December 2017 – Page 2

Month: December 2017 (page 2 of 4)

New Media Consortium no more

No coincidences.

The Atlanta airport was shut down on Sunday. Trump issued an executive order going after human traffickers. Eric Schmidt resigned from Alphabet.

And last Monday, the New Media Consortium sent out this sudden email:

The New Media Consortium (NMC) regrets to announce that because of apparent errors and omissions by its former Controller and Chief Financial Officer, the organization finds itself insolvent. Consequently, NMC must cease operations immediately.

NMC would like to sincerely thank our loyal and dedicated community for its many vital contributions since its inception in 1994. NMC is grateful to its current executive director and NMC staff for their tireless efforts to connect people at the intersection of innovation and technology.

NMC will be promptly commencing a chapter 7 bankruptcy case. A trustee will be appointed by the court to wind down NMC’s financial affairs, liquidate its assets and distribute any net proceeds to creditors. The case will be filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California.

To be honest I don’t know anything about the NMC, but the timing and abruptness of this announcement is more than slightly suspicious.

A look through the NMC website shows that there are globalist-NGO affiliated people on its board of directors, and it’s affiliated with several globalist NGOs–the website of one which has a game promoting Soros’ Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.

It’s not surprising that an academically-oriented media entity would also be in love with the globalist myth, nor would it be surprising that an entity like this would be mismanaged, but to have see it abruptly closed down the day after rumors of Soros’ arrest start floating around….

Let’s be clear: I don’t know anything. I just don’t want to forget this.

What a time to be alive.

Faculty Culture II

2017-12-20 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

More character studies from The 4 Cultures of the University. See if you can guess what this guy is the precursor of. The book was written in 1992.

The faculty member most inclined to join a union in general … will (1) teach at a two-year community college or four-year public institution with no tradition of strong faculty participation in institutional governance; (2) have a degree short of the doctorate and be nontenured; (3) teach in the humanities or social science field; (4) be less that 40 years of age and male; (5) have a greater teaching load and lower salary than academics at four-year/graduate institutions; (6) have a record of little participation in a campus senate or similar body; (7) have low trust in the campus administration and be dissatisfied with working conditions (i.e., have low morale); (8) be conscious of the benefits of unions on other campuses and of the nonacademic level on his own campus.

The author goes on to call this person “estranged from [faculty] culture” and contrasts him with similarly-paid faculty in vocational fields who have no desire to unionize.

Let’s see. I wonder why someone with subpar credentials (in a field that idolizes them), who chooses a non-technical field, who chooses not to contribute to the dominant culture, and who does not defect from the dominant culture into the support culture, might feel like he is not valued?

And yet, instead of recognizing the reality of his situation and taking steps to change it, he instead doubles-down and insist that everyone else accept his reality by force of power in the form of a union.

Now we’ll make this a bit easier and give you some choices:

A. Soyboy
B. Gamma
C. Proto-SJW
D. r-selected individual
E. All of the above

If there’s anything that can deflect some of my distaste for faculty culture, this guy is the personification of it.

Bleh.

I’m intrigued: Elliott Jaques

2017-12-19 / childlike empress / 2 Comments

Add another name to the “controversial Canadian” category (I’m listening to a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Stefan Molyneux as I type this): Elliott Jaques.

As a Millennial whose overly-earnest side is still libertarian, I’ve never been a huge fan of the bureaucracy. As I’ve spent time in medium and large university bureaucracies, I’ve come to despise them even more. When they grow dehumanizing, they grow evil.

Enter Elliott Jaques, a man who wrote a book called A General Theory of Bureaucracy. You’d think he would be a pallid, cardboard fragilista….but I’m not sure that’s the case.

So far, he has the hallmarks of being a truth-teller–polarizing and mostly despised in his field, and what I’ve read of his works so far has broadened my understanding of the universe rather than muddling it. He also cites entropy, much like Steve Keen in his forthcoming book on economics.

He’s also written a book that cites “social justice,” although to be fair he wrote it before the SJW cancer started to grow. We’ll see.

