Egg Fry and a Gentle Breeze

/ dmueller / 4 Comments

In the middle of frying up egg sandwiches last evening, the stove presented
me with a loose knob and only two settings–(red) high and off–for the one decent
sized heating coil.  The other coil is too small to cook anything much
worth eating (it’s like a Weight Watchers burner); the other side of the stovetop is a griddle thing–fashionable in
the late seventies, I guess.  It would have worked for the egg fry, but it
takes a while to heat up, and the stove didn’t go on the fritz until after I’d
made D. and Ph.’s sandwiches.  No, really, you go ahead and eat; I’ll
fume over this crappy appliance and the life-threatening popping sounds it’s making (while my egg
hardens to the faint heat of a might-be-on-might-be-off burner.  

So I pulled it apart today, figuring a knob can’t be too hard to replace,
even on an old stove.  Trouble is none of the hardware mega-stores around
here carry appliance parts and the Maytag fix-it shop doesn’t open until 8:30
Monday morning.  I had the camera out to take a pic of the wires on the
switch I was removing, you know, to pixelate my memory because I would forget
where each of the five wires should be reconnected.  Then I took a couple
more pics–the ones you see here.  

Easy Bake Nest
Temperature settings matter.

With any amount of luck, this will be my final post in a growing
series about
spiffing
up the house for market.  We’ve had several inquiries, given out five tours
of thePull the chain.
house ("Aw…notice the splendid view.") No offers yet. 
Twenty-three fliers have been pulled from the box hanging next to the sign stuck
in the front yard–in two weeks.

My only planned house-fix for the day was the tug-chain switch in the house
fan.  It’s old, irregular.  Sometimes you pull on it and the fan works,
other times you pull on it, nothing.  So I cut the power, started taking
out screws.  And what I found was deeply troubling.  The insulation on
the old-a*s fan wires were all cracked, revealing bare wires.  Plus,
working on a house fan is physically demanding: my head was crookt into a tight
space, the Sahara winds were drifting down from the attic space, the lighting
was poor, my step ladder was quivering. The electrical line from the house was
fine–that much was a relief.  So I chopped the power supply to the fan, grabbed some 18 gauge extensions, wrapped-spliced-routed, patched in
the cycle switch, and affirmed my faith that miracles happen.  It works.
From pure misery to pure joy, just like that.  Now, no more pictures or
blog entries about home repair.  Promise.

Porter, et al., 2001, “Institutional Critique”

/ dmueller / 4 Comments

 Porter,
James, et. al. "Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for
Change." CCC 51 (2000): 610-642.

Big Idea

Institutions can be changed through rhetorical activism.  Porter and
company develop broad model for institutional critique driven by rhetoricians as
agents for change and pomo geographical interrogations to stage institutional
dynamics (needing change).  The authors juxtapose "despair" as
the unsatisfying alternative to a more hopeful and upbeat, even (re)visionary
empowerment:  the field must vigorously imagine its potential for
changing institutions, for transforming them through language, and for thinking
about rhetoric and writing as activisms beyond academe. 
The essay sets up a macro-micro paradigm for thinking about institutionality,
then, invoking a model of "boundary interrogation," the
space-made-over institutional critique ventures into the space between the
macro-micro and into the "’zones of ambiguity,’ or spaces that house
change, difference or a clash of values or meanings."  

Wondering About

My impression is that this article and the premise it advances are much more
compelling due to the group authorship.  A team-authored article suggests a
formidable solidarity, a banding together of credibility and force–the very
sort of coordinated leverage that makes institutional critique possible. 
As I read the essay, I had questions about whose agency is staked in the
critique.  Is rhetorical-discursive institutional critique most potent when
it is pressed by clearly recognized members of the institution?  Membership
and stability can work both ways; institutional critiques, I suppose, work best
when they are formulated by stable bands of respected participants
members in the
institution.  Contingent faculty, like new students or new workers,
probably have a more challenging time leveraging such critiques against
their own proven records for longevity and loyalty. Hear this: "You haven’t
been here long" or "You won’t be."  So I wondered whether
this is a workable plan for all comp/rhet folks or whether it is much more
realistic for WPAs and groups of faculty with a shared sense of how the
institution should change.  Even if, as the article suggests, we rename
"composition teachers" as "writing experts" and fashion thereby a public
sensibility about the broad applicability of rhetoric and writing, we (must)
continue to feel the tug of unsavory labor practices.  In other words, it’s
not easy to promote the *new and improved*  "writing expert" toward a
public role when the writing program (employing said experts) relies on
contingent and contract labor to cover courses. "Writing experts" like
"composition teachers" can’t be remade publicly until they are remade
materially, validated and stabilized by the institution’s commitment to capital
support–all of which is why this works wonderfully at an institution with a
well established writing program and works less swimmingly in places where the
writing program is already in the institution’s cellar (free of despair, not
tribulation).  In such places,
routing institutional critique through a writing program (in the name of
rhetoricians for change) can be risky business–even riskier, perhaps, where
comp/rhet is a subset of English.  So leaving behind the name "composition
teacher" because it reflects the field’s history of inferiority and subjugations of labor doesn’t alter
the legacy or the lingering (even prevalent) realities of exploited contingent
faculty. That said, I’m sure Porter et al. don’t take the plights of lesser
established U’s or contingent
faculty lightly. 

The essay outlines the avenues of institutional critique, categorizing
critique into administrative, classroom and disciplinary areas.  And in the
administrative area, the WPA can make great strides toward institutional
critique by 1.) establishing graduate programs in writing and rhetoric and 2.)
establishing a writing major.  These in-house steps affirm the validity of
the writing program; they give body to the power necessary for such
critiques to be taken seriously. 

In a few places, I wished for clearer examples.  The critical geography references are terrific: Edwards Soja, David Sibley, Doreen Massey, Michel de
Certeau and David Harvey figure into this essay, and for composition, I suppose
this essay is attempting something new by calling on spatial analysis postmodern
mapping and boundary interrogation–both of which play heavily in their
analysis.  The single diagram in the article–a map of a site for
institutional critique–is included without much of the boundary analysis said
to be so promising. It maps the space "where Institutional Critique operates,"
but it left me wondering why the map wasn’t subject to the interrogations
promoted in the essay.  I
also wondered why the space of institutional critique didn’t bear out a
productive tension with the composition classroom (in the map-diagram) the way it did
with the discipline and the macro institution. I didn’t pick up on much boundary
interrogation of their diagram nor any acknowledgement of the problem that
mapping (unanalyzed, two-dimensional) tends to be oversimplified for any complex
system.

I wanted a few more examples of a "zone of ambiguity."  The
article leads with one example in which a usability expert and former CWR
student pushes for the term usability in a Microsoft development
chart.  Is a space
between macro and micro ambiguous to the extent that it is contested or
institutionally unstable?  In such cases, institutional critique from all
directions (not just from WPAs and faculty) inevitably continue to refigure the
zone.  Its contestation is discursive and material, but can we say the
same of an unambiguous zone?  Or are all institutional zones–all spaces,
even–ambiguous to the degree that they are rhetorically charged?  Is this
true more so when we conceive of space as, in Harvey’s terms, "produced." 
One example brought in is Purdue’s OWL, which is atop the heap of online writing
labs.  The essay describes the scientific appeal of a lab space (sig.
of naming), the ongoing battle in an
English department about the usability of space.  Question: how, if at a place such as
Purdue, the tension rages on, might smaller, lesser established writing programs
venture into such perilous matches.  Must they?  What are the risks?

Passages

"[I]nstitutional critique is an unabashedly rhetorical practice
mediating macro-level structures and micro-level actions rooted in a particular
space and time" (612).

"But we have a particular spin on institutional critique.  Our spin
is more locally situated, more spatial, and more empirical than most theoretical
discussions of institutions" (613).

"We are frustrated, however, with the gap between local actions and more
global critiques (which are far more common in our disciplinary discourse). We
are frustrated, in other words, when global critiques exist only in the form of
ideal cases or statements, which all too often bracket off discussions of
materiality and economic constraints in favor of working out the best case
scenario–which, all too often, does not come to pass" (615).

"Talking about institutions at this macro level is extremely important (as we
argued earlier in respect to WPAs) because it is one way to discuss how our
public lives are organized and conducted (both for us and by us). But limiting
our analytic gaze to macro institutions also encourages a level of abstraction
that can be unhelpful if it leads to a view of institutions as static, glacial,
or even unchangeable (i.e., if it urges us to see change as requiring
large-scale action that few people rarely have the power to enforce). If
institutions are conceptualized exclusively on this macro level, we may be
restricted to visualizing an abstraction of institution that makes change
difficult to imagine" (621). 

"Our discussion raises an important question about the relationship
between institutional action and reports of action. Can dissertations and
other publications themselves be instances of institutional critique? 
Maybe, but as with idealized goals statements, we are suspicious of publications
that do no more than recommend or hope for institutional
change.  To qualify as institutional critique, a research project has to
actually enact the practice(s) it hopes for by demonstrating how the process of
producing the publications or engaging in the research enacted some form of
institutional change" (628).

The Teacher Broke Free

/ dmueller

(pronounced Mc-fur-son): A friend called today
to solicit my opinion on

McPherson, Kansas.  I said I had been there only once.  My
impression: churches, train tracks, small town tidiness, two smallish colleges. 
But I was only there for a few hours.  There’s a KFC near the Interstate. 
Friend wanted to know what people do for fun in McPherson.  Suppose I don’t
know the answer to that.  So I did some online research, found they have
a pipe band and
an art gallery.  The weather is beautiful in late August.  Maybe
it’s better to direct the question to somebody who knows.  So, McPherson,
Kansas, what do you do for fun?

Retro-scholarship: Revisit

walk-on policies?


The Teacher Broke Free: Seems that a group of five students at a nearby high
school attempted to tape their English teacher to a chair as a senior prank. 
One of the television reports suggested that the day was cast as a free day of
preparation for the final exam.  It’s a relief nobody was hurt, and, of
course, it’s in poor taste make light of it.  But I am curious what was on
the exam.  Did they still take the test?

1/350: Here’s a pic from Tuesday afternoon of Ph. at his first track meet. 
It’s a blur.  Set the shutter speed to multi-frame, but the light (cloudy)
and distance (top row of bleachers) weren’t in our favor.  No retakes at a
track meet.  I won’t say whether he won or where he finished; he’s depicted
with momentary potential to win the event.  Tracksters qualified from their
respective gym classes then merged into a seventh-eighth grade combine. 
Here, in the 200-meter, Ph. (left) had long strides, but you can see he was
running against long-legged giants.

Either Or

/ dmueller

 

So outside the school was a man with a drum, he
was on a bicycle and he was drumming and when Rose heard him drumming she went to the door and the man was calling out either or either or, either there is a lion here or there is no lion here, either or, either or. (GS, The
World Is Round, 58)

In the place where you are

/ dmueller / 6 Comments

When Six Apart released MT3.0 (Beta-Developer) and a new pricing structure
early last week, I started out with an uneasy feeling. Lots of froth and
fray bubbled out from the announcement; some among the MT faithful cried
out Betrayal!, some swiftly dumped MT…hooks to beefmeat.

Parts of what Clay Shirky wrote at Many2Many
yesterday got me thinking about content management systems as social
organizers, more
specifically weblogging systems, as a kind of cybersocial fabric, a
"community enabler" as he puts it.  He argues that social
software built on a free now, pay later upgrade scale dupes the community by imparting a class system
and, basically, the branches or divergences in the system are inimical to
the sense of community shared among users.  It makes sense that
"changes to the [social software] tool trigger anxiety." Many anxious
variations have turned up in these six days (apart) from the announcement. FWIW, I
have a less easy time making sense of the move to separate the rational
users and emotional hooks. And I grant that I have, in the use of a handful of
MT plugins, benefited from the fruits of an MT developer community that might
shift, fade, vanish in the months ahead (toward other platforms or more recent
versions).

The comments following Shirky’s post are worth a read, too.  Perhaps
it’s because I’ve never fully realized membership in a community of MT users
that I don’t see my laggard attachment to the older, freer version of MT as a
social rip-departure from the upscale 3.0 users.  I’ll be able to read
their blogs; they’ll be able to read mine.  Presumably, I will be able to
leave them trackbacks; they will be able to link to me.  In fairness, I
really don’t want to use Shirky’s post daftly. However, as a blogger, I never
saw myself as a member of an MT community more than, say, a member of a blogging
community among people I admire and read regularly (mostly) in my field(s) of
interest.  The self-defined blogroll trumps the CMS community, I think, and
it’s much more directed, much more real to me, having a greater effect by far on
how I conceive of blogging as purposeful.  These are the people whose weblogs I keep up with.  So, Shirky’s entry set me to thinking about a few
other issues that have stirred in these six days–other material I want
to dig my 2.65 anchor (temporarily, perhaps) against.

First, my blogroll, which has remained relatively stable lately, includes a
array of platforms:

Mister BS – Blog-city; Clancy Ratliff and Charlie Lowe – Drupal; Dennis
Jerz – WordPress JWeblog; Will Richardson – Manila; Dr.
B – Blogger; Ken Smith – pMachine;
Marie Freeman – TypePad; John
Lovas – Manila; Rich Rice –
Who knows?; Amy
Propen – Blog*Spot; Jeff
Rice – Greymatter

These are most of the non-MT bloggers I keep up with (although aggregation
isn’t possible with a few of them, so I visit less frequently, attributable to
business, absentmindedness).  Without
gushing burning bloglove, their regular entries, getting to know people by their work,
their ideas, their weblogs–that’s the sense of community membership I identify
with.  And…important and, here…I appreciate that they work
from different platforms.  I’d feel uneasy if all of them used Movable Type
or Drupal or WordPress.
Changes to platforms (upon which or through which our conversations unfold, our
connections manifest) are less significant to me socially than their persistence
as available, present, and connected bloggers.  In other words, it would
matter less if John Lovas, for example, switched to Blogger or Manila than
if he gave up blogging altogether–literally checking out of the
"membership in a community."  

Second, software choices present ideological window dressing, perhaps
more, perhaps less.  Hanna from join-the-dots makes
this point squarely in her announcement of the switch from MT to WordPress. 
For folks committed to GNU
GPU licensing, true open source, as I understand it, the point is
crucial.  Honestly, I’m not sufficiently well versed in property law to
give a responsible run-down of the differences between CC, GNU GPU (which
applies to software source more than IP?) and all the gradations. Suffice it to
say that I’ve always struggled to live out ideological fancies with lasting
vigor–I have worn Nikes, munched on KFC, even thrown away perfectly recyclable
materials in the trash.  So, without preferring to be an ethical slob or a
hypocrite, I’ll continue with MT 2.65, no matter how that reflects an
ideological layer.  I on-ramped to blogging with a recommendation to use
MT.  It was free.  I’m content with it.  I don’t have time to
tinker with Drupal or WordPress.  MT will continue to meet my needs for
writing here and teaching and so on.  Bunker the social and ideological
gales along the way.

Third, I haven’t observed any features in other blogging systems that vastly
expand the potential of EWM to do what I mean for it to do. Maybe my mood would
change if I got hit with 1000 spam comments, but that hasn’t happened yet.  Drupal is the only system whose look, feel and usability appeal to me–for
the wiki functions than the threaded comment functions. On that note, Drupal
and WordPress users have
been out in full glory, converting the MT-disgruntled, inviting the dejected
into the warm and gregarious open source alternatives.  Distracting us from
smashed idols and empty dreams.  Please forgive the evangelical language.
I’m just having a bit of fun.

This is less of a defense of sticking with an earlier version of MT or riding
out the ripples of Six Apart’s mustard-on-the-shirt announcement last week than
it is an attempt to make sense (for me or for you) of why I’m doing what I’m
doing.  Maybe, in the next six months, the competing platforms will feature
collaborative entry authoring (co-authorship or tri-authorship
functionality…for comments, too) and other stuff, such as [insert wishlist
here].  In the meantime, I’m going to idle, wait it out and blog
contentedly in this MT space, crossing my fingers that my delicate sense of
community won’t be obliterated.

