Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education bleak guidance, but mostly on target. There is a hard rain falling on the world of the humanities, a kind of slow-motion water torture -- drip, drip, down, down -- the demise of venerable institutions is happening, for those who can bear to watch.

Just to be clear: There is work for humanities doctorates (though perhaps not as many as are currently being produced), but there are fewer and fewer real jobs because of conscious policy decisions by colleges and universities. As a result, the handful of real jobs that remain are being pursued by thousands of qualified people — so many that the minority of candidates who get tenure-track positions might as well be considered the winners of a lottery.

Universities (even those with enormous endowments) have historically taken advantage of recessions to bring austerity to teaching. There will be hiring freezes and early retirements. Rather than replacements, more adjuncts will be hired, and more graduate students will be recruited, eventually flooding the market with even more fully qualified teacher-scholars who will work for almost nothing. When the recession ends, the hiring freezes will become permanent, since departments will have demonstrated that they can function with fewer tenured faculty members.

The problem with PowerPoint

BBC NEWS story on PowerPoint pitfalls.

The Auteurs: online cinema

The Auteurs.com
Discover and watch great films, then talk about them with other enthusiasts. It's a virtual art house cinema.

iCyte - grab and archive web pages

iCyte - Home

The Man in the Mirror

A harshly brilliant take on the symbolism of Michael Jackson's demise at Clusterfuck Nation:

Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.
He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.

Like I said, harsh, but brilliant, the way the sunlight at midday can pummel you with clarity. Kunstler's essay finishes with a bang:

When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

The economics of free

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker

The internet has screwed the old rules for making money on media content.

Understanding Credit Card Debt

Understanding Credit Card Debt & Credit Card Late Fees -- see the cool infographic at Mint.com

Does the Obama Plan for Reforming Wall Street Measure Up?

Robert Reich doesn't think so.... [@ RGE monitor]

Signs of the times: partial mobility

Financial Armageddon: Following the Same Path

Although history never quite repeats itself, that doesn't mean there aren't parallels to the past. One of the iconic images of the Great Depression was of men and families being forced to venture out -- often very far -- from home turf, looking for paying work and cheaper places to live. Amid the worst economic contraction since that time, many Americans are discovering that, as the Wall Street Journal reports in "Unemployed Hit the Road to Find Jobs," they must follow a similar path in order to survive.

Virginia Woolf on throw-away books

Books that Die a Natural Death: The Book Bench: Online Only: The New Yorker:

"Books ought to be so cheap that we can throw them away if we do not like them, or give them away if we do. Moreover, it is absurd to print every book as if it were fated to last a hundred years. The life of the average book is perhaps three months. Why not face this fact? Why not print the first edition on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months time? If a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound. Thus by far the greater number of books would die a natural death in three months or so. No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected."