`VLORBIK`

Zines, Math Ed, Labor Unions . . .
2003. January 2004. February 2004. The rest of 2004.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Evidently the biggest problem in the world that I'm willing to do anything about is: not enough blogs. Announcing Academic Lumpenproletariat (vlorbik.blogspot.com).

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Roy Edroso, entertaining as usual, on teacher's unions. No wonder he's got a new gig with the Village Voice.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

"Don't Pit Tenure Against Contingent Faculty Rights", by Steve Street in Academe. We have rights?

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

TMAO's quitting. More here. Meanwhile across the contininent, Jonathan's blogging about despicable management shenanigans.

Friday, May 9, 2008

This latest outrage is a little too god-damn close to home. Evidently my bosses consider it okay to ruin a guy's life because he annoys a student.

Language Log now allows comments. Huzzah!

"Why Brazil Loves Linux" (Gustave Duarte).

Thursday, May 8, 2008

The guy in yesterday's last link (fredtopeka of Petunias) posted a couple days ago about the story in the first link. Then, yesterday, a post about Indiana's ghastly voter-ID law. Petunias could turn into yet another big drain on my oh-so-abundant blog-reading time ... if he'd just leave off about the doggone US presidential election. Nobody can be interesting about the US presidential election.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Loyalty oaths: a history lesson, yesterday in The Progressive. Hmmm ... also "Kafka Revisited" at Mathematics Under the Microscope. These just fell into my lap within an hour of each other. I'll bet if I did a little research, I could post a lot more such stories ... but it's altogether too depressing.

More on Massey (Northeastern News). This was evidently posted tomorrow. Now, that's timely!

OK, not. April 8, May 8—what's the difference? (Hint: somewhere around one month).—Added 5/8.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Also at Shalizi's: a reference to the Skolnick effect that I'm sure to want pretty soon.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

A guest blogger on May Day at Shalizi's.

An interview with zine scholar Wred Fright.

Carnivals of Education ## 166 and 167 both happen to've been hosted by blogs on my blogroll.

Friday, April 18, 2008

So I had a tooth pulled Wednesday ... "Old Number Fourteen" (first molar on the upper left) ... 31 more to go ...

Monday, April 14, 2008

The new Zine Thug is up; my reviews are bylined "Indy Ana Jones".

Review update: Lazy Boy Mike informs me that his zine wasn't actually called "Kozy Boy"; the "pared down version" (vignettes only; no interview, 50's story, etc.) goes for $2.

April 8, 2008

"No Faculty Left Behind" (Bousquet again; IHE again; all right, I'm a broken record ... go read one of my other blogs).

Oh, and there's a forum on higher ed on the agenda here at Columbus State. It's held in the "Center for Workforce Development"-- and the fact that a classroom building on an alleged college campus should bear this stalinoid name is a pretty good hint at why I'm almost certainly too alienated to bother to show up ...

March 28, 2008

"New Impacts Seen for Faculty Unions", today in IHE.

March 26, 2008

A bunch of zine reviews at Zinetopia. I wrote some recently myself but Marc's in Poland or something and hasn't pubbed 'em yet.

March 25, 2008

Taking Children Seriously.

March 19, 2008

A comment in yesterday's last link led me to this review of Mark Evanier's book about Jack Kirby (in BookForum)—G-d bless this WWW.

But I found this review of The New Ruthless Economy at Raw Thought, right there on my blogroll.

March 18, 2008

McLemee profiled (and also a review) in the NYT Book Review; some kvelling.

March 17, 2008

"Why Contingent Faculty Must Lead"--Bousquet again.

March 14, 2008

The ever-amazing Barbara Ehrenreich on designated shoppers.

Also, John Gravois on P. D. Lesko (of the execrable Adjunct "Advocate") in the Chronicle.

March 13, 2008

"Join or Die"--Marc Bousquet on AAUP.

March 4, 2008

Paul Abowd on contingent academic labor in the Monthly Review.

February 29, 2008

Adjunct Advice ran its hundredth post recently.

February 26, 2008

McLemee on zombie pix.

Oh, and SPACE is this weekend.

February 15, 2008

Well, I met my last class on Tuesday right before classes were cancelled.

Here's TMAO's "Criminalization of Misconduct" (cops on middle school campuses)... and a follow-up at Math Stories.

The UMKC AAUP fell off my radar for a while there. But they're still at it. A few more sources like The Faculty Advocate would sure be welcome ...

Steve Gerber, RIP.

The UUCE has a web-presence.

February 12, 2008

With any luck, classes'll be cancelled ... lotsa snow out there ... and I can go home.

Meanwhile, here's some coverage of Sc**nt*l*gy protests at Gateway Skepticism. A-and a Timeline of SF Inventions that I spotted at Hlavaty's

January 31, 2008

Booksthatmakeyoudumb, via Quick Study.

January 25, 2008

Acephalous on Watchmen.

January 15, 2008

John Scalzi on Jonah Goldberg on Mussolini: priceless.

January 11, 2008

Marc Bousquet's How the University Works reviewed in IHE yesterday.

And, what the heck: a related post from the sorely-missed Invisible Adjunct (2003).

January 4, 2008

The greatest assault on free speech since HUAC.

January 2, 2008

Interesting discussion of social privilege at Arthur Hlavaty's.

December 28, 2007

Happy Anniversary to Paul & Caroline (at the Esoteric Science Resource Center).