Out the Way, Coach

/ dmueller

 

Before

…middle school…hoops practice…pass a
few years…
After

Organized a Stampede swimming party yesterday at North Kansas City Community
Center.  It was my farewell to the young men who’ve done mostly what I
asked on the basketball court for the last four years.  Fine times.

Not much of a before and after comparison.  The crew on the left (in
fifth grade, three years ago) morphed into the group on the right (yesterday’s
bunch).  Along the way, we expanded to two teams, holding open roster spots
for seventeen players this past winter.  And, although I confess to whining
once in a while, joking that it was a mistake to take on so much, I can’t say
I’d change any of it, trade any of the kids or their families for different
ones.  Six of them didn’t make it yesterday for the swimming and
pizza.  Baseball, church stuff, graduations.  

My talk was briefer than usual yesterday; the lifeguard interrupted me to go
over the important pool rules.  I told the boys and their families two
things:  1.  Young players shouldn’t play for the same coach for more
than four years (which means my time is rightly served and we’re both better for
it being done), and 2.  Second place is a better teacher than first place
(note that everyone was holding second place trophies from this winter–both
teams, green and blue, finished one spot behind an unbeaten squad in their
respective leagues).  All in all, we finished with a record of 60-32 over
four years–including a couple of first places, second places, and even, um,
well, a winless season in Smithville (against older kids).  In late
December, we even matched up with an "eighth grader" who dunked three
times against us in a 90-something-to-much-less-than-90 blowout.  Some days
there just weren’t enough timeouts.  Still have a few t-shirts in a box if
faithful EWM readers want to claim one (various sizes, athletic gray). 
They’re like the one A. (front left in the photo on the right) is wearing. 
Seriously–extra shirts.  Just shoot me an email.  Spare tees are free
(to the first five readers who tell me they’d like one…kinda like a radio call
in); the nostalgia, on the other hand, is priceless.

D’Angelo, 1977, “Intelligible Structure”

/ dmueller

 D’Angelo,
Frank. “The Search for Intelligible Structure in the Teaching of Composition.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998.
Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 51-59.

Big Idea
Look!  We, compositionists, are disciplinarily vital. We have an
epicenter, proven radials, recognizable and defensible structures holding our
work together.  D’Angelo’s essay, I’d say, is best read as a freeze frame
in composition’s becoming.  In his afterthought, he notes, "Much has
happened in the teaching of writing and literature that suggests that our
earlier emphasis on structure and sequence may have been misguided and
naive" (59). He cites a long list of folks (Leonard, V. Burke, Scully,
Stade, W. Rice) whose critiques hammered at the (perceived to be) thin, 1976
shell of the dispersed ranges of academic writing.  Toward "new unity
and order," D’Angelo diagrams the modes of discourse, partners them with
Kinneavy’s aims of discourse, and folds them together with the contention that
the field must be drawn with a sense of coherence, visible chalk
lines.  

Monday Morning

D’Angelo’s essay, brief as it is, proceeds descriptively more than
critically.  It’s not an overtly political defense of the field of
composition, but by leading with the allegations that "writing is the
disgrace of American education" (Leonard) and that "many entering
students are in fact ‘functionally illiterate’" (Scully), the essay serves
up an answer as well as a call for a recentering of stray pedagogies.  In
one sense, I see D’Angelo’s Braddock as a crucial moment: it carved out a future
into which compositionists could proceed critically.  By promoting a
disciplinary structure, it also sets up a core fade to (trained) corps fade
to clubhouse fade to "what you’re doing isn’t
composition."  

Because I had time yesterday to take on a decent chunk of the latest CE,
I’m thinking about "Intelligible Structure" under beams of Bonnie
Kyburz’s essay on chaos theory in composition and at least one small bit of
Joseph Harris’ response to Beech and Thelin’s critique of his article on
"Revision as a Critical Practice."  First, Kyburz’s chaos theory
work probably wouldn’t have been well received thirty years ago;
"Intelligible Structure" is, in part, D’Anglo’s response to Virginia
Burke’s claim that "there is chaos today in the teaching of composition
because since the turn of the century, composition has lacked an informing discipline."
Arguing for chaos could have been like rocks to a fragile figurine–hazardous.
And I wonder: are these different brands of chaos?  In "Meaning Finds
a Way: Chaos (Theory) and Composition," Kyburz writes;

