tone of accusation. The student couldn’t comprehend that they were accusing me–offering fault–of being unfair as they sought answers for their own underperformance against the standards. I told them: “study and you’ll improve.” Theory: people improve when they study in method courses.

Grades are indeed a means of judging. But grades in college are institutional symbols; they’re an exposed stitch in an otherwise ambiguous universe of hidden twingles, knots, and shadowy patterns. In a perfect world, students would read an evaluation and then retire to the cloister and improve where they were asked to improve, trusting that there was some rhyme to the stanza, which is simply one of a rather long and dense poem, whose deeper parts will unravel later in life. I often find that these conversations lead to mutual frustration. I seek the language of explanation, encouragement, and development. The student wants assurance that their GPA will be okay in the end, that they won’t ultimately be harmed (which is symbolic harm); but they rarely express concern about subject matter knowledge. We’re not, in the end, understanding each other. Neither of us is, perhaps, at fault.

But many of my students learned something. Many of them inspired me. Many will be not be happy, and my colleagues and I have a lot still to talk about:

1. Intensifying a semester often filled with too much space
2. Diminishing the pressure of grades
3. Prepping for students who will be coming with yet stranger habits and expectations
4. Figuring how to tap into talent and new talents

P.S.
I like the studio art method where grades are withheld till the end but learning is asked for throughout. I also like the proposition of gradeless completion and let the market hash out competence. Isn’t this what portfolios are for? If there are portfolios, why do we need grades? Note that grades and evaluative standards are not the same thing.

On Reading Don Quixote Outloud

My son and I are starting up a long out-loud read of Don Quixote. I’ve taught the novel before but have to confess never having reading the whole out-loud as a performance.

Already there’s something about the work that’s reminded us of Tolkien and Daniel Handler’s Unfortunate Events Series. The travel in the first, though Quixote is famous for finding “adventure nearby,” and the narrator in the second. The first impression from us is that despite the ornamented language, Cervantes is both vast and incredibly economical: he get’s a lot said in a very short span of time. Incredible. And then there are the incredible, subtle images . . . Hopefully my students in World Literature will figure out what calls the knight to adventure and how modern this notion is.

A Few Thoughts on September 11

The day assholes brought the towers down I was driving into work for teaching. I disremember the details. But I do remember switching from NPR (a small plane had hit the towers) to Howard Stern, whose show was one of those “we’re staring out the windows and watching what’s happening” affair. All “showmanship” was dropped and Stern did some serious reportage and I’m glad for that. At work I watched the smoking first building, then the second hit. I don’t remember the first image I had of the buildings collapsing. In class we stumbled through the material like people who had other things on our minds and I think students were monitoring things on the tech we had at the time. But I’m not sure.

Back at home Susan and I marveled in thankfulness that more people hadn’t perished. The next few weeks saw an outpouring of grief, compassion, humanitarianism, wonderful stories of people doing their best, wonderful stories of global solidarity. The towers’ fall was just too big, and we had many conversations about the power of the images: game-like, movie-like, unbelievable. Conferences were moved as flights were not going to happen. We put candles in our yard. We waited. My son was just two months old at the time and we wondered: what is this new world?

I had my own urges for revenge, a sort of righteous pragmatism, and secretly found satisfaction in the brute force brought against Afghanistan. Coincidentally, I had been following the wreckage to culture the Taliban had brought there, complicated by other interferences. The images of falling skyscrapers blended with the images of hangings in soccer fields and the words of the men and women seemingly tossed back into a history people wanted to leave behind. Women treated like animals, the learning of a great country demolished by dolts.

When stories started up about the invasion of Iraq, I waved them aside thinking that this was just rumor, mere saber rattling, being fairly knowledgable about the region. I told myself and others: there’s no way this will happen, even if the excuse is plain. And when it finally happened, reading news infected by the inevitability of invasion, news colored by outright falsehoods, a building tone of cynicism, a media now bent on representing “sides” as if they were equally credible (an infection I quickly left behind on this weblog), I watched, talked, and taught, and wrote in a sort of stunned disbelief. The fall of the Towers was horrible enough but to watch our incredible resources move in this direction given what we’d just survived was purely bizarre and unjust.

