Mojo Bison's Range

How Professor Mojo Took Off 7-10 Years In About 40 Seconds

2010-01-02T16:01:00.001-06:00

Combined, not sequential (but occurring within 24 hours of each other):

1) Using new beard trimmer, thinning mustache and reducing beard length to 1/4" from 2"; approximately 30 seconds elapsed time;

2) Going to gym, ran into an acquaintance whom I had not seen in some time, who remarked, "Man, you're getting really ripped. What's your secret?" Ten seconds.

If I had had a coed make a pass at me today (happens about twice every three years, on average), I'd have made it 10-15 years. But as Mrs. might not have approved, I'll be content.

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

How Professor Mojo REALLY Grades Exams

2010-01-01T11:06:00.001-06:00

Concurring Opinions » A Guide to Grading Exams. I make printouts of my students' test forms for this method.

And As 2009 Draws To A Merciful Close...

2009-12-31T08:54:00.001-06:00

Some appropriate music: Auld Lang Syne

I could go Old English on everyone and wait until January 16th (or even March 25th) to declare the New Year begun, but I'll go with the flow and declare January 1st the start of 2010.

2009: I have a bad way with odd years. Yes, this was the year that saw my long sojourn through Adjunct Hell come to an end. Even so, this was not a very good year. The summer drought pretty much ruined most of my tomato and vegetable harvest, to say nothing of my lawn. There was almost no time for fishing after early June, and water levels were so low as to render most local venues near-unusable. Financially, summer was as close as I've ever come to going completely broke (zero liquidity) --and in fact, I had to admit that I had a problem with playing too much poker when I had no business doing so. (Not very proud to say it in public, but there it is...)

And did I mention the country is now officially careening toward a complete and utter repeat of the Seventies combined with the Thirties?

Thusly I rank this year right up with 2003 (my true anno horribilis) as a year to whom I will gladly and proudly and eagerly show my Hairy Backside come Thursday night. I will smoke a clay pipe, as is the traditional English custom, and smash it in the fireplace before midnight. I will go outside my house (in my totally unincorporated subdivision) and chase away the evil spirits with large amounts of pyrotechnology. I will kiss my wife at midnight and play a copy of "The Blue Danube" to celebrate 2010's arrival. Friday morning I'll prepare black-eyed peas and cabbage and jerk pork (the Mrs. hates ham) and get ready to watch the Neujahrskonzert from Vienna.

And on your behalf, anno horribilis 2009, I invoke Cromwell:

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately...

Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Now therefore let us welcome 2010.

Proßit Neujahr!!!

Technorati Tags: business, economy, Great Depression, News I Can Use, relationships

In Hoc Anno Domini - WSJ.com

2009-12-24T09:05:00.001-06:00

In Hoc Anno Domini

So the light came into the world

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster and has been published annually since.

In my class, this would be academic dishonesty...

2009-12-17T12:00:00.001-06:00

Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming – Telegraph Blogs: "On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data."

Read all of it. I'm all for reducing pollution and cleaner energy. But the people who are supposed to be at the forefront for making the case are really looking like con artists trying to hustle governments into huge research grants, allied with enviro-nuts who want us all to return to a Luddite paradise. And if any of my students pulled this crap, I'd throw them out of my class so fast their heads would spin like tops.

Technorati Tags: climate change, News I Can Use, revisionism

Oh Brave New World! (or, Then And Now)

2009-12-14T19:43:00.001-06:00

CARPE DIEM: Christmas Shopping for a TV: 1958 vs. 2009:

In 1958, American holiday shoppers paid $269.95 for Sears’ “best 24-inch console TV” (Update: black and white) in its Christmas catalog.... [I]t would have taken 136.34 hours of work at the average manufacturing hourly wage then of $1.98 to earn enough income (ignoring taxes) to purchase the TV.