I have long been fascinated (like Taylor and Walker) by the concept of
writing as a chaotic process, and I find that this notion is encouraged by
conversations regarding "alternative discourses" and
"post-process" pedagogy.  These progressive,
"alternative" discourses–which shape-shift, form, and reform
according to rhetorical purposes, unbound by the strictures of traditionally
bland, uniform, and regulated "academic writing"–have recently
gained currency in composition studies.  Yet, as Gary Olson tells us,
there remains within the field a conservative and nostalgic presence that
denies these and other progressive discourses the sorts of disciplinary status
that can create appreciable change for the composition classroom and for our
notions of what we are about in composition studies ("Working").
Perhaps by returning in iterative fashion to the chaos metaphor–via chaos
theory–that has for so long informed ideas about writing, we may find ourselves
rethinking writing in increasingly complex and promising ways, effectively
resisting pressures to define ourselves and our students through standardized
testing and retrogressive pedagogies, among other ages practices, as the
gatekeepers and worthy practitioners of "order" (that is, Standard
Written–white, middle-class–English. (CE 66.5 505)

Retrogressive pedagogies.  Hmm.  Good stuff.  It reminds me of
Joseph Williams’ phrasal links interface shared via techrhet a few weeks
ago–loosely associated links from among the spray of web texts–discovery and
potentials in chaotic textual extension.  Wonderful.

And this clarification from Joseph Harris on his use of diverge fits
with D’Angelo, too, I think:

The verb I actually use in my essay is diverge.  I don’t see myself as
trying to head off or rebut the work of Ira Shor, James Berlin, or Patricia
Bizzell. Rather, I view us as starting out with a similar set of aims and
values, but ending up in different places, doing different kinds of
work.  Our approaches to teaching don’t conflict so much as branch away
from one another.  We need to find ways of talking about such divergences
that don’t lock us into fixed antagonisms–and especially that resist
valorizing some teachers for "empowering" students while dismissing
others as serving the "dominant ideology." (CE 66.5 557)

With this, then, I need only to note that I see D’Angelo’s essay as a
necessary, momentary assembling of the field toward "intelligible
structure" so that compositionists could, again, diverge in good
stead, loosely tied, supported, affirmed by some conceptual disciplinary
guard–a force at once beneficent and differentiating, making divergence
possible yet risky.

Detached Structures

"But one of the most important reasons for our inability to teach
composition adequately is that we have failed to identify the most significant
principles and concepts in the field which make intelligible everything we
do" (52).

"My thesis is that composition does not have an underlying structure
which gives unity and coherence to the field, that that structure can be
conceived of in terms of principles and forms (akin to those found in music or
painting, (for example), and that these principles and forms need to be taught
in an orderly sequence" (53).

"Virginia Burke emphasizes this point even more forcefully: ‘There is
chaos today in the teaching of composition because since the turn of the
century, composition has lacked an informing discipline, without which no field
can maintain its proper dimensions, the balance and proportion of its various
parts, or its very integrity. Consequently, the practice of composition has
shrunk, has lost important elements, has become a victim of all manner of
distortion’" (51).

"According to many critics, the composition curriculum was a loose
amalgam of separate skills and content which tried to pursue its various
objectives in a bewildering variety of ways" (57).

Cold Showers

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

The sixteen-year-old hot water heater in our basement started to wet itself
when the house-shopping plumber came in for the open house today.  Did I
mention that we’re selling this place ourselves? Yeah.  Great. 
Part-time real-estating. Ask me anything about the "Statement of
Condition" form. Anything. Maybe we’ll turn it over to a professional in
early June.

The water heater isn’t gushing yet.  Probably got another hot shower or
two in there.  I replaced the thermocouple
this winter; figured that would get us through the sale of the house.  No
such luck.

Fine with me that the plumber won’t be buying the house.  He could’ve
offered to fix the leak he provoked by tapping on stuff.  He just walked
around the house, knocking on the walls, looking behind furniture, grumbling
about the tangle of copper lines that *is* the ceilingof the garage.  No
aesthetic sensibility, this guy. Those pipes all criss-crossing are beautiful and masterfully crafted. Unconditionally, he wins Most Irritating
Visitor among the three shoppers who stopped by today.  The other two were
upbeat and polite. 

Between online course conversions and house-selling, I’ve been swamped. And
now I’ve got a hot water heater dilemma to sort through.  Took one call
already from a guy who wants $525 to install a new one.  "No," I
said, "It’s spelled R-h-e-e-m."  Dunno if I can handle replacing
a gas water heater on my own. But for 500 bucks, it had better come with a scalding
sponge bath.

 Due to post a serious entry at the blog any time now.  Maybe even
later today.

Chameleon

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

First, the quiz tells me: 

At work or in school: I need to be “hands on”: I like to play games, to compete, and to perform. I enjoy flexibility, changes of pace, and variety. I have difficulty with routine and structure. My favorite subjects are music, art, theatre, and crafts. I often excel in sports. I like solving problems in active ways and negotiating for what I want. I can be direct and like immediate results.

With friends: Planning ahead bores me because I never know what I want to do until the moment arrives. I like to excite my friends with new and different things, places to go, and romantic moments.

With family: I need a lot of space and freedom. I want everyone to have fun. It is hard for me to follow rules, and I feel we should all just enjoy one another.

Orange
What Color is Your Brain?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, yeah, I’ll be something different tomorrow.  Shades of green, gold
or blue. [via Culture
Cat – tks!]

Syracuse
U. announced yesterday that its mascot is now plain and simple: Orange.

Previously the [athletic] department had multiple marks and logos. In addition, Syracuse University’s teams will now use the nickname Orange, replacing Orangemen and
Orangewomen.

Fragmentation is bad for branding; fair enough.  Now Otto’s rotund
genderlessness perfectly matches the desexed mascot name.  I never cared
much for the genderbent mascots anyhow.  It’s been tricky at my current
institution, where "Pirates" is *usually* engendered as male, and
where "Lady Pirates" doesn’t do the trick–in my thinking.  Our
graphic solution was to prefer a skull;  the skeletal face is pretty much
neutral, right?  Of course, the graphic of the skull scares the kids, so
they drew up an alternative for "Little Pirates."  What a relief
that SU is simply Orange (and portends to be the first U. with a single official
color, rather than two).

Beats the heck out of rose
pink and pea green (SU’s original colors in 1872).  At Park, we’ve been
dickering over Canary and Old Wine versus their modern cousins, Maroon and
Gold.  Flipped back, forth and back again in my seven years there. 
Old wine: is that the color left in the bottom of the wine glass the morning
after a bottle of Chardonnay? Shiraz?

So I should be reading and working on course migrations into eCollege for the
summer and pasting a trail of fresh caulk in the bathrooms for house showing in
the days ahead.  I have to balance my priorities; SU trivia is going to
come in handy when we visit in early June.  Maybe I’ll find a sweatshirt
freshly reduced to the discount rack as a result of the switch to the latest
official logo. 

Words Made Me Do It

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

&nbsp

A
number
of
smart,
insightful
posts have turned up in recent days, working over the abhorrent prisoner abuse
news out of Abu Ghraib; I’m not sure I have a lot to add.  I’m still not
ready to dig my heals in on the whole issue; haven’t come to many firm
conclusions about what’s happened, although I do find Mike’s mention of command
failures to be compelling.  Jenny’s reading of Shaviro’s post is
interesting, too, for the suggestion that many of the young folks who
follow the enticements of recruiters have few other post-secondary options, have
vexed experiences with power and aggression, and find, in the recruiter’s pitch,
something promising.  

Lynndie England has become the poster child for U.S. military recklessness,
gone to abuse and photo op celebrations of abuse.  In one story (whose link
is down), England’s uncle said, basically, she was just following orders. 
Another story
from the Baltimore Sun, describes England as a "paper pusher";
she’s also termed a "scapegoat" by a family friend.  So what the
world needs now is a resurrection of Stanley Milgram’s experiment on subjects’
willingness to inflict harm by subduing conscience in deference to authority: agentic
shift. It’s the same sort of critique applied to Adolf
Eichmann who was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. 
Note: Some accountability went to his superiors, too.