After the attacks of 9-11, I often used Osama Bin Laden as a metaphor for Grendel in the great story of Beowulf. Bin Laden broke through the space of power we nurtured; he broke through the metaphors of safety, he invaded with the assistance of the duped our space, destroying not just symbols of American urbanity and modernism and capital exchange, but the things we’d built physically, like Heorot, shattering the intimate. The only difference was the absence of the hero and an arm. But this is also true of Oklahoma or any other kind of home invasion. al Qaeda’s war was stated as perpetual, to lure the United States into perpetual fighting until the economy collapsed, like the buildings. I see the debt ceiling debate and the unscrupulousness of the housing bubble as part of that story. Even after we leave Afghanistan or Iraq, all it will take is one person with a bomb to send the alarms back into high pitch.

Withal, thousands of Americans lost, thousands more Iragis, Afghanis, and so many others gone because of a few assholes with box cutters, and then a PATRIOT act and several years of time for the vestiges of the Cold War to work their mad magic still. Walking through the lines to grab at your stuff, shoes off. And still the schools and bridges are crumbling, and somehow it’s the teachers and other public servants who are at fault. Even now my muslim friends are watched for any shady business. Even now we don’t know who’s reading the email. We’d have done better to build on the first stories, to take advantage of what in 2001 everyone shared, naive or no. Instead, we moved into a period where, like the buildings falling, we kept exploding things and making them fall, like good will, which, in my mind, is more powerful than a tank. We have to remember: you can spend billions on security. Even so, it just takes only one asshole to sound the alarms again.

I have to admit now that I still suffer from anger. Anger at the attacks, mingled surely with the initial pride I felt for the Shanksville and Pentagon heroes, the efforts and losses of the first responders in Manahattan, and all those who made efforts to help, to comfort, to rebuild, and those who fought and still fight in the services, intermixed still more for the police who assisted us years later when our own home was invaded and for those professionals who helped us through sicknesses with no hint of complaint or hard word, but still there’s anger, anger at how we chose to respond, that the madmen were in charge, and how we, in my view, could have been building and making things instead of tearing things down, leavening the bread, solidifying and chasing the commonly held values. When people say: we can’t leave this public debt for our children in the future, I say: Really? Are you fucking serious? What the fuck have you been doing for the last nine years?

That’s what I am: angry. I’ve just recently learned this. It won’t go away.

My son’s ten years old now now and when I look at him I see everything that’s good. I try hard not to show him the anger I hold close and must live with–as a peaceful person.

On Language, Precision, and Ethics

In language it’s important to be accurate. One of the words we’ll be hearing a lot in the future is the word theory. It will be used like this:

I hear your mom was asking about evolution. It’s a theory that’s out there and it’s got some gaps in it. In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our programs.

This is Rick Perry in response to a question about how the old the Earth is. The word “theory” will often be added after the phrase “just a.” In this sense “just” is meant as a replacement for adverbs like “merely” or “simply.” This is not a precise way of talking about the theory of something as a theory being “simply” something tends to minimize the significance of the logic or predictive nature of a theory.

But even Scott Keyes doesn’t use the term correctly in referring to Young Earth Creationism in reference to Perry and whether or not he “subscribes to this theory . . .” because YEC isn’t really a theory in a scientific sense as the only evidence for it comes from assertions of dusty texts and guesses by people who claim inerrancy in the Bible and charge that Evolutionary science has gaps, which is actually part of what a theory should have. There are still loads of gaps in physics. Even with gaps, if a theory provides for prediction and testing, things are looking pretty good. It’s not good practice to claim that your theory is better just because another one has gaps or you don’t like dating methods.

Does Rick Perry know how old the earth is? This doesn’t really matter. Perry could have said that current science puts the age of the earth at this date ( four billion years or so). He might also have said that Biblical chronology asserts another date (say 7,000 years). It would even be better for Perry to assert a belief and say that he holds to the 7,000 year date and can’t stand the former. At least then the child could have asked Perry to argue why he goes with the 7,000 year date.

