Hey! I’m a professor at one of those universities no one has heard of, too!

Dinesh D’Souza thought he’d teach an uppity college professor a lesson.

I kinda suspect that Dartmouth is rather embarrassed that D’Souza is a product of their education. Ivy League schools turn out asshats, just like every college — it’s a problem with being egalitarian and trying to educate even tendentious dullards like D’Souza. Don’t feel bad, Dartmouth grads, it’s not your fault. You tried. I don’t think that even the University of Minnesota Morris could have salvaged him.

Kevin Gannon, the target of D’Souza’s attempted snipe, had a great reply.

What all that means, Gannon continued, is that Grand View “serves students, many of whom come from populations or places that have not historically been well served by higher education.” The university is a liberal arts college with many pre-professional programs, and a liberal education should be accessible to all students, in all majors, he said, noting his institution is relatively affordable.

“And here’s the thing: there are a lot of folks at schools a lot like mine doing this same kind of work. The universities ‘Nobody’s heard of’ literally make this country go. We’re out here doing work, y’all. We support entire communities. We make our part of the world better.”

Yup. He could have been describing my university, too. As an undergraduate, I attended both the Giant State University and the Little Liberal Arts College, and I can say with an informed background that both have advantages…but if I were to do it over again, I’d have stuck with the liberal arts school. They provide more personal instruction and a broader background to students. And that’s why I switched from teaching at a large state institution to a smaller university myself in my career as an instructor.

So much missing the point

I like this little comic.

Don’t read the comments though, unless you like to watch target shooting where everyone misses. Lots of people nitpicking and arguing that “But Movie X was a bad movie” — which doesn’t matter. Most of the stuff churned out by Hollywood is objectively bad, a lot of bad movies may be subjectively enjoyable, and the point of this comic is that the gatekeepers who want to tell you what you should like should be ignored. Like what you like, let other people like what they like.

I feel for my students now

Today was the day I set for myself to complete all the online coursework required to qualify for IRB certification, since I’m concerned that some of my proposed spider research might require approval. The fact that the work is on spiders isn’t a problem (it was weird discovering that invertebrates don’t seem to count as “animals”), but that I’m planning to survey people’s — you know, human beings’ — homes might be of some concern. I’m dotting those i’s and crossing those t’s to make sure.

Anyway, I hadn’t realized what a painful slog it was going to be. Lots of the modules have these little staged videos illustrating cases of problematic behavior. I’ve already decided that I hate Smarmy Grad Student and Smug PI so much. I have to take a little quiz after each module, too, which are usually easy, but the ones on financial reporting put me to sleep, and jeez, I had to take an online cours in Export Controls and Economic Sanctions which was 90% acronyms, I think. For instance, my work has to comply with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which is going to put a real crimp into my nefarious plans for spiders.

Now it’s done, at least, and my brain is only bleeding a little bit.

Hey! It’s March!

February is over! Winter is dead!

We’re supposed to get 3-7cm of snow today, and it’s -14°C. Nature does not care about our artificial boundaries or categories, so the lesson you should learn is that you are meaningless and the universe does not align itself to your desires. You can clear that path today, and it will be buried again tomorrow.

All is futility and purposelessness.

The 43rd Midwest Philosophy Colloquium Race and Gender in Analytic Philosophy! Here on campus! Tonight!

I’m sure that title gets your heart racing. The first lecture in the series is tonight at 7. It’s by Jeanine Weekes Schroer, who will be talking about “Race, Grace and Intractable Moral Problems”. Sounds fun, I think I’ll be going, although lately I’ve been leaning towards favoring utilitarian spider philosophy: if it disturbs your web, bite it, fill it with venom, and suck it dry. Maybe I need to pay more attention to human-centered philosophical solutions, though.

(Although…writing a book that takes a spider-centered approach to philosophy would probably be a best seller in the Intellectual Dork Web community (better than lobsters, anyhow) and would also exemplify its own philosophy by biting, envenoming, and sucking the wallets — and souls — of its devotees dry. Tempting.)

All right, what do I need to do to get a woman to look at me like this?