What I like about his thinking so far is how he has brought in the concept of TIME to hierarchies, and has drawn up a Platonic form of hierarchy. In addition to a worker’s ability to complete tasks, the different levels of jobs are defined by the time of their longest project.

Stratum I: These jobs might include shop floor operator, salesclerk, or general police officer; most work is routine, and supervision is commonplace for new tasks. Such jobs are good fits for “level one” people, who can cope with thinking about a time horizon of one day to three months.

Stratum II: First-line managers, shop-floor supervisors, foremen, proprietors of some small businesses, and police lieutenant positions have a felt-fair pay level of one-and-one-half times what a Stratum I employee might get. This job fits people with a three-month to one-year time horizon (who can handle assignments that take that long to fulfill).

Stratum III: Department heads, workshop managers, owners of multistore franchises, and police captains would make felt-fair pay that was three times that of a Stratum I employee. Stratum III managers typically know personally all the people below them in a hierarchy. Many professionals with high technical skill levels operate at this level, managing just a few people. People with a time horizon of one to two years can handle this.

Stratum IV: A plant manager, editor of a large media operation, lab manager, or any line leader with responsibility for diverse constituencies would earn felt-fair pay six times that of Stratum I. Appropriate time horizon: two to five years.

Stratum V: Positions at this level include large-company divisional executives, business-unit heads (at the vice presidential level), production directors, and CEOs of 5,000-employee organizations. Most “zealot” jobs are probably Stratum V positions. Felt-fair pay: 12 times Stratum I. Time horizon: five to 10 years.

Stratum VI: From here on out, the air gets rarefied. Positions include CEOs of companies with 20,000 people, or executive vice presidents and business-unit leaders of larger companies. Felt-fair pay: 24 times Stratum I. Time horizon: 10 to 20 years.

Stratum VII: Positions include CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies, high-level civil servants (like the Sir Humphrey character in “Yes Minister”), and other leaders whose decisions might (or should) be sweeping enough to take decades to fully realize. Felt-fair pay: 48 times Stratum I. Time horizon: 20 to 50 years.

Stratum VIII: The CEOs of General Electric Company, the General Motors Corporation, and other super-corporations have Stratum VIII jobs, with a felt-fair pay level 96 times that of Stratum I. If you are chosen for such a job, you’d better be one of those rare people (like Jack Welch) with an innate time horizon of 50 to 100 years, or your corporation will probably decline.

Stratum IX and higher: Now we move beyond the mere CEO level, to the geniuses who operate on behalf of society’s far future, or whose work embodies extraordinary complexity … for example, Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Mozart, Galileo, Einstein, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and a few business leaders like Konosuke Matsushita and Alfred Sloan, who graduate from running Stratum VIII companies to looking out for society’s development. Most of us cannot count a single Stratum IX person among our acquaintances. And their felt-fair pay? Well, James Joyce spent his life in poverty.

I have so many questions about the influence of this guy. Is he the source of the time-preference theory that so many in the alt-right have applied to sociology instead of individual capacity? Has Donald Trump read him? How would he and Nassim Nicholas Taleb get along?

Or…is he just full of crap?

I’m reading one of his books. We’ll find out.

There’s CHEATING in college sports?! YOU DON’T SAY

2017-12-18 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Anyone who’s been even tertiarily involved in NCAA sports knows how corrupt it all is.

That makes this bust all that more gratifying.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced punishments against Northern Colorado Friday, commending the university for “exemplary cooperation” but still slapping it with fairly severe penalties, including vacating the 2011 win in the NCAA Division I Big Sky Conference and returning all money from the team’s appearance in the championship — neither the institution nor the NCAA specified how much that will be.

Former head coach B. J. Hill, a longtime coach at Northern Colorado, was fired in 2016 after allegations emerged he had helped players with their course work. The NCAA found that Hill, along with five assistant coaches and one graduate assistant, had either completed classes for prospective athletes or paid for the online courses.

I don’t know if the institutions I worked at were that bad, but we had fluff classes called things like “Life After Football.” Taught by the football coach, of course.