What he does assert to the questioner as a fact is that in Texas “we teach both creationism and evolution in our programs.” I would assume that this would mean a few weeks of religious education even for people who don’t hold to the authority of the bible or who are Buddhists and then several years of study of science. I have no problem with the teaching of theology in schools, as long as that theology is unrestrictive. I do have a problem when a politician misrepresents ideas to a child. This is unethical. Scientific theories are not just “out there.”

Is the Republican Party Dead: My Answer is Yes.

I caught this article in The Nation by Sarah Posner through email. (The phone tells me that The Nation still doesn’t know how to differentiate small from big screen). It seems to me that the analysis here is a in part a waste of time. We talk in studies of reasoned debate that rational audiences are the preferred target. But to take this item from Michelle Bachman as rational is, to me, beyond belief.

At a town hall meeting held in the parking lot of a sports bar in the Des Moines suburb of Indianola on Friday, Michele Bachmann asked a small circle of supporters and onlookers, “Why is it that government always wins? Why is it the taxpayer always loses?” Comparing the fiscal condition of the federal government to a family in bankruptcy, and blaming that on “government theft,” Bachmann positioned herself as a warrior against a rapacious behemoth. “Why should we bankrupt ourselves, why should we bankrupt our kids…to keep this thing going?” she asked. “It is a money-eating machine in Washington, DC, and I say it’s time to dismantle the machine.”

Here, Bachman uses a whole bunch of mixed metaphors and incoherent comparisons. The government is a family that steals from itself. This family is a “behemoth” and a “money-eating” “machine.” This language makes absolutely no sense and represents the kind of language that should be ignored by any thinking person.

It’s been my view for many years that the Republican Party is basically dead, which is a shame, and that the word “conservative” has been appropriated as a term simply meant to counterpoint “liberal.” This is why I refer to people like Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist as “so-called” conservatives. This article in The American Conservative by David Livingston represents a sort of push back but ultimately gives up on defining what conservatism might mean by ending with Reagan, another so-called conservative and certainly not a Republican and reduces Hume to a caricature.

And “gold standard, out of control spending” Rick Perry, a George W lookalike, is no more relevant.

A political part should have coherent representatives. There are none for the Republican Party.

Amazing.

Why Abilify is a Good Metaphor for Our Current Congress and President

You’re probably familiar with Abilify commercials if you watch television. The ad campaign features an animated character who claims that Abilify makes her “feel better.” Of course, an animated character can’t feel anything, use a “real” drug, such as aripiprazole, or improve because of its use. Nevertheless, drug companies, I assume, think it’s fine to pay millions for this.

Furthermore, animated characters can’t really be depressed, therefore the assertion of the advertisement is beyond bizarre and should be judged false advertisement. Most prescription commercials fall into this category, as the people in them claiming to have benefitted from the drugs are actors, actors who are on multiple other drug commercials, but not actually “on” the medication. For an actor, who doesn’t suffer from chronic pain, to play the role of someone who benefitted from the use of a drug as a means of validating the benefits of drugs, is pure falsehood.

This is a good metaphor for debt ceiling analytics. The real problem was avoided for purposes of carnival, and our president and congress people floated an animated character, who, in the end “cannot feel better.”

A Brief Look at Austerity Fever (Irony)

The Hartford Courant’s editorial writers are demonstrating a touch of Austerity Fever (some call it Austerity Irony), meaning they’re suffering from the typical beware of getting what you ask for disease, which is the new course not just of American political forces but also European.

Utilities pay the salaries of the 14 employees who will be laid off, so DEEP won’t save much, if any, money, while consumers will get worse service. That doesn’t sound like a consumer-friendly trade-off.

About 45,000 customers of companies supplying electricity, natural gas, water and telecommunications called the consumer services unit during 2010. Obviously, there needs to be a consumer sounding board, information center and dispute resolution center in the new superagency. The old one has done a good job.