Activities

Just a word to say that my relative reticence online corresponds to a lovely time that Margaret and I are having together in Glasgow. It would be even nicer without the ice on the pavements and the sub-zero temperatures*, but we’ve had a spectacular fortnight anyway. Yesterday we went to the Hunterian Art Gallery, but were very disappointed to learn that the Mackintosh House was closed for renovations. We then strolled (skidded) downhill to the Kelvingrove Gallery.
 

Kelvingrove (Argyle St Entrance)

 
The Kelvingrove, thankfully, has an ample display of Mackintosh and Glasgow Style artifacts for us to admire. Yesterday, we were especially impressed by Margaret MacDonald’s life and work. (We passed through an exhibit of Glasgow Boys (not to be confused with the Bhoys) paintings, too, of whom I was mostly impressed by E. A. Hornel.)
 
I had thought that I knew Dali’s “The Christ of St John of the Cross” well enough that it wouldn’t surprise me, and when we got to that end of the gallery I learned that the canvas is smaller than I’d expected. Nonetheless,
 

Kelvingrove's Christ of St John of the Cross by Dali

 
seeing the real thing blew me away. As does spending a precious two weeks with my sweetheart.
 
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*The Sky News presenter onscreen now is marveling at — icicles. That’s what the devastating winter weather entails here in Scotland.

On Bombers and Security

What makes something an act of terrorism rather than simply a mass murder? At the simplest level, it’s the intent to cause terror, to impose disruptive fear on people. Even if a terrorist act doesn’t cause any deaths, it succeeds if it engenders exceptional fear.
 
So why aren’t civil authorities working to combat fear, rather than undertaking the ultimately fruitless task of shoring up an inevitably imperfect security? If they invest in preventing incidents, they are guaranteed to fail; if they invest in diminishing panic, they can alleviate the effect of past incidents and even disarm the terrorists, not by eliminating per impossibile their access to guns and explosives, but by reducing their actions to unromantic criminal acts. If they can’t prevent incidents, they can help prevent terror. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Textbooks, Exploitative Academics, and Criticism

A brushfire developed when Andrea James made a side comment in her Boing Boing post about LaSalle University (itself a noteworthy pointer to the rich social history of distance learning); she observed in passing that “Like modern academia, a big part of [LaSalle’s] revenue involved selling overpriced books authored by instructors,” and when several commenters (including me) pointed out that this claim seemed remote from the academia with which they were familiar, James and some other commenters pushed back. Then James, in hope of steering the comments back toward LaSalle University, forked the discussion by making a separate, subsequent Boing Boing entry about the textbook racket.
 
I absented myself from that discussion (though I followed the comments), in large part because the tenor of the argument seemed overdetermined. While I agree that there’s an element of racketeering in the textbook marketplace, I very strongly disagree that faculty are noteworthy malefactors in the story, and I decline to participate in an online thread where responding to charges of corruption triggers the charge of “defensiveness.” I ain’t playing by those rules, nor am I charging James with any hysterically overblown wrongdoing. I leave it to other readers to ponder James’s observation (in response to Got Medieval’s response to the second thread) that “Whenever a professor mentions “the truth,” I reach for my gun” (a few points for the allusion to Hanns Johsst, but big demerits for the implied threat of violence in response to trying to tell the truth, especially since James herself has been emphasizing her veracity (“it’s in a report!”) over against the corrupt defensiveness of professors).
 
As far as I’m concerned, Got Medieval hits many of the salient points. Some of the motifs of James’s (and the commenters’) complaints warrant specific response, though. First, although few defensive academics have disputed the premise that textbooks cost a whole lot — more than one would ordinarily expect them too — much of the anti-academic rhetoric persists in treating this phenomenon as a sin of the professoriate. Among my academic friends, three have hit the gravy train with big-selling textbooks (I don’t know what the sales numbers are, and I especially don’t know what the financial implications are, but they live in noticeably nicer homes than the rest of us, and seem less worried about retirement). As a percentage of “academics I know,” that’s about 1%, probably too small a sample to be considered representative of the whole field. As for the rest of us, James notes that 42% of instructors indicated that they didn’t know how much the textbooks they assign cost. That’s a Bad Sign, although it would sound less horrifying if you said that 58% of instructors pay attention to the cost of the books they assign. Again, among the academics I know, that demonic 42% comprises mostly people who would say that they’re concerned about using the best, most apposite books for the course; why spend thousands of dollars on tuition if you’re going to try to save twenty bucks by using a less-satisfactory text? (I’m not defending this position, and I don’t hold to it myself, but it doesn’t sound particularly baleful or corrupt to me). Another portion of the 42-percenters are (as Got Medieval suggests) overworked or underinformed about the books in question. I have never, ever, ever heard a colleague observe that they derived a pecuniary benefit from assigning a particular book, not in the academic equivalent of locker room talk (maybe “while vesting for a procession”?), not in private conversation about our maddeningly straitened finances, not in boastful assertions of superiority. Sure, I expect that it happens sometime; but I’d be startled if it were other than an extremely isolated incident (in my fields).
 
