The Cranky Professor

I Shouldn't Complain...

I really shouldn't complain, but having barely gotten back to a normal sleep pattern I'm off again, this time to Italy.

On the agenda -- a detailed study of Italian beach-going habits. I'm sure I'll do some other things, but my sister and brother-in-law have joined a beach club and are serious about getting their euro's worth out of the space they're renting (Italians are much more organized about the whole beach experience).

Of course there's food to eat, too.

And I'm going to go stare at some 9th century mosaics in Rome. I may go stare at an early Christian chapel in Naples. I'm going to try to talk folks into going to the catacombs in Naples -- I've never been. Rome wasn't the only city with a serious catacomb network, but it's the only one anyone ever thinks about. I think I'll try to get back to Herculaneum (I'm teaching Roman art in the fall and can use all the looking I can get to).

Sometimes I hate the media.

I finally take the cellphone plunge (yes, I lived with one while with students in Italy but it was work-related, not MINE) and then CNN reports Girl burned when cell phone catches fire. Typical.

Or there's this cautionary tale -- watch out for lung transplants! You might get rabies! How cheerful.

When Life Hands You Snakeheads....

When life (or a diffident practitioner of traditional Asian medicine) hands you snakeheads, set up a snakehead fishing tournament.

Snakeheads are high on my ick-factor list, and they seem to be breeding in a stretch of the Potomac.

In all the coverage two years ago I never read that the original Crofton pair were released by someone who'd bought them to make soup and then changed his mind. Snakehead soup. Ick.

Update: And I don't care if leeches ARE good parents. ICK. What's happened to CNN? Have they become a front for pro-leech activism?

School District as Cash Cow

The New York Times has a great scandal story about a Long Island school district; here's a teaser:

"The Roslyn situation is unique," said Dr. Ronald L. Friedman, the superintendent in Long Beach, also in Nassau County, "in that there appear to have been multiple larcenous people employed in high places who colluded to defeat the very tight safeguards with which we are all familiar and proud."

"The Roslyn school district, which Nassau County prosecutors say has been victimized by financial mismanagement, fraud and theft, did get something for $56,645 it paid to Dr. Steven Lamm over a decade: a thinner superintendent." - that's in a related story.

The Unhappy and the Happy

William F. Buckley is giving his shares in the National Review to a board, and the New York Times has a story. Buckley's style comes up; they quote a very young board member's public address on the subject (written in an absurd style of its own) and then quote Leon Wieseltier (it's not particularly clear if he was interviewed for the article or said this on another occasion). Wieseltier says about Buckley, "His thinking and his writing have all the disadvantages of a happy man. The troubling thing about Bill Buckley's work is how singularly untroubled it is by things."

Really? Things like the drug war? Antisemitism? Immigration? Anyone whose read a lot of Buckley critically would probably admit that, though a man who leads a happy life, he is aware of problems in the world; how can one have been a leading conservative Republican loudly in favor for 30 years of legalizing marijuana and not be? A man who has driven long-time contributors away from his magazine and read them out of his corral of conservatism over anti-Semitism?

I'd just read a James Lileks aside on urban theorists who complain about people's decided preference for houses that don't live up to modernist theory: "I swear: some people will not be happy until the people who are usually happy aren’t."

Sad, but true. Some people won't be. I often have the feeling that when some of my colleagues talk about instilling habits of critical thinking they're confused about the usage of "critical." Wieseltier may be (please note the modal) one of those people who thinks that only those in therapy can be honest with themselves or others. He may be someone who believes, with Tolstoy's narrator*, that happy families are all alike (and probably have no stories worth telling). Oh, well. Of course, given what I understand to be the small world of magazine editing and publishing in New York City, Wieseltier may have said this at a dinner of appreciation for Buckley; podiums make for strange bedfellows. The article would serve the reader better if it made that clear, though.

*note, Tolstoy didn't necessarily think it! Please! Separate the author and the narrators! That's a first start at "critical thinking."

The Fertile East...

O.K., so you're having trouble conceiving, even after IVF. Or you don't want to take drugs. So you turn to the wisdom of the East -- where the magical emphasis is not on pregnancy but on MALE children, but we'll let that pass. Need more info? The Washington Post has it for you, complete with self-aware post modern irony -- I mean, her "conventional" fertility doctor contact is named Frank Chang, even!

Oh - is the author pregnant yet? Read to the end. It's a story of sad desperation; she and her husband are talking about borrowing money for another round of IVF.

Leeches!

CNN pegs it right - MY first mental image of leeches is Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. Actually, what occurred to me when I heard that the FDA had approved the marketing of leeches was that there's some poor soul in Washington who is now more or less in charge of leeches.

Ick.

Abortion and Electoral Politics. Yow!

Today's Opinion Journal (the part available to nonsubscribers) has an article claiming that the Democrat party has supported itself out of victory with abortion. I'm sure there are lots of problems with the piece (the simple identification of politics with parents), but the numbers are still suggestive.

A childhood friend of mine came to this cynical view at the ripe old age of 12 -- pro-abortion people would have abortions, anti-abortion people wouldn't (or, as this article points out, would have not none but fewer abortions), and the problem would solve itself eventually.

ISBN. Amazon. Lighter Luggage. Heaven.

For once I managed not to buy all the books I wanted to buy (and then in sad consequence curse my addiction the rest of the way around the UK as I dragged my luggage with me). I kept a page for ISBN information in my pocket notebook and am popping them into Amazon. Some of them I'll pay a little more for, or have to wait for - but the money I'll save by NOT buying a few of them will cover that!

I'm even ahead on my Christmas shopping thanks to this!

His Goose is Cooked

Schwarzengger has said something now that will PROVE he's a "Nazi." Of course, reminding people that Hitler loved his dog won't help bring any sense to the conversation, political analogy being what it is.

Please read the article. Note the difference in compassion -- killing animals after 3 days rather than 6 doesn't seem like such a big difference; you're still going to gas most of the strays, make conditions miserable for all of them by overcrowding, and spend an extra $14,000,000 a year (admittedly, Schwarzenegger's optimistic estimate of savings by repealing the law).

Tag your animal companions if you want them to live.

I like animals (I'm a lifetime cat person and currently live with an Airedale terrier). I dislike people who will make political hay out of this, like the assemblyman who suggests (LA Times, registration probably required) that this is the make-or-break issue in the state budget for him. Yikes.

Then there's Richard Riordan's daughter:

"It's sad they would put a price tag on the animals," said Kathy Riordan, a member of the Los Angeles Animal Services Commission and daughter of Schwarzenegger advisor and former Mayor Richard Riordan.

Among the craven capitulators to people who care about animals enough to vandalize a city employee's house, Mayor Hahn has promised to end the killing of animals by 2008. That will call for about a 100% increase in animal adoption rates in 4 years (they currently kill about 30,000 a year, about 54% of the strays). I'll be interested in seeing how he can effect that change.