searching for the ineffable
You decide. I’ve decided: I’m happy enough with my Gmail account that I’ll be keeping it, and using it (as I do now) for list mail and automatic special-offer mailings from airlines and such. But, for some, Google and their services really might be too creepy.
(Thanks for the link, Jill.)
Bet you didn’t know all this about frogs.
Tomorrow will mark my first ever paid holiday. Amen.
Our house is relatively clean, my housepaperwork-related conscience is perfectly clear, and China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, with its hypnotic filth and alien science, is calling my name.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re at war.”
Worthy read, this article here, if you are interested in an impassioned view of what’s going on in academia. This goes nicely with the Salon article link I posted recently, the one about Lynne Cheney and the NEH.
A bit lengthy, but worth a read. Thanks, George!
I’ve got a few invites. Leave me a comment if you want one, with your e-mail address please — or e-mail me, vika-wordsend-org. I’ll edit this post when they’re gone.
Looks like Mrs. Cheney is pretty ruthless in showing her disapproval of academic dissent with conservatism.
Disgusting and dispiriting. And this, just an hour after I read Allen Renear on getting government and university funding in humanities computing, from 2000:
But we must also be prepared for these efforts to fail. And if they do fail, when we fail at them, it must be with the grace that allows us to at once fail, and at the same time remain in the game, continuing our work. This means that we must give up the ‘everlasting delusion… [the] utopianism’ and instead ‘…cheerfully accept [our] inexorable destiny’. That destiny being that we will have to make our own way in the world, sustained by our conviction, courage, and skill, by our colleagues, students, and friends… and, above all, by the never-failing excitement of the work.
This is from “Humanities Computing 2000: Passion and Authenticity,” pp. 27-39 in: Domenico Fiormonte, ed. Informatica umanistica. Dalla ricerca all’insegnamento (Humanities computing. From research to teaching), Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 2003. Renear quotes from J. Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University, London: Routlege, 1998.
I’ll be drinking to that tonight. It’s been a day of extremes.
I’m afraid my entry into the distributed cookbook will be somewhat disappointing for George, since it’s…
well, it’s miso soup.
And I’ve never made it. But going to some Japanese place and ordering a bowl of that stuff when I’m feeling cold and miserable, mmmm. It cheers me right up.
The next thing I think of, when contemplating comfort food, is actually chicken soup. To wit:
a few large pieces of chicken
(I don’t much like white meat, so tend to get leg quarters)
1 onion
a couple of carrots
a couple of celery sticks
a couple of potatoes
fresh dill and parsley, the more the better
a tablespoon of Vegeta, more to taste
large pot
Throw the chicken in large pot, fill with water. Don’t ask me how much of either, because I don’t know. You know the largest pots in the cheapo sets they sell at Walmart? I’d probly put two leg quarters in that, and fill it almost-full of water, with just enough space to spare to put all the other stuff in.
Put that in, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, wait until the foam floats up. Skim off the foam.
Put in everything else except for the herbs. I usually put in the onion whole, and at the end throw it out, but that’s because I don’t like boiled onions. If you’re using Vegeta, watch out: it contains salt already, so don’t add any more salt. Add other seasonings if you like, but I usually leave it at that. Cook until the vegetables are done, probably 15-20 minutes.
Throw in the herbs, taste and adjust the seasoning. I generally throw in a liiittle bit more Vegeta, or leave it be.
Let the herbs cook a couple of minutes. Turn off the heat, cover, let stand for as long as you can bear it. Ladle into bowls and grind some black pepper into that. Mmm.
Beware the thunder of teenage sexual activity. For it is a Dangerous and Bad thing.
I feel like screaming.
I’m reading Peter Suber’s article titled Promoting Open Access in the Humanities. It talks pretty thoroughly, and – refreshingly – with no obvious bias or bitterness about the differences in funding between the humanities and the STM (science-technology-medicine) fields. One part amused and struck me in particular:
The most succinct wisdom on the usefulness and fundability of humanities research was uttered by Aristippus, a Greek philosopher who sought patronage from one rich Athenian after another. Dionysius once asked him, “Why do I always see you philosophers knocking on the doors of the rich, but I never see the rich knocking on the doors of philosophers?” Aristippus replied, “Because philosophers know what they need and the rich don’t.”
Hear, hear. What a great testimony to the necessity of the humanities, and it’s coupled with an attitude I share: I’ve got a pretty low patience threshold for defending my subject matter. If an adult I’m talking to doesn’t understand the necessity of knowing and practicing the arts, literary arts included, they’re probably beyond my help.
Happily, the people I surround myself with generally don’t need to be convinced of this. But chances are, the person next to me in the supermarket line is a different matter. Sometimes that makes me sad, and reminds me that not being in this for the money is the only sustainable option.
Fritz Hugh Ludlow’s 1857 The Annotated Hasheesh Eater is now out on CD-ROM. There’s a sample annotated chapter on the site, and it’s pretty fascinating.
The CD’s reading interface, if the sample web page is anything to go by, isn’t terribly pretty. But the book seems interesting enough that I might just get it. Apparently, there are some other 19th-century works about cannabis on the CD. Good going for the editor: in this age of renewed “reefer madness” scaremongering and awful levels of misinformation, I love it that books like this are still coming out.