Now, if we turn to the question of should instructors be complicit with this industry by assigning arguably-overpriced textbooks, the question gets even more complicated. A great proportion of students want lucid, colorful, reliable, helpful textbooks that cohere with the points an instructor is trying to make. If we are to respond to that preference (and the student evaluation feedback that it triggers), our choices are extremely limited — and none of the alternatives, so far as I’m aware, is inexpensive. This, I think, is the real pressure-point for would-be activists, since it affects the pedagogical atmosphere and tenure evaluations. If someday, it were clear that a preponderance of student evaluations expressed a forceful, consistent expectation that the cost of supplementary materials were more important than attractive design, painstakingly careful exposition, critically-sound textbooks, I imagine that heads of department, deans, and canny colleagues would pick up that demand. I don’t expect that to happen, since some of the students who want the fancier product just don’t care about the price, and others probably would prefer something less expensive, but realize that the options are few when one places the benchmarks high. I’m assigning a glossy textbook this spring; I know what it costs, and I’m happy for students to buy it second-hand or at Amazon (or second-hand via Amazon, for that matter) (by the way, to avoid charges of corrution I have omitted the “associates” link with which I usually tag items I mention on Amazon, thereby making about £8/year). If students want to use an earlier edition they may, but Ehrman does make significant changes from edition to edition, as far as I’ve been able to tell, including refactoring the number, order, and contents of chapters. Now, it’s possible that Bart is crassly doing so in order to bilk students out of their meager monies; he’s never talked to me about the business end of the Ehrman family of best-selling publications. I don’t have any reason to take that as my starting premise, though, nor do I think anyone else has.
 
I remembered after I first commented on James’s original remark that I have indeed written a textbook. The fact that it slipped my mind should suggest how great an impact it made on family finances here; it was also the most painful experience I’ve ever had with an editor/production team, rushed, marred with very many errata, and not at all the book I had hoped they would make. It had several distinct advantages when it came out, and for that reason I assigned it two or three times (after having supplied students with free printed drafts for a couple of years); the publisher has presumably seen that the benefits to them of the production decisions and timetable that they made mattered less than the flawed result, and they’ve let the resulting textbook slide into oblivion; if there were a general interest in my resuscitating it, I’d be happy to correct the design and copy mistakes and produce a free-to-distribute PDF of the book, but I also have pressure to produce critical work to support my departments standing in the REF.
 
Most university bookstores with which I’ve worked derive little or no profit from books or textbooks, and a vast amount from office supplies and especially branded merchandise. If we’re going to start a consumer revolution against high prices in academic settings, let’s start by disallowing anyone who’s spent more than £100 on t-shirts, jerseys, hoodies, underwear, and other branded knick-knacks.
 
But that points to big differences among institutions, where (I would guess, without specific experience or data) that community college bookstores (or other small-scale institution bookstores) operate under very different conditions from those that affect Harvard or the University of Chicago. I’m not sure how much benefit we gain by lumping those together under the indistinct header of “academia,” given the factors in play in this discussion.
 
Rather than taking up the rest of my morning with elaborating this point, I’ll conclude by noting that this is an area of vivid interest and commitment on my part; I’ve devoted considerable energy to the addressing this problem; my syllabi in general reflect that commitment and energy; and even though I’ve gotten a lot less support from colleagues than I’d wish, and even though I don’t foresee that changing soon, I won’t back off. And I don’t think it’s fair to most of my colleagues, even those who are politically deaf and inert on this topic, to target them as the principal malefactors.