Today you can purchase a Sansui 26-inch widescreen LCD high-definition TV on the Sears website for about $350 (or chose from the several hundred other TVs available), which would be a “time cost” today of only 19.03 hours of work at today's average hourly wage of $18.39, and this represents an 86 percent reduction in the cost compared to the 1958 TV.

Lessons Learned

2009-12-07T12:31:00.001-06:00

I have been winding down the semester, putting out fires of various kinds. This term has led me to re-evaluate some of my practices, and there will be some changes next time out.

For starters, I am going to be far less charitable in my attendance policy: hey, the college's handbook says X absences and you cannot pass the course. If that much else is going on, then you need to focus on that. Your grades will improve when you're not distracted, and we'll all be happier with that.

Next, I am revising my bonus policy for very good attendance. The current system can be streamlined very quickly into one-size-fits-all. I want my students to come to class, but I'm going to cut out the penalties for excessive absences below the college limit, relying instead on the system policy of "X misses and you're done."

Third, I am going to really take more advantage of the "hybrid" category and give more online work, especially for materials that I don't like to emphasize in lecture. The students are supposed to be picking up some of the slack, anyway.

I will not be taking a full break over Christmas. I will be teaching a mini-term --the money is good and it will get me out of the house and out from underneath the Mrs.'s feet.

Technorati Tags: academia

ATTACK OF THE CUTE!

2009-12-01T11:50:00.001-06:00

Technorati Tags: News I Can Use

A Funny Thing Happened to Me Today...

2009-11-23T16:53:00.001-06:00

I had a student tell me "I lost respect for you a long time ago." Thankfully this had nothing to do with my mastery of the material. It had everything to do with interpersonal issues. I will not violate FERPA here and now; suffice to say there was an issue and the student did not feel I was being "appropriate" in my response.

Still, the idea of a student losing respect for me... Should I care? In this one case, the answer is definitively "NO." But in general, I do want to be seen at the minimum as someone who is consistent. No one will accuse me of favoritism. In that, at least, my conscience is clear in the present circumstances.

Oh, and no good turn goes unpunished, I have learned.

[Post redacted from earlier version out of concern for FERPA. I never use names, ever; still, no sense being any more than appropriately vague on the specifics]

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy

Why Johnny Can't Add

2009-11-17T12:14:00.000-06:00

Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway? by Sandra Stotsky, City Journal 13 November 2009: read all of it. When education professors tsk-tsk me for being so instructor-centered, I silently resist the urge to find a more appropriate use for the paper on which their diplomas are printed. Constructivist approaches have their uses, but they never should have been allowed to take center-stage. Long live Ausubel! (oh just go look it up already...)

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy, unintended consequences

'Equalizer' star Edward Woodward dies at 79

2009-11-16T11:32:00.001-06:00

'Equalizer' star Edward Woodward dies at 79

"The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" cried the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

Remembering Our Vets

2009-11-12T12:00:00.001-06:00

Remembering Communism

2009-11-06T16:55:00.001-06:00

Paul Hollander - Remembering communism - washingtonpost.com:

In the aftermath of the fall of Soviet communism, many Western intellectuals remain convinced that capitalism is the root of all evil. There has been a long tradition of such animosity among Western intellectuals who gave the benefit of doubt or outright sympathy to political systems that denounced the profit motive and proclaimed their commitment to create a more humane and egalitarian society, and unselfish human beings.

We could go all the way back to Lord Chesterfield, if we wished, to see the source of this emotion. I see many of my colleagues as his misbegotten intellectual children: railing not for progress but to a return to a sometimes-idealized-sometimes-actualized past where an oligarchic few exerted control over what they feared to be an over-energentic and far-too-clever-for-their-own-good movement of entrepreneurs and optimists --in other words, a form of aristocracy is what they wanted to perpetuate. Dress it up in whatever language you wish: communism, socialism, progressivism, they all inevitably have at the root a small group of people who really want to control a much larger group of people, weal or woe being beside the point.

I will not mourn the fall of the Soviet Union, and I hope to live long enough to see the history community join me whole-heartedly in that.

