La Marquesa's b-day
All right folks. Y'all got to watch an alt.celebrity death match (one fac/one admin) yesterday. For those who missed it, Pat and La Marquesa got into it over: multimodal analysis, triangulation, Hinton 1993. Now that Pat and I have "modeled the behavior" of knights, we all (The pICT 2005) have to return to the lowlier (and less prestigious--go to my web site http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~marquesa/ and click on Manuel de Landa--in the interview with Manuel Landa, there is a section on knights vs. archers) task of strategizing together about bringing those of us in the humanities into a project being run out of the College of Undergraduate Education. This is my concern: it's being "run" with certain unexamined/unstated assumptions that "feel" more like "College of Sciences" than "Arts and Letters," or English and Comp Lit.
We all need to read, if we have not (I have not yet), Perry R. Hinton, The Psychology of Interpersonal Perception.
Those in the sciences who get grants are judged by a different set of criteria than those in the humanities. We have to do research because that's how they judge us--not by grant amount--many of us do not get grants.
Simply put, it's not that Pat and I are on opposite sides of anything. I want to bring quantitative and qualitative thinking together into our classrooms. Math and lit in the same undergrad lower division class. However, like all real research institutions (and we are now having the kinds of problems they have), we will have "tense" moments when funding seems threatened--anyone's--for any reason.
Assessment is more complex. We are moving from party school to think tank. Out of respect for all sides, we need to be UN-style "sensitive" to possible misunderstandings. When the term "assessment" is used by an administrator in the presence of both tenured and untenured faculty without cushioning/explaining--many of us got to feel like students during the last four days--we're being graded on what????? We are not "recalcitrant." We are terrified. There's a difference.
Brock and Hicks haven't had lunch yet to work out the relationships among: digital culture, ontology, epistemology. I am sure he will inform me of the correct relationships and the software that can be used to relate all data in all possible configurations using multidimensional scaling, peanut butter....sunlight...a piece of glass...
It's all good. I remember being a grad student at UCSD and hanging out at UC Irvine (Program in Comparative Culture) (late 70s). The hard/soft divide can get much uglier than yesterday--yesterday, we were on the same side. Ugly is when people have fully funded high stake differences--when "multimodal" is not a term respected by all.
Real research institutions get their labs shut down, their funding lost...all the time...really important stuff...delayed, ruined...over... I went to Berkeley as an undergrad. My grandfather has patents (ionizer, electric car). Tracy and I both grew up with some exposure to all this (Tracy grew up in a lab). It's pretty sad seeing grown researchers trying not to get emotional when it happens. Tracy's father worked at Rockland Institute. One day you're inventing the precursors to Prozac (no, Tracy's father didn't make any money---would we be here?) running the lab...next day you're in charge of making sure the top floor is secure--a sort of well-respected night watchperson (but woops, you lost your funding/space). It happens. So bajale (calm down and, please, get over yourselves) non-humanities people. Quit "telling" us and consider learning from us. We're "way" closer to our colleagues at the elite research institutions than you are. Like them, we already know how to "do it in our garages." Just like good fashion, ideas come from the street.
I would like to answer a question Brock implied.
Brock made a statement which I mentally rewrote as a question he was having trouble formulating. He stated: "You (read: tiny earthlings) don't have to do research (in relation to the last four days). You can just do a project (that he gets paid to study????)." What he may have meant was: "Wow. You seemed stressed. Just add a blog assignment to your class." Or " Why are you stressed?" We in the humanities do not have the time/infrastructure to "just do a project." We have to do research all the time--not curriculum development that we do and you guys study as we do it. For some of us, this is not the first workshop/curricular reform project activity at SDSU. For some of us, we have done so many of these projects that a special form of post-traumatic stress kicks in when we see the weird brown plastic coffee cups/holders (topographically speaking, what are they and will the coffee really stay in there?), no more coffee in the big icky silver thing (we're four minutes late and the coffee's already gone), and we're asked to "come up with new ideas for courses." We need to do research in relation to all other activities all the time.
Please do not look down us. No one shot stipend is worth giving up our dignity (all we have left).