I mention Eichmann because the corollaries are considerable.  And since
Eichmann’s role surfaced during the Nuremberg trials, I thought the following
connection was good enough for the blog.  See, Mark Bowden’s Atlantic
Monthly report on "The
Dark Art of Interrogation" seems almost prophetic now, in light of the
torture.  In October 2003, Bowden’s piece ran with its premise that
coercive discomfort, while not exactly "torture," is militarily
useful.  It saves lives, it enables intelligence officers to head off
plots, and it’s vital to criminal interrogation.  Fine. The project was
eerily predictive as I re-read it over the weekend, during the garage sale when
I needed something interruptible. From Bowden:

The official statements by President Bush and William Haynes reaffirming the
U.S. government’s opposition to torture have been applauded by human-rights
groups–but again, the language in them is carefully chosen. What does the Bush
Administration mean by "torture"? Does it really share the activists’
all-inclusive definition of the word? In his letter to the director of Human
Rights Watch, Haynes used the term "enemy combatants" to describe
those in custody. Calling detainees "prisoners of war" would entitle
them to the protections of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the
"physical or mental torture" of POWs, and "any other form of
coercion," even to the extent of "unpleasant or disadvantageous
treatment of any kind." (In the contemptuous words of one military man,
they "prohibit everything except three square meals, a warm bed, and access
to a Harvard education.") Detainees who are American citizens have the
advantage of constitutional protections against being held without charges, and
have the right to legal counsel. They would also be protected from the worst
abuses by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual
punishment." The one detainee at Guantanamo who was discovered to have
been born in the United States has been transferred to a different facility, and
legal battles rage over his status. But if the rest of the thousands of
detainees are neither POWs (even though the bulk of them were captured during
the fighting in Afghanistan) nor American citizens, they are fair game. They are
protected only by this country’s international promises–which are, in effect,
unenforceable.

And this:

The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter.
Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against
humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even
a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who
protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it
generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate
U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for
American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also
smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

Apart from sensationalizing passages, it’s a strong
article for context, for digging into the semantics of "torture,"
splitting out what it is and what it’s not, in legal terms. 
"Torture," in this sense, is avoidable–duck the Geneva Compact, dodge
international law and the Constitution, play the slippery terms.  

As I looked into Bowden’s article and what follows, I
was especially taken by the letter from Stephen Rickard, Director of the Nuremberg
Legacy Project, an effort to memorialize historic atrocities of war. 
Rickard’s letter
shows up in the Jan/Feb 2004 Atlantic Monthly, an issue with the
White House Chiefs of Staff, including Don Rumsfeld, on the front.  In his
letter (scroll down to "Interrogations"), Rickard defends the Bush
Administration’s definitive stance on torture and coercion:

Mark Bowden’s article "The Dark Art of Interrogation" (October Atlantic)
is an important survey of calculated cruelty. But when Bowden argues that the
Bush Administration’s position on the legality of "torture lite"
(so-called "stress and duress" interrogation) is ambiguous and
should be, he is wrong on both points.

Bowden correctly notes that Administration officials said for months that no
detainee was being "tortured," but failed to rule out "cruel,
inhumane, or degrading" treatment. Both are prohibited by the U.S.
Constitution and international law. Specifically, he cites an April letter
from William J. Haynes II, general counsel for the Defense Department, to
Human Rights Watch, which ruled out only "torture," and says,
"Haynes’s choice of words was careful–and telling."

It’ll be interesting to see how the Nuremberg Legacy
Project responds to the atrocities now upon us, U.S. culpability in the fiasco,
and the currency of it all.  So many other atrocities of war have been set
against years of discovery.  Eichmann, for example, was pursued for years
before he was tried in 1997 for crimes nearly fifty years past.  And while
I’m not sure recent events match Eichmann’s crimes, I recommend a quick read
through Bowden’s story and some of the letters of response.  If nothing
else, they affirm the drastic shifts in meaning stemming from context: the
meaning of these months-old articles has been overhauled in the last ten
days.