Phil Ray Jack's "Divide and Conquer" (corporate-style management in higher ed; AFT); also "Outsourcing Remedial Education" (Elizabeth Redden in IHE).

Ray Davis's "Reference Work".

December 12, 2007

Paul Brians's Common Errors in English page has been around since forever. But I just found out about it (from supergee).

December 5, 2007

Academic bloggers plug academic blogs, in IHE today (McLemee again!).

November 19, 2007

"After The Last Intellectuals" at Quick Study.

November 15, 2007

Keith Hoeller reports on Campus Equity Week in IHE. Some excerpts from Marc Bousquet's book (long live Workplace!).

Also Sam Gindin on UAW-GM 2007 Negotiations in Labor Notes.

November 6, 2007

Meanwhile Oregon COCAL's webpage is in the form of a blog. Good. Chicago COCAL hasn't updated in years, COCAL-CA is proudly hosting the next big conference, and Boston COCAL has vanished from the web altogether.

This interactive Jackson Pollack tribute is sort of fun. For a minute or so. (Found at GotM.)

November 5, 2007

COCAL-CT is in full effect: the Connecticut branch of the Coalition Of Contingent Academic Labor recently announced their web presence.

October 23, 2007

Zapping Annoyances.

September 25, 2007

A footnote to his "Punctuation and Human Freedom": Pullam on quotation.

September 21, 2007

The new Academe has a story about privatization at Indiana U. and a review of Joe Berry's Reclaiming the Ivory Tower. My subscription has, of course, long since lapsed—so I'm grateful for Keith Hoeller for posting a notice to the in adj-l mailing list.

September 20, 2007

A quick rant on evolutionary psychology at WWDD? (follow its second link for much more of the same).

High Crockalorum.

Brendan Cooney's Lessons of the Taser, in counterpunch.

September 10, 2007

Stacey on Shalizi on Altemeyer.

Ben Goldacre on cash for "stories" at Bad Science [corrected (?) 9/20/07—the HTML at Bad Science is buggy for sure, but I may have posted the wrong URL].

September 6, 2007

The Carnival of the Bureaucrats.

September 4, 2007

Campus Equity Week has a webpage. It loads slowly because of the pointless "news feed". This problem is commonplace of course: featuritis. Just because you can make the images move, designers think you should. Maybe it would be a good idea if they actually used the web for a little while before creating pages ...

August 30, 2007

"Web 2.0" explained at last.

August 28, 2007

Columbus cartoonist Ray (!!) Tomczak is showing in the Gallery Hop this weekend.

August 24, 2007

A piece on featuritis. I not only can't work all these 21st century toys, I've mostly quit trying to even to understand why anybody even wants to. Cel phones don't work, people. And you sure as heck can't get service when they fail. Hello?

August 23, 2007

I found Transplant Comics by following the link in a comment by this guy in a math blog. Which speaks well for it, of course.

August 15, 2007

"Pessimistic Views of Academic Freedom" at the ASA (from IHE).

August 14, 2007

Marc has (finally!) posted the new Zine Thug (including some reviews by me [Indy Ana Jones]).

August 10, 2007

The Portland Zine Symposium is this weekend. As far as I know, Portland is still the new San Francisco—Zine Ground Zero. I haven't been keeping up.

August 9, 2007

Big Event at my other blog.

July 31, 2007

Craig Smith of AFT recently announced AFT's new contingent-faculty blog, FACE Talk, to the adj-l mailing list. So I checked it out and it looks like it might turn into something interesting.

July 18, 2007

Dan Lockton has been documenting a lot of elaborate ways of pushing people around at fulminate//Architectures of Control since November 2005. Why was I not informed?

July 17, 2007

Aaron Swartz announces the Open Library.

July 16, 2007

Some recent shots of Bloomington looking, for the most part, nothing at all like itself. Downtown housing boom? Wha. From Hollysism.

July 13, 2007

Paul Di Fillipo presents the Slipstream Canon. I've only read about 20% of 'em ... guess I'll have to get busy. Mad props for including Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.

July 7, 2007

Shalizi is blogging again after a long hiatus. One of my favorite writers since the early days of the web.

I might be quitting soon. So if vlorbik.com should vanish, just keep visiting vlorbik.wordpress.com and all will be well.

June 25, 2007

Brady Dale has announced a new fiction blog, Novellas as they happen. Also my own new math ed blog has actually got some content now ...

June 12, 2007

On Greasing the Pan: ex-writer Paul Riddell explains the economics of Harry Potter books.

June 7, 2007

There's a new blog at http://vlorbik.wordpress.com. Please note that I didn't say "an interesting new blog" ...

CNN deletes Ron Paul Comments. Here's their version. I haven't been following the presidential campaigns and don't intend to start now. But this is a pretty interesting story just the same. Here are a whole bunch of comments (from Slashdot).

June 6, 2007

Carnival of Mathematics IX, at JD2718.

June 4, 2007

Bloomington Daily Photo hasn't updated lately. Meanwhile, my old zine-trade buddy Joey Harrison recently posted this photo of the Von Lee theatre (and the comments thread included a link to this history of the Von Lee).

May 31, 2007

Lectures are over for this quarter; finals next week; Spring Break. Whee!

Every "upgrade" is really a downgrade. I've known this since the early days of the Web. Geoffrey K. Pullum wrote about it (with his usual wit and charm) in "Yesterday's Technology Tomorrow" three years ago. Others may be catching on: check out "Science Pubs Reject Articles Written In Word 2007" (in Undernews).