At this point, honestly, I don’t see how college sports and college academics are in any way related. They’re two completely different entities shared by a common brand.

I’m not sure which one is the parasite anymore.

Athletics needs the college’s academic legitimacy and its name. The college needs the $$$ from athletics.

A weird co-dependent relationship.

It’s really weird.

To the world, this is JOY

2017-12-17 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Normally I dislike modernized arrangements of traditional Christmas songs, but this one is so full of charm that I can’t say no. This song makes me stupid happy.

The video is merely tepid, but who cares about the video when you can put this sonic explosion of Christmas and joy on repeat all day every day?

Banned words list

2017-12-16 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

One of the words that I’ve learned to hate during my time in higher education is the word “evidence-based.”

It’s basically a flag for intellectual-yet-idiot modern shortsighted rootless science, for values of “evidence” that mean only peer-reviewed scientific studies published under governmental agency oversight after 1900.

Thousands of years of folk medicine? Nah.

Hundreds of similar personal anecdotes? Nope.

Logic applied to physiology? Not possible.

“Evidence-based” medicine will probably help you in the short term, but it’s likely to mess you up in the long term.

It’s a fallacy that we can know everything about a natural system and control all inputs and outputs with no unintended consequences.

That’s why I love that “evidence-based” is one of the words banned from the CDC’s budget proposal this year.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered. […]

The ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to CDC’s partners and to Congress, the analyst said. The president’s budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration’s priorities.

It’s only the budget, so it helps set the direction for what the priorities of the CDC are. I also find it interesting that the concept of “evidence-based” is not banned, just the phrase.

As we’re rounding out the first year of the Trump presidency, it’s heartening to see some good changes roll out to ancillary institutions.

Still gotta build that wall, tho.

Image of the week: deep (state) irony edition

2017-12-15 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

This doesn’t appear to be fake news, but you never know.

Apparently a water fountain backed up at the EPA today which started spewing sewage into the hallway.

The deep state has infiltrated farther that we thought.

Productivity Reminder

2017-12-14 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Warning: blogception ahead.

I’m blogging about a blog post. If we do that too many times, it’ll cause a recursive rift in the internet (although that may not be a problem anymore with whatever is happening to Net Neutrality) that may cause the catastrophic end of all time. Or something.

Anyway, I wanted to document Ramit Sethi’s “Productivity Advice for the Weird.” It’s a good reminder of the real priorities in life, although 1. I don’t really know anything about that because I haven’t accomplished much in life yet, and 2. I disagree with some of his philosophy. I suspect that habits provide a nest for inspiration and productivity to occur, whether they build up in small chunks over time or if they grow with leaps and bounds in one long binge.

If creative productivity mirrors physical healing at all, it’s both at once. You have to have the tiny habitual victories every day, which eventually reach a critical mass for something transformative to happen.

I am terrible at getting enough sleep, so anything that will help me convince myself to get more sleep is a good thing.

The small habits of productivity that nobody wants to tell you except Ramit Sethi:

Get enough sleep
“Clean your room” (live in a functional space)
Stick to a meal plan (make fewer decisions)
Set healthy boundaries
Optimize your calendar (always know what you’re going to work on before you wake up in the morning)

There’s more, but those are the most basic ones that set the stage for everything else. It’s kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but for productivity.

It probably also helps to have some sort of plan of what you’re working on, or at least a general direction of some sort. The best system will never work if it doesn’t have some content to work with.

What is it that our dads always told us? Plan your work and work your plan?

That seems to be another version of what this is. Definitely worth a read.

Weaponized fashion styling

2017-12-13 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Clothes are just as much about communication as they are about preventing one from walking down the street naked.

Clothes can say everything from “I’m not that kind of girl” to “I’m the next President of the United States of America.”

I love how this scene from My Father is Strange illustrates how important clothes can be when preparing oneself for battle.

“Fur trumps everything,” says the status-oriented mother (nevermind that fur is a ridiculous choice in the summer months).

Meanwhile, the practicality-oriented mother shows up looking far better than the other team ever would have thought.

