GPOY, approx. 12:10 pm today.

davebloom:

It seems like just a few days ago that Raina and I were getting public thanks from Adam Warrock. Now, of course, he’s spectacularly famous, with Jean-Ralphio himself plugging his new Parks and Rec EP to the AV Club.  I can only conclude that we are somehow responsible.  Obviously.

Duh.

infoneer-pulse:

“If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down,” Obama said, drawing immediate applause. “Higher education can’t be a luxury — it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.” Although the speech did not offer any additional details about that warning, a document the White House published accompanying the speech said that the president would propose to “shift some federal aid away from colleges that don’t keep net tuition down and provide good value.”

» via Inside Higher Ed

President Obama doesn’t understand how publicly-funded higher education works. If you take away taxpayer funding, you have to raise tuition because the cost of the materials and resources associated with education increase every year. There is very, very little that college and universities can do about this. This is compounded by our belief that higher ed. is inherently valuable or necessary, even for people who aren’t prepared or don’t want to attend college for whatever reason. So we have to hire more tutors and advisors and instructors to keep class sizes small for students who need extra love, which, of course, costs money.

Or I could just keep my mouth shut and let them move a couple more desks into my half-converted office (former hospital room, for real) for the non-union, part-time, underpaid adjuncts that will undoubtedly be hired to fill in the gaps in this utopian vision of affordable education.

thepinakes:

There was a recent piece posted by the Atlantic about the cost cycle and paywall of academic articles. It’s a big issue and access to scholarly journals is a topic that merits real discussion and hopefully change. However, the article itself was so poorly researched and inaccurate it does a disservice to the conversation.

The article supposes that the villain is JSTOR. It’s not.

The author of the Atlantic piece is bemoaning his inability to access the latest research in autism and blames JSTOR, even though the vast majority of JSTOR content (aside from their small and new “Current Scholarship” program) is 3 years old or older. JSTOR is designed to be the alternative to print journal storage for back issues; if you’re looking for current articles and the latest research, JSTOR is not where you should go. JSTOR is a not-for-profit that has done tremendous work digitizing and saving thousands of historic scholarly journals, dating back over a century of content, that libraries are throwing away. They are providing access to a treasure trove of valuable content that libraries cannot afford to maintain or store.

Actual current research is packaged and sold by for-profit companies like Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis — if you have a problem with the model for academic publishing, those are the publishers you should take it up with.

Because of that poorly written article, I’m seeing “fuck JSTOR” going around on Tumblr as if JSTOR has anything to do with the problem. And therefore the internet is pissing me off.

Truth.

For all the academics in the house, inspired by Brofessor Hoffmann.

This is what your teachers do when you’re not looking.

davebloom:

suitwithsneakers:

I made a song about Jane Austen, over the beat to “Moves Like Jagger.” 

No, really…

My wife and I are both implicated here (for the record, her voice isn’t naturally that high, but has, in fact, been to clubs—just not often*).  Hope Eugene keeps this series of retooled pop hits coming. 

* Dance clubs, that is.  We’ve spent plenty of time at shows.

I like having a recent example of remix/reuse to use on the first day of class (today, in fact). Looks like the undergrads are going to find out what a weirdo I am on day one, instead of having it dawn on them slowly.

Thanks for making me a part of this, rapper man.

Dear PBS,

We, the undersigned, request that you stop showing Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo every Sunday afternoon. Have you considered airing some cooking shows? Or maybe a crafting program - the undersigned will watch people assemble quilt squares and explain the wonders of rag rugs for at least an hour. British costume drama? Or BBC comedies? The IT Crowd is really funny - how about that?

Sunday afternoon is prime ‘loafing around while watching a documentary about animals/space/some bomb tosser’ time. Yet, not moments ago, we were driven away from your publicly-funded bosom by pancake-makeup’d weirdos performing “A Tribute to Dixie” while wearing read polyester.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Sincerely Yours, 

I was going to explain the above to all of you, but I did such a fine job capturing the absurdity of the situation via IM that replicating the effort seemed unnecessary.