May 22, 2007

The 8th carnival of mathematics, at The Geomblog.

I seem to have left off blogging pretty much altogether. Still reading 'em like a junkie, though.

May 8, 2007

The seventh edition of the Carnival of Mathematics is up (at nOnoscience).

May 4, 2007

Tomorrow's Free Comic Book Day.

April 30, 2007

I commented today in Barbara Ehrenreich's new piece, "The Higher Education Scam". Spoiler: approvingly.

The sixth Carnival of Mathematics is up (at Modulo Errors).

April 19, 2007

Here's "Alternative Approach for Adjuncts", by Doug Lederman, in IHE yesterday. I found out about this Burnt Out Adjunct blog in the comments thread.

Post Office to End 215 Years of Support of a Free Press (in Undernews).

April 17, 2007

Paul Di Fillipo remarks on the 20th anniversary of SF Eye (in a group blog called The Inferior 4+1).

April 13, 2007

"Let's Abolish High School", by Robert Epstein, in Education Week (April 4). Hell, yeah. OK, the guy appears to be a tireless pop-psych hustler and clearly published this piece as promo for his new book, The Case Against Adolescence—but maybe that's not such a bad thing. Also it brought Leon Botstein to my attention. I'll probably want to follow up.

(Added April 20.) IHE has hidden the piece behind a subscribers-only setup; the whole thing is apparently reprinted at Where The Blog Has No Name.

April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. So it goes.

Mike Whybark on Joshua Bell's busking. More here (in Marginal Revolution, via God of the Machine ... there's some weird bug in the code, but it does eventually load).

Gore reported ready to run, via Undernews. I bet he'll win again, too.

April 11, 2007

The type in Carnival of Mathematics, Ordinal 5 (at Science and Reason) starts out way too small, but my browser is able to bump it up (so it's only a minor annoyance). I haven't been studying these very carefully or anything, but this feels to me like the best one yet.

SPACE is in two weekends. I might even show up for this one (as I haven't in a few years).

April 4, 2007

There's a new Zine Reviews group at Yahoogroups. [This blog entry has been revised April 5 to remove remarks neither nice nor true.]

March 28, 2007

Stay Free! is calling it quits. Congratulations to Carrie McLaren (& company) on a long run of a terrific magazine.

Here's a (PDF) paper called "Schooling in Capitalist America Revisited" (2001). Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis understand that schools aren't failing, as so many claim: they're doing exactly what they're designed to do (keeping kids ignorant). While I'm at it: the great John Taylor Gatto hasn't updated his page in years. Go buy his book anyway. (Crossposted to KTM.)

March 27, 2007

The URL ulabookreview.blogspot.com now takes a browser to something called "the outsider writers' blog". Evidently the reviews editor (Victor Schwartzman) defected from the Underground Literary Alliance to become a founding member of The Guild of Outsider Writers. At least part of the resulting e-mail flamewar showed up in my mailbox. Delete! Delete! OK!

Here's King Karl's version.

Oh, and the fourth Carnival of Mathematics.

March 20, 2007

Lotsa comments on the textbook racket: "Who Controls Textbook Choices? (IHE yet again).

March 15, 2007

Strike at Community College of Philadelphia (IHE).

Reading Frenzy is having a financial crisis. Go buy some stuff.

March 13, 2007

"How to Help Adjuncts", by Gwendolyn Bradley (AAUP), today in Inside Higher Ed.

The third edition of the Carnival of Mathematics.

WAGT loves Krispy Kreme.

March 2, 2007

Nathan Newman on the Employee Free Choice Act. On to the Senate and let's win there.

Lunar eclipse tomorrow.

February 28, 2007

The second carnival of mathematics, at (previously unknown to me) Good Math, Bad Math.

February 20, 2007

Sean Stewart has filed his last reviews for the "Zine Rack" at newpages.com, and mentioned it in his blog last week. Congratulations on a terrific run.

In other zine news, Microcosm is moving to Bloomington IN. Amazing.

February 9, 2007

Here, in one big slow-loading file, are the Contents pages for Making Comics. I never thought I'd link to amazon-dot-friggin-com, but there it is. Here's Scott McCloud's page.

Lots of coverage of the hearings on th' Employee Free Choice Act at th' AFL-CIO blog.

Carnival of Math (inaugural edition).

February 7, 2007

French Teacher Unions Threaten Mass Strike, at Workplace Blog.

February 1, 2007

Ariel Rubinsein's review (in PDF format) of Freakonomics is seriously funny. But I'm posting the link here at least in part because I'm so impressed with the page layout (by The Berkeley Electronic Press). How my source (Danny Yee) found the link, I don't know: at this page, BEP seems to expect to get paid for their outstanding work. Some nerve.

Oh. Wait. Here it is without a subscription at, duh, Ariel Rubinstein's webpage.

January 31, 2007

The Salary Theorem (at Funtoosh, via George Lenard).

28 Pages Lovingly Bound With Twine wins Utne's General Excellence award. I published the first review of the first two issues, scooping Utne by five years (in The Ten Page News #30).

I've just learned that I've won a T-shirt from What Would Durkheim Do?. Eat your hearts out.

January 26, 2007

This guy recently quit Library Thing.

January 25, 2007

Am I the only one who finds this amusing? (I found it at Education International.)

January 24, 2007

The Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions has started a wiki.

January 19, 2007

Oregon COCAL (Coalition Of Contingent Academic Labor) announced its existence today in the adj-l listserv.

I won't be at the march on Washington next week. Nor, alas, will I participate in National Gorilla Suit Day a few days later. They say life is the thing ...

January 18, 2007

Everybody talks about creating full-time positions for part-time faculty; Georgia State U has done something about it (last month in Inside Higher Ed). Non-tenuretrack of course. Oh, stop griping.

January 17, 2007

101 Reasons to Stop Writing.

January 12, 2007

The latest abuse by the administration at Columbus State Community College is outrageous even for them. Here's an excerpt from the faculty union's newsletter (The WORD from CSEA) describing the situation.

Michael B�rub� has quit blogging. The web is getting crummier every day.

January 11, 2007

Robert Anton Wilson died today; RIP. Here's a comments thread.

January 8, 2007

Kitchen Table Math has moved (here's the old site, while it lasts ... very slow to load).

December 8, 2006

Grades are filed. Whoo-hoo. I may disappear until 2007 or so.

December 4, 2006

Tricks to Irritate an Atheist, at Oncle Psycho (via Abstract Nonsense).

December 1, 2006

Anti-Union Brutality in Houston, at Mike the Mad Biologist.

November 22, 2006

Happy Birthday, Ma!

Joshua Zucker has been blogging about his trip overseas in From Russia With Math. The type's kind of small.

Diebold whistleblower pleads guilty (in a case that the state has no right to prosecute in the first place). I learned of this here (at Mark Crispin Miller's blog).

November 17, 2006

The Spell Against Spelling, by George Starbuck, reprinted at Language Log today.

Everybody's greatgrandblogfather Jorn Barger seems to have, essentially, abandoned Robot Wisdom in favor of an "auxiliary" page (evidence here and here). OK, so be it.

November 15, 2006

Scott McLemee (Cogito, Ergo Zoom) recently published a review of a new biography of William James. (I set up a William James homepage in the early days of the Web but quit when Frank Pajares did a much better job of it.)

November 7, 2006

Unionizing Postdocs, in Inside Higher Ed.

October 31, 2006

Billmon is not a liberal (at Whiskey Bar). Also Geoffrey Pullam conveniently indexed some rants yesterday (at Language Log).

October 30, 2006

"Daylight Savings Time" may not be the stupidest idea anybody ever had. I'm not saying that at all. Just the stupidest idea ever implemented. "OK. 24 hour days. Nothing broke here. Let's fix it! Once a year, let's have a 25 hour day, just to mess with people's minds! A-and we'll have a 23 hour day six months later to make up for it! Wow!" ...

October 13, 2006

SPX is going on even as I type. The Underground Literary Alliance has begun a book review blog.

October 11, 2006

Here's a blog by the Linux system administrator at my high school (class of 75: we had remote access to a mainframe via paper tape in those days).

The Voting Rights Revival Conference is right here at Columbus State this weekend. Long live The Free Press!

October 6, 2006

I've just compiled the first page of my lecture notes. Still a long way from doing all three chapters. I'd explain it all to you if I thought you cared.

Update. Sorry. It's gone. I'll get back with you.

October 4, 2006

Hey now. There's an entry for The Ten Page News in ZineWiki. I swear to g-d I didn't do it myself.

In other zine news, Marc has posted some new reviews (including a few by me) at Zine Thug.

October 2, 2006

Stephanie McMillan posted list of pro-human-rights editorials this morning. All but the two from the NY Times (which require "registration") are free to read online.

September 29, 2006

This online LaTeX compiler works as advertised, much to my surprise. An hour ago, I successfully created this browser-readable version of a page from the semester summary of some old algebra class. I'm still a long way from being able to do the same for the lecture notes I abandoned years ago (here's the prospectus), what with various TeX versus LaTeX issues (and my low frustration tolerance). But it's the closest I've been since I gave up trying to work my ex's scanner.

Remember, remember, the 5th of October ... event listings from The World Can't Wait.

"More Dylan Thefts", from Ralph the Sacred River.

September 25, 2006

SF author John M. Ford is dead. I knew him slightly in Bloomington in the early 70s when we were both members of the IU SF club. He knew how to make verses scan, rhyme, and entertain.

September 22, 2006

Some interesting remarks on the upcoming "Banned" Books Week (scarequotes mine) at librarian.net.

Mark Evanier covered last Wednesday's Writer's Guild demonstration yesterday and the day before in News from ME.

Orwell on the interrogation bill at Whiskey Bar (via Danny Yee, but now belatedly added to my blogroll in its own right).

September 21, 2006

Imminent death of the blog predicted: as of yesterday my usual routine for uploading webpages doesn't work. Obviously, I've found a workaround. But for several hours I thought I might be quitting without notice. Blag.

Serge Lang's HIV/AIDS file (and my review of Challenges).

September 20, 2006

Marked for uploading a couple weeks ago (before the quarter break) and so less timely than intended:

NYU Strike Is Over—Without Contract, from Inside Higher Ed.

Horowitz Lies about Grover Furr.

Oh, and the Philly Zine Fest is on Sunday.

August 30, 2006

Cincinnati's Adjunct Faculty Association has called for a boycott against UC's board of trustees (story from City Beat).