If I have to wear a dress, I’m willing — it’s a small price to pay. I’d also be flattered if I got a man to look at me like that.

In my case, I think it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than just a skirt, sad to say.

And the Oscar goes to…

Congratulations to the Best Picture! At least it wasn’t Crash.

I didn’t watch the Oscars. Instead, I watched Roma on Netflix during the ceremony. It was a tough sell — the movie I’d seen before this one was Alita: Battle Angel, so the contrast was shocking. Cleo doesn’t battle a single cyborg even once in the whole show. It was also a long slow build, with the interminable beginning just being the floor getting washed and other mundane tasks by a young housekeeper in a Mexican home.

Also, in this one I wouldn’t have minded the dog getting shot. No one ever played with Borras, but he was always pooping on the floor, and anytime the door was opened they had to yell at the help to hold the dog. He was just another chore for Cleo.

But the movie may be a slow build, but it becomes increasingly affecting, and it deals with how the working poor have to cope with emotional trauma that is far more common and damaging than robots on roller blades. Roma isn’t a popcorn movie, and it’s the kind of movie where every frame is supposed to be art, but I think I spent my evening well.

Ali: Bat Ang

I have to admit, I walked out of Alita: Battle Angel half-liking it. It’s set in a somewhat creative world where the oppressed citizens are dominated by a floating city overhead, and the only way out is to win a championship game of some kind of ultra-violent murderball. Dystopian society: check.

For some reason, an awful lot of the citizens of this city are missing limbs or other body parts, but they’ve been replaced by advanced cybernetic prosthetics. Some people have had their bodies entirely replaced, and are just human faces on bizarrely complex robots. Ubiquitous futuristic technology: check.

Christof Walz is a guy (all body parts human) who has the job of repairing all those prosthetics, making him indispensible. He’s also moonlights as a hunter-warrior, going about collecting bounties on bad guys. He finds a head in a junkyard — the brain is still alive, somehow — and installs it in a new robot body. That’s Alita. She’s got giant eyes, but is otherwise a pretty, teenaged gamin. Main character camping happily in the uncanny valley: check.

She’s super good at fighting, beating up all the bad cyborgs, ripping their arms off, crushing their human heads, etc. Much fight choreography. Much balletic violence. Super zippy CGI. Action movie tropes: check with a sword slash and an explosion.

Another bonus: Jennifer Connelly. She’s still beautiful, but she’s matured into an icy, stern, scary kind of older beauty. That time with the goblin king has turned her fey. I love her work.

So I’m enjoying it for what it is, as long as it’s swooping along kinetically with CGI fights and weirdly fascinating anime robot girl doing her thing. But it had 3 big problems.

They killed the dog. I’m not happy with that.

The love interest just came out of nowhere, and the boy did not have the charisma to warrant the girl abruptly (and literally) offering him her heart. It was stupid and superfluous and compromised Alita’s character. I wish a giant cyborg had murdered him on first sight, rather than the dog.

Worst of all, the ending. There wasn’t one. It just stops cold on the brink of the big battle in the murderball arena. I practically got whiplash, slamming on the brakes that hard. This was clearly a two-parter, at least, and there’s no warning of that anywhere, and it was a risky enough venture that it’s not at all certain the sequel will be made.

It’s half a movie, more like a mega-elaborate over-long trailer for a story in development. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a Margaret Keane waif slice a cyborg juggernaut in half, lengthwise, but aren’t worried about seeing a plot resolution, this is the movie for you.

I’d try it

My wife just interrupted me and told me I had to go to the store for various items. Very well then; I also have to throw dinner together, so maybe I’ll get a special treat or two.

The recipe looks fairly straightforward, although they don’t list the ingredients. It looks like green onion, garlic, peppers, cooking oil — I’ve got all that already — oh, is that Haplopelma? I’m fresh out. I wonder if they have any in stock in a small rural midwestern grocery store, or if I’m going to have to go to Cambodia to pick up some?

I’ll probably have to fix something else for Mary’s dinner, since I don’t think I can zip to Phnom Penh and back in time for my other evening plans (gonna check out Alita: Battle Angel at the Morris Theater). It’s too bad, I’d really like to try that sometime.