Guilty, guilty, guilty

Bill Cosby has been found guilty on three counts of sexual assault and faces up to ten years in prison on each. He’s 80 years old, and therefore faces the end of his life in total disgrace. It’s quite the downfall for the guy whose comedy records made me laugh, who was a revered icon at Temple University when I taught there, who became immensely popular as the star of a comedy series. Now this is what he’s come to…a convicted sex offender known to all as a creep.

At least it’s good that it caught up with him at last. Too late for the women he abused, but he gets a small taste of the punishment he deserves.

The devaluation of knowledge accelerates

Here’s an announcement that kind of says it all.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale is asking department chairs to recruit graduates to serve as adjunct faculty on a volunteer basis.

A statement from the office of SIUC Chancellor Carlo Montemagno, posted on the chancellor’s website Tuesday afternoon, indicated that the university is developing a “pilot project” in collaboration with the SIU Alumni Association to “create a pool of potential, volunteer adjuncts with advanced academic degrees who might contribute as needed for up to three years after their approval.”

I’ve written a few rants about the appalling practice of universities surviving on the backs of poorly paid, part-time temporary faculty, that we churn out brilliant, educated people that we then put in such desperate straits that they’ll work for a pittance, and for long hours. But they were paid…poorly. Now we’re at the stage where the administrators, who are better paid than the faculty, are thinking they can get our intellectual labor for free.

If, 40 years ago when I was a graduate student, I had heard about this practice, I would have decided it was time to leave science and find an occupation that would keep me and my family alive. Not because I wanted to, but because it would be necessary.

We are looking at the end result of years of Republican misrule, of long efforts to starve and destroy the infrastructure of this nation.

I volunteered for this?

Warning: posting may be intermittent, and I may be particularly cranky. I volunteered to chair two search committees at once — we’re trying to find sabbatical replacements, and since I’m a terrible person abandoning my colleagues for a year, I felt obligated to put in one last surge of work to get it done. Unfortunately, it’s all coming down in the last two weeks of class, so I’m a little overwhelmed right now. A little. May break down in tears soon.

Also, stress means I wake up at 3am now and can’t get back to sleep, which further increases stress. Who designed this physiology, anyway? This is not the place to stick a feed-forward loop.

I just have to hang in there for a few more weeks, and then as a reward for when everything is all done, I’ve scheduled a colonoscopy.

I don’t think I’ve ever read Writers of the Future

I’ve been an avid devourer of science fiction for decades, so it’s a little odd that I’ve missed out on this anthology, Writers of the Future. It’s been cruising along for 34 years, and apparently they throw a colossal, glitzy gala in Hollywood every year, flying in the authors and partying…for a week? Jeeez, writers…so spoiled, they’re all just rolling in the dough.

And here I’ve never even seen the books, let alone paid for one. How are the publishers paying for this? Oh, here’s the answer.

Yikes. “L. Ron Hubbard presents…” — that’s as good as slapping a glowing green Mr Yuck sticker on the cover as far as I’m concerned. No way would I ever pick up something like that, but at least we know how a few authors can get treated swankily. It’s by selling out to a corrupt criminal cult. Tony Ortega has been writing about this PR gimmick for years, but still authors fall for it and still participate, and they should be embarrassed. Also because paying homage to an extraordinarily schlocky pulp author who founded a religion should be something to be ashamed of.

The bad news is that if you get published in Writers of the Future, no one will read it except Scientologists, and everyone who sees your name listed there will know you’re a sellout. The good news is that no one will crack the cover to see your name on the roll of the shameful.

O my fellow Academics, this poem will rip your heart out with its truth

I wept several times while reading A POEM ABOUT YOUR UNIVERSITY’S ABSOLUTE AND UNWAVERING APPRECIATION OF ITS FACULTY IN SPITE OF SAID FACULTY’S CRAP SALARIES. I might have howled a few times, too, but I blacked out at the end and the last hour has been a blur.

Maybe we need a law against too much raw honesty in our poetry. It’s dangerous.

News from the prairie

MPR talked about Morris today! A sign of the future in Morris: Cows + solar panels + fast electric car charger. We crave this kind of fame.

Today, the university community is celebrating the arrival of the only fast electric vehicle charger for more than 100 miles around. And later this spring, a 30-kilowatt solar array will be installed in an adjacent cow pasture, sending clean power to the charger.

It’s a big deal for electric vehicle ownership in western Minnesota: It can take days to charge an electric car at home from a regular electric outlet. Before now, the nearest fast charger was 120 miles away in Monticello.

Also, this:

“It’s sort of a wasteland beyond Monticello, and there’s nothing west of us,” said Eric Buchanan, a renewable energy researcher at the center.

(Monticello is a bit more than a 100 miles east of us; the Dakotas are west.)

So now you know. We are an oasis of electricity in the center of great empty wasteland, devoid of anything. OK, there is a bit of truth to that, except we do have far more corn and soybeans than you’d see in a Mad Max-style wasteland.

Maybe we should take the train

Wow, the pilot on Southwest 1380 was remarkably professional and effective in dealing with an in-flight emergency.

Watch the first part of the video for the praise for Tammy Jo Shults, but then get horrified at the end, when it mentions that there was a similar incident in 2016, when an engine fan blade snapped. At that time, the engine manufacturers recommended ultrasound inspection of all turbine fans to spot invisible cracks in the blades.

Southwest Airlines ‘resisted’. The excuse in the video? “The airline business is a profit-making business.” Yeah, capitalism.

Apparently, other airlines also resisted. I’d like to know who, because we’re about to book some flights to visit family, and I’d rather not experience exploding engines or getting sucked out through a window. Southwest is off the list.

A curious phenomenon

Most mornings, I get up a few hours before my wife does, and shortly afterwards I carry out the morning ritual of Making the Coffee, and I dutifully deliver a cup to her bedside, where the sweet strong smell gently awakens her. I’ve been noticing an odd thing, though: we have lots of cups, and a place in the kitchen cupboard where we put them, but on many mornings, the cups are not there. Thus begins another part of the morning ritual, the Quest for Coffee Cups. I tend to find them in the dining room, in the living room, and in our bedroom, strangely always on the table near her side of the bed, and also, they have often collected tea bags in their interiors.

From my observations, I have determined that these ceramic cups undergo a daily migration, and that they wander the house to prey upon teabags. I am pretty sure there’s a complex hidden ecosystem at work here. For instance, I’ve noticed that if I take off my socks in my office and leave them by my slippers, sometime during the day they will mysteriously disappear. My first hypothesis was that the hungry coffee cups were snatching them up, but I’ve never found a cup with a sock in it, suggesting that there may be some other medium-sized predator prowling about the house. I’m eyeing the casserole dish. Or maybe the toaster.

The existence of a hitherto unnoticed food web operating inside my house has me vaguely worried. If I vanish some day, somebody check the guts of the dishwasher, or possibly the cabinet in my office. They’ve been trying too hard to look nonchalant lately, and could be plotting something.