Meanwhile, medulla noodle's blog entry about COCAL VII. Douglas Giles posted the text of his presentation in the [adj-l] archive. I also found this short report from FPSE (a Canadian union), with a link to the text of its president's address to COCAL. That's about it (there's more at [adj-l], though).

Much more on "Manifold Destiny", from Not Even Wrong (via Ars Mathematica).

August 28, 2006

There's a new Bob Dylan album. I learned this a few minutes ago from this thread in Sadly, No!.

August 23, 2006

Here's a piece in the current New Yorker about Grigori Perelman (eccentric even for a math-head). I haven't read it ... can't get to a printer just now.

Photos from a demonstration on High Street a couple weeks back, from Monthly Review.

August 21, 2006

So I read Allison Bechdel's Fun Home this weekend and was blown away. Long live literate comics! Turns out she's also doing a blog.

Dave's Web Of Lies is a hoot.

August 15, 2006

More photos of the destruction at Madeline's house right here.

August 14, 2006

Here's a a photo of me with Madeline and a couple faculty members, from the math department picnic last Friday. I'm the hairy one.

And here's Madeline's house with a car sticking out of it, late Wednesday night. There's a video in the story at 10tv.com (though probably not for long).

August 10, 2006

Zines Are Not Blogs, by Jenna Freedman, from the zine collection at Barnard College. More cool stuff from the same source.

The Baltimore CPL zines page provides links to several public libraries with zine collections.

August 9, 2006

The Portland Zine Symposium is this weekend.

August 2, 2006

The last couple of times I wanted to cite Paul Knapp's Things that would convince me there's a skills shortage, I couldn't find it. No worries. I'll probably want to cite it again soon. Oh, and here's a business exec on Why I'm not spending on IT any more (also from membox, but more recent).

A new list of philosophical weblogs, by David Chalmers.

July 26, 2006

A thread on calculus reform at The Art of Problem Solving.

Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day, is due in December. OK, I never finished Mason & Dixon. So why am I still so excited? Here's pynchonoid.

July 19, 2006

I've been playing around at LibraryThing, so go there if you want to see some of my books. Username "vlorbik", natch.

July 14, 2006

From alt.zines:

Date: Thurs, Jul 13 2006 12:09 pm
From: "D. Halligan"
For those who have spent more than a few years in the zine community, the name of Fred Woodworth is well known. Fred is the publisher of The Match, the oldest explicitly anarchist publication in North America. It's quite possibly the longest running zine, The Match has been published since 1969. Today Fred Woodworth needs our help. He has recently had to undergo major surgery. The resulting bills have be overwhelming and Fred has fallen on hard times. He's has never been able to afford private health coverage. Donations and get well cards can be sent to:
Fred Woodworth
c/o The Match!
Box 3012
Tucson, Arizona 85702
USA

July 13, 2006

Here's a blog entry from April in TheAgitator.com about a drug war atrocity: some cops beating a confession out of a suspect last year. Oh, but this time, somebody got it on tape. There's also a transcript. Finally, here's a comments thread in Obsidian Wing.

The "President" is always right: you can't make this stuff up.

July 11, 2006

ZineWiki announced its existence today in alt.zines.

June 30, 2006

MathPanelWatch: tools of the devil but potentially very useful and interesting.

June 29, 2006

I've just come upon the minutes (PDF) of last month's initial meeting of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The second meeting was yesterday; there's a session for public comments today.

Catherine Johnson has posted a bunch of relevant links here (particularly info on some of the panelists).

June 28, 2006

Why Unions? Labor 101, by Nathan Newman, a couple weeks back in Daily Kos. Well over 200 comments ...

June 27, 2006

Columbus State employees give no-confidence vote to president, several weeks ago in workplace blog. The Dispatch story linked there sez "A no-confidence vote at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland earlier this year resulted in the president's resignation" and that other Ohio faculties are considering similar actions. Evidently this sort of thing goes on all the time. Still, it's refreshing to see at least a hint of what's going on here appear in a public place.

Hard to find 800 numbers: "You keep them in business. Yet they hide from you. Until now."

June 23, 2006

"John Dewey" on math-ed follies, last week in Edspresso.

June 7, 2006

Net neutrality and the political point of no return.

The MoCCA art festival is this weekend.

Spring Quarter is over; I'm on break. Whee!

June 6, 2006

Imminent death of the net predicted: the "net neutrality" bill is up for a vote tomorrow. Here's a short piece on the subject by (the amazing) Andy Stern.

May 18, 2006

Joseph Duemer (Reading and Writing) has withdrawn his resignation from the Faculty Senate at Clarkson. Good. The web can sure use plenty more honest reporting about what goes on in suchlike institutions.

I found this out by following a signature link in this Inside Higher Ed piece about some whistleblowing by famed media critic Renata Adler at Boston U College of Communication. Looks like there might be a pretty good scandal there.

Also spotted today: a good thread on free vs. restrictive software.

May 17, 2006

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog.

Here's Math and Text on "Math and Literature" at the NCTM con of a few weeks back.

May 12, 2006

Cary Nelson is president-elect of AAUP, I've now learned from another story in Inside Higher Ed. Very good news. I'd have known about this earlier if I were a member, I suppose. I've been in AAUP in the past ... in two separate runs: once when I actually was a (college, not university) professor, and then again when I was a unionist.

May 11, 2006

SPACE is Saturday. I won't be there — no money. Payday is Monday.