UPDATE:

Technorati Tags: academia, Cold War, revisionism, Soviet Union

Sweet Jeebers! Is This Person Secretly Enrolled In My Class?

2009-11-05T11:21:00.001-06:00

Investors.com - The Ghosts Of '38: discussing the impact of the New Deal agenda on the actual Depression, the author makes three points:

Amity Schlaes in The Forgotten Man demonstrates FDR's own version of "trickle-down" economics centered on giving union workers higher wages to stimulate consumer spending, which did not work.

Recent scholarship, led by Cole and Ohanian strongly suggests the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression; and

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy argues that the Fed's actions made the Depression worse, not better, particularly in regard to the "depression-within-the-Depression" of 1937-38.

I discuss every single one of these points in my New Deal lectures. Man I'm good!!!

Technorati Tags: business, economy, News I Can Use, Great Depression, revisionism, unintended consequences

Views: Is Tenure Conservative? - Inside Higher Ed

2009-11-04T12:20:00.001-06:00

Views: Is Tenure Conservative? - Inside Higher Ed: while nodding my head in agreement (even though I'm at an essentially non-tenure institution), I had to laugh out loud at this, because it's so true:

[M]ore slyly, what possible objection could there be to speaking frankly about topics in which most people have utterly no interest? Most academic work, especially in the humanities, is published for an audience smaller than a successful cocktail party..."

[Emphasis added, because it's so true...]

Again: Everything You Know About The Great Depression Is Wrong!

2009-11-04T12:14:00.001-06:00

Hu versus Sarkozy | Steve H. Hanke | Cato Institute: Commentary:

"There is no more reliable rule than the 95% rule: 95% of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant. Just reflect for a moment on the most frequently repeated lessons drawn from the Great Depression (1929-33). According to most accounts, the stock market crash of October 1929 was the spark that sent the economy spiraling downward.

"How could this be? After all, by November 1929, the stock market had started to recover, and by mid-April 1930, it had reached its pre-crash level. Contrary to the received wisdom, massive government failure — not the stock market crash — pushed the United States into the Great Depression. It was the Federal Reserve that ushered in that terrible nightmare. During the course of the Great Depression, the money supply contracted by 25%. This sent the economy into a deflationary death spiral, with the price level falling 25%."

Read all of it --it's not that long.

Technorati Tags: bailout, business, economy, News I Can Use, revisionism, unintended consequences

Charter Schools Help PUBLIC School Students!? Wow!

2009-11-04T11:45:00.001-06:00

Charter Schools Help Public School Students - WSJ.com: wherein we read about something that, if causation were firmly established, completely obliterate one of the strongest arguments against charter schools --that they take away bright students from struggling public schools and make those schools look worse. To the contrary, charter schools may actually help local non-charter public schools! Again, I would like to examine this more closely; correlation does not necessarily indicate causality. Still, wow....

Technorati Tags: education and pedagogy, unintended consequences

Rescuing the University; or, Welcome To My World Yet Again

2009-10-27T13:11:00.001-05:00

Rescuing the University: read all of it. This is the reality I face every day at work.

The writer references the importance of publishing or perishing. I admit that writing was never a strong point of mine and that's part of the reason I never went beyond my masters back in the day. But did any of my advisors ever stop to wonder why I wasn't interested in writing? Could it have been that most of the writing around me was over the intellectual equivalent of poppycock? That the paper used for most of the topics I was seeing would better have been used towards composting my veggie beds?

Technorati Tags: academia, education and pedagogy, News I Can Use

The Fall Garden

2009-10-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

Ordinarily I would be fretting about the small window of good temperatures for tomato-setting, but this year I don't have any fall tomato plants, so my life is less complicated. Just peas, broccoli and cauliflower --plus the Thai pepper and the odd volunteer basil (took a long time this year for any to come up). I weeded the old bed Saturday before last but have been unable to get to the new bed owing to schedule and inopportune rains. I have given up on trying to control the Malabar spinach vines, they just keep coming back and will continue to do so until a killer frost hits in conjunction with an extended cold snap. It's not that they taste bad, but they're not really good (IMO) unless they're in some sort of combination like a casserole or stew. At least they're thriving --I suspect I'm going to have to do major amending of the soil before spring, everything else is in a sort of "go-slow" pattern. Last soil test indicated serious deficiencies across the board in N, P and K. I foresee much manure spreading in January, along with rock phosphate and epsom salts.

