Apr 9, 2005

More Noted Things ...

by Cliopatria

DeLay: At Slate, Nicholas Thompson is keeping score on"The Tom DeLay Scandals." Pardon my monomania about this, if you will. It's important because he is both corrupt and ruthless.

The Funeral: I'll be watching the live broadcast of the funeral for John Paul II this morning, between 4:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. edt. As the BBC's Peter Gould observes, it is being compared with the funerals of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, and Joseph Stalin. This may be the most massive tribute to any single person in human history.

Protection/Control: At Mode for Caleb, Caleb McDaniel asks us to consider decisions about extending life in light of the history of medicine and the entwinement of control and protection in asymmetrical relationships of power.

Transitions: At Chapati Mystery, Sepoy is sporting new threads. Go over and have a look. All is not yet known. Some of it is, you know, a mystery. Tim Burke's Easily Distracted is also in process of a transition. I continue to admire the outfits of my colleagues, Sharon Howard and Mark Grimsley, who blog in conjunction with impressive web sites. Howard's Early Modern Notes is done in conjunction with Early Modern Resources and his Blog Them Out of the Stone Age is done in conjunction with War Historian.org. Looking around for helpful suggestions, my friend, Mr. Sun! found an example of what we might want to avoid. Professor Paul May teaches chemistry at the University of Bristol. He seems to like red, yellow, and animated graphics. It gets worse. He's a libertarian who loves science fiction.

S**t: When I was teaching in the mushroom country of southeastern Pennsylvania, we had a fairly contentious faculty meeting in which a colleague accused the administration of treating us like mushrooms – that is, we were kept in the dark and fed a lot of s**t. Btw, you should someday experience the odor of mushroom country in springtime. It's quite remarkable. Well, I hope you didn't miss yesterday's story of the Harvard economics professor who stands accused of s**t theft. Puts a different light on the complaint of oppressed academics who say they have to"take a lot of s**t." Margaret Soltan at University Diaries has the story and is holding a competition for Best Headline."Purloined Poop Lands Harvard Prof in Poo-Poo" or something about the professor's having lost his position because of"moral turditude" seem to be the best ideas so far.

Update on the Lindgren/Chronicle Controversy: Jim Lindgren's remarks about the Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage of the Bellesiles case generated considerable reaction yesterday. Today, Glenn Reynolds cites Scott McLemee's reaction and Eugene Volokh posts a reply from the Chronicle's managing editor.

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More Comments:

John H. Lederer - 4/8/2005

Clandestine trips to the local horse farm ..obviously a trade secret passed down from professor to professor on how to obtain fresh lecture material for that introductory course...

Jonathan Dresner - 4/8/2005

I tell you, just when you think you're coming out of the gutter of a major cultural low (i.e. Larry Summers) you get not just figurative horsemanure like "sexy librarian discrimination" case but actual, physical, stinking, fertilizing, wet, rich, LITERAL HORSEMANURE. It's getting harder to admit to being a Harvard grad with a straight face.... fortunately, the diploma's in Latin, so nobody can tell for sure.

chris l pettit - 4/8/2005

The whole Pope burial is really starting to bother me...it seems that many (not all) people who are turning up represent one of the things that I look at as a great example of one of the worst aspects of religion. It is one things to truly "pay your respects"...but one does not have to make a pilgrimage to Rome to do it. What this smacks of is the deifying of someone who was, at best, a pretty morally suspect figure if you really want to get down to it. Can someone explain to me why the Church has gotten so far away from its roots that it results in idol worship in this way? It is as silly as revering symbols instead of actually following the words of Jesus...as many (if not most) Christians now do. My geshe told this story (and my old pastor loved it when I told him...I was Catholic until I reached the age of reason...but still keep contact with many who actually use their religion for the pursuit of peace and human rights).

"Once there was a man who figured out how to make fire. He was a human rights activist and good human, so he did not selfishly keep the secret to himself, but instead brought his secret to a village and showed everyone there how the fire could (some say should) be used. he taught them to use it to cook and keep warm...but not to burn the land or each others homes or bodies. When he saw that the people sufficiently had mastered the fire, he slipped away. The people never noticed he was gone, and he was happy with that as he was not about himself and simply wanted the world to be a better place. he then went to a second village where he started demonstrating the uses of fire. In this village the heads started feeling threatened by the man, even though he had shown no desire for power or position. With highly superstitious members of the community as support (the uneducated and ignorant can always be found together) the leaders arranged to have the guy killed. As soon as he was dead, the leaders and others (including some rather dim followers of the man out for their own promotion) began erecting temples the honor the man. Statues of the man were built...they commissioned individuals to write "authoritative" biographies of his life and how he brought the fire. But no one actually concentrated (much) on the gift of fire. In time, only a very select wise and clear minded few could still call attention to what the man taught about the fire...and those people were shouted down and persecuted by the rest of the "believers" who did not even know the history of the cults they had joined. No one remembered the quality uses for fire...for the most part the fire was used to burn and destroy, and not to keep warm and cook. In the end the population simply worshiped the man who brought fire (actually a gross misrepresentation of him) and maybe symbols of the fire and had completely lost touch with the actual meaning and what the principles behind the fire were and how it was supposed to be used. The population came to worship those who they thought to be "keepers of the flame" who had the power to help the "faith" progress or hold it back. They deified leaders, and went into woeful wailing when one passed one...promising that he was joining the leader in the special kingdom...all the time betraying the actual general principles behind the message of the original guy. And the disgraces continued...

In other words...once Buddha died the schools were born.

I feel somewhat sorry for those "believers" in Rome...this is truly a sad situation...although not for the reasons they might think...

CP