There's a story on adjunct unions today in Inside Higher Ed.

May 5, 2006

Hola. Zine World isn't dead; just napping. And to prove it, they've webbified a bunch of reviews that would have been in #23 if it'd come out on schedule.

May 4, 2006

It's "Celebrating Teachers Week", according to the Wonks. So buy me a drink.

April 26, 2006

I found this appreciation of Lingua Franca (by Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer) in Scott McLemee's blog. Evidently Aaron Swartz has set up an archive mirroring LF's long-dead website. I might as well mention Rick Perlstein while I'm at it.

April 25, 2006

It's TV Turnoff Week. Unfortunately, the page appears to have been created by illiterates.

April 24, 2006

Antiwar blogger Empires Fall contacted me over the weekend and invited me to take a look. Yep. Worth checking out.

April 18, 2006

Longtime Kitchen Table Math regular Ken DeRosa has begun blogging at D-Ed Reckoning. Looks to be something I'll want to look at pretty often. One should know right up front that "kderosa" allies himself with Zig Englemann's "Direct Intstruction" program.

April 11, 2006

Free the Beats!: a reading by the ULA in NYC (Monday April 17).

April 4, 2006

Steve Kudlak was one of my first papernet corespondents back when I did my zines. Now he's shown up on the web at the Santa Cruz Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Also Aj Michel (of Low Hug) has moved from Papercuts to Syndicate Product Covert HQ.

Hey, Jeff (Disciplined Minds) Schmidt got a big settlement last month. Sometimes the good guys win one. I published a brief review of the book back in '02.

March 31, 2006

Chris Clarke is not a feminist. It says so right in Creek Running North earlier this week. I learned this from the Reclusive Leftist, who doesn't agree. Ann Bartow (of Feminist Law Professors) sez in LP's comments thread "... but yikes, a person�s autonomous right to self-define is no small thing." — a mighty sensible point of view if you ask me.

March 29, 2006

A math-warrior must read: yesterday's They Will Teach Math To Children at Learning Curves (plus comments thread).

March 28, 2006

Oh, and speaking of computer wizards: yesterday's update on Aaron Swartz's recent activities is his first post in a couple of months. At "Aaron Swartz", that is: he's been blogging at infogami.com and The Will To Hack (and running a website-development company at infogami.com [recently merged with reddit]). If I myself had the will to hack, I'd like to think I'd be coming up with progams like Aaron's recent Simple Amazon and the great NY Times Link Generator that first brought him to my attention: work-arounds for internet cruftiness.

March 27, 2006

Kirby Urner recently put a post on his position in the "Math Wars" in Bizmo Diaries.

Here's today's Associated Press story on high textbook prices.

March 16, 2006

Grades are filed. Whee!

There's a pretty extensive list of math blogs (2004), at Gooseania and a short article by the same author at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. P.P. Cook's Tangent Space has quite a few math links in his blogroll, too.

March 15, 2006

Moebius Stripper recently posted Where Textbooks Come From, linking to Tamim Ansary's priceless The Muddle Machine (in the generally pretty ghastly Edutopia, November '04).

March 14, 2006

The New Jersey Zine Fest is coming up a couple weekends from now in New Brunswick (March 26).

March 10, 2006

"Recently, Ken Blackwell spoke at a meeting of the Council for National Policy" ... and mentioned it in his blog. Then he deleted the mention ... As supergee put it, "The first rule of the Council for National Policy is that you don't talk about the Council for National Policy.". There's more (much more) at Kos; also a piece in the (online) Free Press (world's best source on the treacheries of the traitor Blackwell). And here's some more about CNP, from Watch Unto Prayer (yes, they're repent-the-end-is-nigh wackos; they're also evidently tireless researchers).

This is evidently a different "Center for National Policy" (thinks the web is TV; also with pain-in-the-neck popup menus). Theocracy Watch ... The Despoiling of America (1994).

March 7, 2006

Two Big Education Blobs Unite to Form One Huge Blob, today in EdNews. More about The Two Blobs, from Third Education Group.

March 6, 2006

Wow. Bloomingpedia.

March 3, 2006

The Red Roach announced today that he's expanding his publishing project ... good luck to the brand new Manual Publishing!

March 2, 2006

Here's another blog about apostrophe abuse (I linked to this one back in October). If either one of 'em has mentioned the plague of backquotes, though, I've missed it.

February 23, 2006

What is the value of "What is the Value of Algebra?" (the ads stop moving after a while)?—I've been reading comments all this week and loving it: almost everyone seems to agree ... the Washington Post should be embarrassed to have published it. The motherlode seems to be here (at Pharyngula) though this Technorati search is also worth a look. Here's a related piece in the LA Times that almost everyone seems to've overlooked (hat-tip: Jay Ackroyd).

Random bookmark: the Dennett-Ruse affair.

February 14, 2006

Another weekend in the county jail. Done.

February 6, 2006

I recently discovered cybercaf Bloomington. Some worthwhile stuff there and at least the ads don't throb.

February 5, 2006

My first weekend as the guest of Franklin County went by without any major incidents. One more to go.

February 2, 2006

Comments on the "American Competitiveness Initiative", at Ms. Frizzle. Hmm. What else? More comments at The Education Wonks.

Broadway shows in Vegas ( from the Review-Journal).

I'm going to jail tomorrow.

January 26, 2006

Free Zine Day is only about 3 months away. Also Free Comic Book Day.

Following up on my post of the 6th instant: Joe Berry was interviewed a couple months ago at Inside Higher Ed.

January 24, 2006

Columbus Indymedia is up and running. O frabjous day! I learned about it from the new (hardcopy) Free Press.

January 19, 2006

MathForge.net and the Young Mathematicians' Network.

January 6, 2006

Lupo told me last night about Joe Berry's new(-ish) book, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower. She also mentioned that COCAL VII is this August in Vancouver (I was at V back when I was making a decent living but will skip VII perforce). There's more at the Chicago COCAL page.

While I'm at it. California COCAL is still going strong. Chapters in Boston & Western New York appear to exist but evidently lack web-presence. NAFFE has a lot of interesting documents but their front page (at fairjobs.org) hasn't been loading properly as I write this.

January 3, 2006

Classes start today. I suppose the book-a-day mystery consumption will slow down accordingly. Blogging may or may not pick up ...

Here's COTA.

A new biography of Samuel R. Delany by "K. Leslie Steiner" can be found at pseudopodium.org (formerly The Bellona Times). A Dylan musical is set to open this month in San Diego. George Lenard's Employment Blawg featured an outstanding survey of blog coverage of the NYC transit strike recently.

December 28, 2005

New reviews have been posted at Zine Thug, including a few by yours truly, Indy Ana Jones.

December 2, 2005

5000 Janitors Organize In DeLay's Backyard, by Nathan Newman in the House of Labor. Led me to Working Life.

Shauna came and got the cats yesterday.

November 30, 2005

Moebius Stripper doesn't like graphing calculators (at Tall, Dark, and Mysterious). Good comments thread —not just the usual suspects.

November 18, 2005

Top 20 Geek Novels. I've read 14.

November 15, 2005

Coverage of the ongoing crisis in labor relations at Columbus State CC. Throbbing ads. Likely to require registration soon.

November 11, 2005

Here's the Carnival of the Balkans. Hi, Ma!

I only became aware of the Deignan affair yesterday — not much access to the web these days. But it's an incredible hoot. The best summary may very well be here at Easily Distracted (via unwilling participant Bitch Ph.D.).

October 28, 2005

Literally, a Weblog … Apostrophe Abuse … The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks …: peeveblogging!

October 21, 2005

Reason posted a pretty decent article about zines a few days back. But the ads keep squirming around making it very difficult to read.

October 14, 2005

Oh, and by the way – the astonishing Carrie McLaren (of Stay Free! magazine) announced her engagement last month and is blogging about the wedding preparations with her fiancé.

October 12, 2005

I was caught up on grading for a moment there, but it passed. I've been hanging around KTM quite a bit, so if you've just gotta read new stuff by me, look there.

Just added (the very impressive) Ars Mathematica to the blogroll. Back to work.

October 4, 2005

Happy New Year, first of all. I'm behind on everything -- not just blogging -- and have some ghastly never-ending chestcold in the bargain. But I'm having a wonderful time. Wish you were here. Blogging will resume when I'm caught up on, say, grading.

September 14, 2005

A huge thread on Being Poor (at Whatever); related posts on being rich, being really poor, and being totally f-cked. Also some knee-jerk blame the victim sneering. Is this a great country or what?

Oh, and the wisdom to know the difference.

September 13, 2005

I just found this post on "Everyday Mathematics" (and this follow-up) from early 2005 (at Parent Pundit). Its outstanding comments thread includes some characteristically clueless vitriol from my old Math Forum nemesis MPG.

Pat Simonelli's report on the Ruminator interview (this link will probably die soon; blame the Ruminator if this prediction proves true) that cites a letter allegedly by "King Wenclas".

Scott McLemee's review of �i�ek! for Inside Higher Ed. Also last week's Barbara Ehrenreich interview and his review of her new book.

September 9, 2005

A press release about a new E.D. Hirsch book (at Instructivist). My review of The Schools We Need (1998; links updated today). While I'm at it: "Romancing the Child" and "Classroom Research and Cargo Cults", by Hirsch.

Mister M�bius and mathman: dead blogs (and mostly dead wrong) by Charles Williams. Also overeducation: a dead blog by Jonathan Kallay (June 03, 2005 in particular -- on J.T. Gatto).

September 7, 2005

The recent photoessay at driftglass has inspired an animated version by "Joe Max". But I haven't seen it yet.

September 2, 2005

"Kung Fu Monkey: turning hot air into altruism, one rant at a time."

August 31, 2005

The CSEA informational picket is in full effect here at Columbus State Community College. According to this press release, CSCC "has the worst ratio of full-time faculty to student enrollment for any institution of its size in the nation".

Michael Harris blawged yesterday about legalities of "Internet Gripe Sites" at George Lenard's page.

"Con" + "Insult" = "Consultant": my favorite entry in the Wonks's new carnival.

August 28, 2005

A terrific thread (albeit over 2 years old) on "Canon Fodder", from God of the Machine (via Robert Nagle). More recently, GotM persuasively ridicules Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn, with lots of well-chosen links (and another good comments thread). So I checked several pieces in between: this guy's really good. And I'm supposed to find time to read all this stuff where, again?

August 26, 2005

Longtime zine publisher Ninjalicious is dead. One less bright light in the sky.