Technorati Tags: gardening

Tell It On The Mountain, Mr. Welsh!

2009-10-20T12:06:00.001-05:00

Patrick Welsh -- To Explain the Achievement Gap, Examine the Parenting Gap - washingtonpost.com: "A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: 'It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.' "

Amen and amen. It breaks my heart, sitting here and mentally reviewing the faces of each and every one of my students, that out of over sixty this semester, I have three black males. And if I were to take them aside today and ask them, I guarantee I would hear that each them had a strong male in the house who made them study.

I had the privilege long ago of teaching a young man who went to Duke University on a basketball scholarship, and who could've gone pro his junior or even sophomore year. He did not, he waited until graduation, because I knew his father would kick his backside if he didn't finish college. And this young man made A's and B's throughout high school without special tutoring or extra credit --because his dad was on his case the whole time (as was his mom).

Mr. Welsh shows yet another reason I abandoned public education for academia:

Perhaps nothing shows how out of touch administrators are with the depth of poor students' problems more than the way they chose to start this school year. The Alexandria School Board had added two more paid work days to the calendar, a move that cost more than $1 million in teachers' salaries. So the administration decided to put on a three-day conference they dubbed "Equity and Excellence." We were promised "world-class speakers." If only that had been true. As part of the festivities, Sherman formed a choir of teachers and administrators that gave us renditions of "Imagine" and "This Land Is Your Land." Sherman closed the conference by telling us that if we didn't believe that "each and every" child in Alexandria could learn, he would give us a ticket to Fairfax County.

Now, six weeks into the academic year, some 30 fights -- two gang-related -- have taken place at T.C. Williams. I wish those three days had been spent bringing students to school to lay out clear rules and consequences, and for sessions on conflict resolution and anger management.

Administrators aren't paid to actually solve problems, only to address them. If schools didn't have problems, administrators and educational consultants would not have jobs. But some of the problems they face are beyond their immediate control, and they should start by facing up to that knowledge and tackling those aspects that they can control head-on.

So tell it on the mountain, Mr. Welsh! I'll be hollering back from the next ridge.

Technorati Tags: education and pedagogy, News I Can Use, unintended consequences

Uh, No?

2009-10-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

973. Getting Out of Grading « Tomorrow's Professor Blog: wherein we read of one instructor's attempt to ditch grading by letting the students grade each other.

I didn't even need a bachelors degree to know how inane this idea was. When I was in high school, I did a project for a physics class. The teacher let the students assign the grades. I got a "C" because most of the other kids hated me for wrecking the curve on every exam. As our most recent Economics Nobeleans would argue, there are limits to the rational-choice approach in that rationality has finite limits. Or, there are alternatives to "normal" rationality that completely screw up the model. Or, perhaps, it's what I call "hyper-rationality" or "meta-rationality" that goes beyond the classroom parameters. Simply put, absent a control mechanism the students will all agree to give each other maximum grades. Even a Prisoner's Dilemma control could be subverted (cash!).

But mainly, I just want to tell her Gird yourself up, for Chrissakes! You're a professor, own up to it! Sheesh!

Technorati Tags: academia, unintended consequences

Words of Wisdom for Roman Polanski, Bill Clinton, Mark Foley and many other menfolk

2009-10-13T21:37:00.001-05:00

Courtesy of Tightly Wound: A Future Note to my Son: [WARNING: use of the word "penis"]

In light of all the current hoo-ha regarding a certain has-been film director, and the perplexing apologias for his behavior, I’m writing this down now, so that when the time comes for this particular heart-to-heart I will have the text ready. Feel free to pity The Boy in advance for having to listen to this particular diatribe from his somewhat blunt and outspoken mother. Text is below the cut, to shield delicate eyes from repeated use of the “p-word.”

