Art by Javier Pérez

[Javier Pérez, Trompclip.]

Elaine pointed me to the art of Javier Pérez. Beautiful and punny.

SEIU on campus

My friend Sara pointed me to news of the growing number of adjunct faculty joining Service Employees International Union:

Bill Shimer, a part-time lecturer in management and organizational development at Northeastern University in Boston, said he never imagined being part of the union movement. But he has been rallying colleagues to support an upcoming vote on whether to form a union.

“It’s not that people want to unionize, but we really don’t see any other way. There’s nowhere to turn and nobody is looking out for us,” said Shimer, who teaches five classes at Northeastern and two at another local university.

The university has responded by hiring a prominent law firm used by many corporations to discourage union organizing.

I am always surprised when a teacher finds the prospect of a union distasteful. I am saddened and not surprised when management university adminstrators feel the same way.

Thanks, Sara.

Ph.D.’s outside academia

The New York Times has an article on Ph.D.’s outside academia: The Repurposed Ph.D. What goes unaddressed: whether a doctorate is truly necessary for the kinds of work the article describes.

[Why Ph.D.’s ? The apostrophe is “traditionally used with abbreviations containing capital letters and periods” to form a plural (Garner’s Modern American Usage ).]

A drawer of the past

[Henry, November 2, 2013.]

I like the refrigerator, but I especially like the drawer — not just the suggestion of dovetail joints but the way the drawer drops when opened. No drawer slides in this comic strip world.

Related reading
All Henry posts (Pinboard)

[Why “the suggestion of dovetail joints”? Because there are no trapezoids. These joints hold together a two-dimensional drawer, so the extra strength of the traditional dovetail is not needed.]

Macintosh Plus emulator

James Friend’s Mac Plus emulator takes me back my first experience with a Mac: 1984, in a Boston computer store. The Mac seemed then to be a pleasant (and expensive) toy. Elaine and I ended up buying a Panasonic Senior Partner and an Olympia daisy-wheel printer. We were no visionaries. These machines would not work together, and we returned them both for a full refund (thanks to a friendly musician-salesman). Our next computer was an Apple //c. Many years (and Windows) later, our fambly is nothing but Macs.

The Mac Plus appeared in January 1986.

[Found via Daring Fireball.]

New Jersey gets a star

I’ve been waiting to post an updated Flag of Equal Marriage with a star for New Jersey. I’ve checked the flag’s site, counted, and waited: fifteen states, still only fourteen stars. And then I looked more carefully at the list, which has fourteen not fifteen states (including New Jersey) and Washington, D.C.: fourteen stars.

Note to self: do not skim lists.

A related post
The flag of equal marriage

[New Jersey: represent.]

“In the end, we can’t [?] lose”

From a New York Times article on the fate of the humanities in higher education:

Some professors flinch when they hear colleagues talking about the need to prepare students for jobs.

“I think that’s conceding too quickly,” said Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia. “We’re not a feeder for law school; our job is to help students learn to question.”

His university had 394 English majors last year, down from 501 when he arrived in 1984, but Professor Edmundson said he does not fret about the future. “In the end, we can’t lose,” he said. “We have William Shakespeare.”

I respect Mark Edmundson’s work, as these three posts should make clear. But two observations:

To speak of the purpose of college without regard for what might follow is to speak from a lofty position indeed. If students are to learn to question, they might begin by questioning the investment of time and money that college requires. What does that investment amount to? What does it mean to graduate with tens of thousands in debt and few prospects?

I’m not nearly as confident as Edmundson that those who have Shakespeare cannot lose. Classics departments, after all, had Homer.

Der・ri・da

I tried and tried again to get OS X’s Dictation service to recognize Derrida : garita, Jerry Gary, die galley, Garry Donna, Gary Dodd, Jerry die, Gary doc, Gary dog .

And then back to garita.

A related post
Mac Dictation and boogie-woogie

A joke for the day

A seasonal joke from my dad, eighty-five and still turning them out: How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect?

No spoilers. The punchline appears in the comments.

Halloween, 1941

[Photograph by William C. Shrout. 1941. From the Life Photo Archive.]

The Life Photo Archive’s description, “Halloween party,” is hardly accurate. A better one: “Mayhem averted.” Or better still: “Cheese it — the cops!”

A cropped version of this photograph appeared in a Life feature about Halloween in Zionsville, Indiana (November 3, 1941). The caption reads: “Being nabbed by the cops is always thrilling, especially because few arrests ever seem to be made. Moving the town loafers’ bench to someone’s porch is always fun.” This mayhem is pretty obviously staged, no?