August 25, 2005

Idiotprogrammer brought my attention to this recent post at 2 Blowhards: Michael Blowhard has had lots of interesting things to say about books and links 'em all up here in one big bundle of hypertext goodness.

August 24, 2005

Yoshie Furuhashi hasn't updated Critical Montages for over a month now -- what gives? Oh, not much ... she's just editing a daily webzine at MRzine (published by Monthly Review).

August 19, 2005

Aaron Swartz published an interview with Maciej Ceglowski of Idle Words. MC's archive didn't come up for me on his main page but can be found here.

House of Labor at TPM Cafe.

The Intellectual Insecurity of GWB, by Brendan Nyhan. Months old: why am I always the last to know everything?

August 12, 2005

Adjustable font sizes at Romenesko (of Obscure Store fame): could everybody that insists on using blindingly tiny type please learn this trick right now? Thank you very much.

Microsoft Genuine Landfill Advantage (at Virusdoc.net): it's worse than I imagined ...

An Atlas of Cyberspace.

August 7, 2005

Poopsheet has moved (and become harder to read -- here's the old site in case you want to check for yourself).

Lefty and Righty excesses of pseudoscience, at Science and Politics. Also this "primo rantage" on intelligent design theory at Kung Fu Monkey (link -- and quote -- via Pharyngula).

August 5, 2005

Somebody spent enormous amounts of time to create this parody of "King" Karl Wenclas and the ULA . Hmm ... maybe they're having some impact after all ...

While I'm at it: ULAer J.D. Finch is blogging at Pale Blue Auto-Mobile; Joe Smith's at Red Roach World; & Mike Grover at the unimpressively-titled my weblog (teeny-tiny print; I didn't stay long). Also Pat Simonelli did this amusing Stephen Crane Fan Site.

Physicist Richard Hake is doing Research in Physics Education at Indiana U. I learned about it in math-teach.

Australian International University (via Pathologically Polymathic).

Bill the Butcher as Educator, in the Valve (via pseudopodium).

August 3, 2005

Some essays on education at Blog Tower. Also quasi-local cartoonist Matt Bors has a blog. I first saw his work in the (indispensable) Free Press.

Hey, look: Kitchen Table Math cited stuff by me recently (twice!). I was gonna add 'em to the blogroll anyway -- honest!

August 2, 2005

The Meta-Carnival.

August 1, 2005

I've told you and told you: basic HTML is easier to learn than whatever point-and-click interface is supposed to help you create webpages. But you refuse to believe me. Okay, fine. Here's Furl, promising a free on-line archive system (so you can "bookmark" pages at home and still look 'em up at work, for example). Almost certain to be a Good Thing for a lot of people if it stays free.

July 27, 2005

This commentary on a report from the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is eerily reminiscent of NCTM and the "math wars". I found it at Instructivist.

College Level Counting is one of any number of interesting pieces at Tall, Dark, and Mysterious -- but it happens to be the one that somebody posted a link to (in some recent comments thread that I've lost track of; watch this space).

I want to apologize here for aligning myself yet again with unapologetic right-wingers. More evidence, as if any were needed, that, not leftists but "Liberals" have in recent decades been almost entirely assimilated by the "feel-good yes-yes-yes business is our business and business is good" party that's been running things for a long time. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

July 13, 2005

Michael B�rub� instituted Theory Tuesday this week; among its many pleasures was this link (in the comments thread) to a page on the Bogdanoff affair.

July 12, 2005

The Philly Zine Fest is this weekend; also the ULA event I mentioned last week. Mingle with bunches of interesting writers (not including me, unfortunately).

Google can search books. Don't stop the presses!

July 8, 2005

The U of Cinci's Adjunct Faculty Association got the cover story in Adjunct Nation (July/August '05). (It might end up here. If so, you'll need a log-in: username INFOWILL password BEFREE may or may not work.)

Paul Riddell started a terrific comments thread about jobhunting in tech-corp hell a couple days back. Still growing.

Google cheat sheet.

New Math Means No Math (at Number Two Pencil). Also this discussion of guided inquiry ("POGIL") at Kitchen Table Math (via The Instructivist). More at brightMystery.net.

July 7, 2005

Here's Science and Politics. Hi, Madeline!

Via Travelling Shoes: a long list of blogs complaining about Kelo v. New London. The "conservatives" are absolutely right on this one, folks.

July 6, 2005

This advice for a new school superintendent (in the Rocky Mountain News) includes such bons mots as

"If he says things like 'We must free children from the tyranny of computation so all children can master algebra and higher order thinking skills,' drive a wooden stake through his heart.".

Not to be missed. More here. Hat tip: Critical Mass.

The R. Crumb Handbook is reviewed today at The Elegant Variation.

This comparison of religious whackos at home and abroad yesterday in Daily Kos has drawn well over a hundred comments and going strong.

July 5, 2005

Wred Fright marries. But he's still indier than you and me put together. He'll be appearing at a ULA event in Philly in a couple weeks according to his news page.

Tom W. Bell has had some interesting comments recently in Agoraphila about ghastly Supreme Court decisions.

July 1, 2005

This Campaign To Reduce College Textbook Costs is a beautiful thing: CALPIRG published Ripoff 101 last year, then got hundreds of faculty all over the US to sign a letter asking a publisher (Thompson Learning) to stop some of their mercenary practices.

I learned about it pretty late in the game . . . but here's my ancient letter in UME Trends to prove I was active in this arena long ago.

VLORBIK

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