Son, as someone who has your best interests at heart, I thought that I would take a moment to remind all of you of one helpful fact:

You are in charge of your penis. Only you. No one has the ability to “make you” do stupid things with it. It’s all on you. Because last time I checked, you were a Homo Sapien and had higher brain functions that translate into being able to CONTROL YOURSELF. In other words, the penis is not interchangeable with the medulla oblongata, no matter how much you may want to believe this is so.

So if, for example, you decide to ply an underage girl with drugs and booze and then do unspeakable things to her, you do not get to flee the country, blame it on her mother, her physique, or your “needs as a man.” Your penis is not an independent actor. It does not wander the earth like Kane looking for enlightenment. It is attached to you, and while you may have trouble learning to control its tendency to become engorged at inopportune times, you are still in charge of where it goes and what it does.

Remember this. And if that doesn’t work, and you find that your penis is still giving you trouble, then I leave you with those age-old words of wisdom: think about baseball. Or geriatric nudists playing beach volleyball. Whatever works.

As I said previously, once you hit the age of 13 or so, a certain Someone demands the prerogative of assuming control of the bus anytime the fancy strikes (so to speak). This passes for most men after 40, but for some (Clinton, Foley, Polanski, JFK, FDR, Harding among others) it remains a lingering bug.

November Will Mark the 20th Anniversary of the End of the Cold War

2009-10-13T17:12:00.001-05:00

The Unknown War - Reason Magazine: "On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country’s militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world." Okay, that was back in August. November was when the Berlin Wall came down. I remember it well, I watched it on CNN. One hell of a moment and today people could care less.

I may have to do something about that...

And this man had tenure?!

2009-10-08T09:27:00.001-05:00

E.J. Dionne Jr. - Obama Right to Weigh Afghanistan Options:

At a White House dinner with a group of historians at the beginning of the summer, Robert Dallek, a shrewd student of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, offered a chilling comment to President Obama.

"In my judgment," he recalls saying, "war kills off great reform movements." The American record is pretty clear: World War I brought the Progressive Era to a close. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was waging World War II, he was candid in saying that "Dr. New Deal" had given way to "Dr. Win the War." Korea ended Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Vietnam brought Lyndon Johnson's Great Society to an abrupt halt. [italics mine]

Say what???

I may not have tenure, and I may not have taught at Columbia or UCLA, but I do have my own rebuttals to Prof. Dallek's assertions.

World War I: Prohibition (a long-time middle-class reform wish of the Progressives) becomes law when Americans equate alcohol consumption with anti-Americanism (and Hoover pushes the diversion of grain into export via the Lever Act). Women's suffrage becomes law after President Wilson gives his public support because women supported the war effort in large numbers. And we haven't even broached the precedents set by Wilsonian government expansion (National War Labor Board, Food Administration, nationalization of the railroads).

World War II: civil rights makes progress during the war for African Americans, as increasing numbers are allowed to serve in combat details. Moreover, the war convinces many white soldiers from the North that support for segregation in the South is incongruous with the critique of Hitler's "master race" thesis, thus laying a critical plank of support for the modern civil rights movement. The war of "Rose the Riveter" had the long-term effect of enabling the next wave of feminism a la Betty Friedan.

Korea: integration of the armed forces completed by Truman.

Vietnam: let's leave aside the critiques of the Great Society for now. The war, in giving life-blood to the New Left, advanced the cause of suffrage for 18-year-olds via the 26th Amendment.

[I reserve the right to make additions and linkages later; I have to lecture now...]

CRASH for Clunkers

2009-10-02T12:19:00.001-05:00

Fundmastery Blog » Blog Archive » CRASH for Clunkers:

--now who didn't see this coming? (read the whole thing there...)

Technorati Tags: business, economy, unintended consequences