The clothes do just as much talking as the people.

This is why you should have your personal equivalent of a “power suit” in your wardrobe. There are times when you (and I) need to perform our best–that is the time to pull out your best garment.

“Best” is subjective in this case.

But this garment should make you feel badass. Invincible. Completely protected. Confident to the point of aggressive.

It can be difficult to find these magic garments (LOL MORMON JOKE) but it’s worth it.

Especially if you have to go up against a Tiger Mother who also happens to be your landlord.

Faculty dreams

2017-12-12 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I started reading The Four Cultures of the Academy for work, but I’m finishing it because the author is incredibly insightful. It’s the kind of book that rings so true that it’s funny.

I haven’t had this much fun reading a book since Antifragile. Like Nassim Taleb, author William H. Berquist puts words to many of the things that I’ve already observed, but arranges them in a useful way and explains them with more insight, experience, and technical knowledge than I have. It both affirms my confirmation bias while providing useful information–the best kind of book.

This is one of my favorite passages. See if you can guess what this story reveals about the rank the male faculty on the hierarchy.

Our protagonist–the ideal scientist or scholar–usually dwells on some lofty plane. Subsidized by family wealth or secure in a university appointment, he (rarely a woman) seems to be oblivious to the more mundane matters of finance. Personal relationships have a low priority, though the professor may be seduced at the end of the film or novel by an attractive laboratory assistant, reporter, alumna, or daughter of the university president. His requisite apparel is either a white lab coat or a herringbone jacket. He invariably smokes a pipe and partakes of an afternoon sherry. The scientist or scholar is often a former college athlete (the Rhodes Scholar model) but is not physically active only when an emergency occurs (about two-thirds of the way through the novel or movie). His physical prowess emerges only when the monster is invading, when fieldwork is required, or when our protagonist wants to show that he is still an all-American fellow by participating in a pick-up football game being played on the grass in front of the laboratory or library. Our modern-day equivalent to the scholar-athlete is Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones.

The scientist-scholar’s work is usually performed in solitude with one or two young proteges who provide appropriate respect and encouragement. Neither our protagonist nor his assistants are very interested in the ethical implications of their work until late in the movie or novel. They are concerned with the ultimate impact of their research on the welfare of mankind but are shortsighted about its immediate implications. The work in itself is a breakthrough–always on the frontiers of knowledge. In Thomas Kuhn’s terminology, this research is never in the realm of “normal science,” but is always in the realm of revolution and new-paradigm construction.

The research or scholarship is, of course, always successful. Very little attention is given to problems of dissemination; the new knowledge is immediately available to the entire world. only early on in the novel or movie is there resistance to the dissemination of our protagonist’s findings. By the end of the movie or novel, the scientist or scholar often shifts attention from his own work to broader social or religious concerns. The quest continues.

Let’s see…introspective? Check. Unusual? Yes; often cultivated deliberately. Unattractive? Generally on the left side of the bell curve. Bitter? Often.

$10 says the seductress is a redhead.

This is such prototypical version of Gamma: A Love Story (the title that I give all the different flavors of gamma fantasies in media) that it almost hurts. And yet, it really is the backbone of the dream of the research faculty. Everybody wants to be the secret king of research. Everybody wants to get the girl without having a clue. Everybody wants to never deal with money again in their lives.

And risk…don’t even get me started on the risk tolerance of faculty.

This book was written in 1992 so I’d like to say that things have changed since then…but I don’t think they have. The type of person that self-selects for a faculty role exhibits almost exactly the same characteristics of a gamma on the hierarchy.

Remember that the next time you ask why universities don’t just stand up to their students.

Batfort

Style reveals substance

Month: December 2017 (page 2 of 4)

New Media Consortium no more

Faculty Culture II

I’m intrigued: Elliott Jaques

There’s CHEATING in college sports?! YOU DON’T SAY

To the world, this is JOY

Banned words list

Image of the week: deep (state) irony edition

Productivity Reminder

Weaponized fashion styling

Faculty dreams

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