Stray Thought

If — as John Siracusa and various other Apple cognoscenti suggest — part of the forthcoming iTablet package involves a special format for electronic text/mixed-media publishing, “publicly documented. . . [with] an SDK available to all interested parties,” wouldn’t this be a spectacular opportunity-moment for a start-up academic publisher to step up to the plate and take advantage of the brief interval in which everyone’s starting from zero?
 
I sure do, and would love to be in on it. A foresighted publisher could make a lot of hay by moving first to an Apple ePub format, and only subsequently figuring out how to handle print distribution (rather than being lumbered by a print-oriented publishing system, and trying to simulate print on a small digital screen).

As I Was Saying

So as if to prove my recent point about being a laughable old coot: Last night, I was making curried rice noodles for Margaret and me. I pulled out the ingredients, chopped a sweet pepper and onion, boiled the noodles; it turns out that I had made half again as many noodles as I needed, since cooking for one has thrown off my judgment. Then I began mixing things up. First I added some milk and yogurt to the noodles, then I reached up to the spice cabinet and grabbed the bottle at the front and sprinkled it into the milk-and-noodles mixture. Poured in the peppers, onions, some corn and peas, mixed it all up. Tasted the sauce; the curry flavor wasn’t very strong. Poured in some more from the spice cabinet. Looked around the counter top for the milk and yogurt, of which I thought we needed more. Spotted the milk and yogurt sitting right beside the. . . curry.
 
Wait. If that’s the curry, what spice bottle had I been seasoning the noodles with?
 
It turns out that I had been sifting ginger into the main course. Could have been a lot worse. I added more milk and yogurt, sprinkled a very generous quantity of curry into noodles; mixed, added a little more, mixed, and served Margaret.
 
Granted all the things that might have awry, it was actually very good. Margaret enjoyed hers, had a second helping, and I ate three servings myself. But I got there by the long way ’round.

Glasgow and Me, Part Six Seven (Really, This Time)

Quick notes: I didn’t hear any fireworks before last night, and I didn’t hear the fireworks that went off last night either (having fallen precipitously asleep at 11:30); Margaret assures me that there were fireworks aplenty, from more than one location. I imagine that the subzero temperatures have diminished the inclination of amateur pyrotechnicians to venture out at night and practise their art, but still, the contrast with the weeks around Guy Fawkes Day is remarkable,
 
We went to see Sherlock Holmes at the local cinema (only one walkable movie theater in the West End, so far as I know). We enjoyed it immensely — very spacious, comfortable seats, with handsome wooden trays between every pair of seats. We saw another couple bring in a bottle of wine and glasses. Now, we can hardly wait to go back. That’s movie-watching with class.
 
I would wish for Margaret a chance to see Glasgow in warmer, sunnier weather (no, we didn’t go to George Square for Hogmanay), but it’s still making a good impression on her. I hope that her fondness for Glasgow increases from her current feelings in proportion to the length of days and the increase of degrees Celsius.
 
It occurred to me recently that a large part of my difficulty in making out a Glasgow accent derives from the very wide variety of accents I hear here. Glasgow being a center for academic, industrial, and general migration, one can easily encounter a great many variations of English accents, many south Asian accents, many accents from other parts of Scotland, and many hybrids of these with Scottish and Glaswegian speech. So I hardly ever know whether I’m hearing a (relatively) pure Glasgwegian accent, or some other regional or hybrid pattern. Still, I’m having less trouble than I was warned that I would.
 
Waitrose may be “upmarket,” but Wednesday, when Margaret and I went shopping there, we found a very good number of vegetarian-friendly options (too many, in fact!). Moreover, when Margaret asked an employee about gluten-free foods, he promptly led her to an end cap replete with g-f staples, and offered her a print-out of everything that Waitrose ordinarily stocks that meets her dietary needs. He then went and printed a copy of it and looked around for her to give it to her. That, my friends, is customer service. Even if Waitrose is justly labelled “upscale,” we will shop for groceries there as long as they have a good supply of foods we can eat, and they demonstrate such readiness to connect us to it.
 
 
Plus, everything that I like about Glasgow is vastly more wonderful while Margaret’s here.