Curriculum development in our world (the humanities) is despised (ranked lowest for you quantitative types) by all committees (from who decides which lecturer for which class to RTP) all the time judging all aspects of our lives (ranking, room assignment, use of Xerox machine). We get that you don't get that. We brought it up over and over for four days. You did not hear us yet. Each one of us in the humanities can explain our own, unique versions of lack of access to rooms, etc. What version would you like: a high level researcher from a country that is not the United States, a leader in her field, who gets invited to international film conferences constantly and can't get a smart classroom to teach film? She crosses the border from unnamed country, parks, goes to AH, checks out the equipment (laptop, whatever), carries the equipment upstairs. That's what we're talking about. Some of us can explain these counterintuitive relationships to you in several non-English languages. If what we do does not lead to an article in a refereed journal, it will not "count." We do what we do (teaching/research) without grant money, for the most part. Regarding the research, we do it, as in free beer, for free.
Sara warned us not to put things in blogs that we don't want to be there forever (or until The Singularity/the big black hole suck). I live a little less sad knowing that this pre-wicki still in blog form attempt at communication in which I try to get those outside the humanities to "understand" may never die. Please read it over and over. We can help you "get it." We won't be impatient explaining it to you over and over...
On a happier note, Qualcomm corporate headquarters is not what they showed us. It's HTH. Latest report (while driving to school) from my son on what he and Alex Dodge were discussing last night on line: the computing capabilities of a rock. Discussion began in relation to how far back the ability to lie goes. That (using John Nash's chart and the entire tradition of software and other research out of which it came, genealogically) was "caused" by concern with Bush's "lies" about Iraq and rhetorical tactics used by Hitler. They were discussing an issue in the field of rhetoric: how far back lying goes... So we in the unfunded humanities win this round...the kids are talkin' about "our" stuff (in relation to computing, of course). For free.
Off topic: today is my birthday. 54. Happy to be working with researchers...hopin' to move towards policy shifts...thank you Qualcomm. I applied to Stanford when I was twelve...they asked me to finish the sixth grade...the eighties were good...it's been hard...when my son quit making math the center of his life (may be temporary), I remembered I loved set theory...and now it's getting good again...
Don't forget to check out that journal Sara mentioned. Cool web site: http://www.reason.com/
We all need to read, if we have not (I have not yet), Perry R. Hinton, The Psychology of Interpersonal Perception.
Those in the sciences who get grants are judged by a different set of criteria than those in the humanities. We have to do research because that's how they judge us--not by grant amount--many of us do not get grants.
Simply put, it's not that Pat and I are on opposite sides of anything. I want to bring quantitative and qualitative thinking together into our classrooms. Math and lit in the same undergrad lower division class. However, like all real research institutions (and we are now having the kinds of problems they have), we will have "tense" moments when funding seems threatened--anyone's--for any reason.
Assessment is more complex. We are moving from party school to think tank. Out of respect for all sides, we need to be UN-style "sensitive" to possible misunderstandings. When the term "assessment" is used by an administrator in the presence of both tenured and untenured faculty without cushioning/explaining--many of us got to feel like students during the last four days--we're being graded on what????? We are not "recalcitrant." We are terrified. There's a difference.
Brock and Hicks haven't had lunch yet to work out the relationships among: digital culture, ontology, epistemology. I am sure he will inform me of the correct relationships and the software that can be used to relate all data in all possible configurations using multidimensional scaling, peanut butter....sunlight...a piece of glass...
It's all good. I remember being a grad student at UCSD and hanging out at UC Irvine (Program in Comparative Culture) (late 70s). The hard/soft divide can get much uglier than yesterday--yesterday, we were on the same side. Ugly is when people have fully funded high stake differences--when "multimodal" is not a term respected by all.
Real research institutions get their labs shut down, their funding lost...all the time...really important stuff...delayed, ruined...over... I went to Berkeley as an undergrad. My grandfather has patents (ionizer, electric car). Tracy and I both grew up with some exposure to all this (Tracy grew up in a lab). It's pretty sad seeing grown researchers trying not to get emotional when it happens. Tracy's father worked at Rockland Institute. One day you're inventing the precursors to Prozac (no, Tracy's father didn't make any money---would we be here?) running the lab...next day you're in charge of making sure the top floor is secure--a sort of well-respected night watchperson (but woops, you lost your funding/space). It happens. So bajale (calm down and, please, get over yourselves) non-humanities people. Quit "telling" us and consider learning from us. We're "way" closer to our colleagues at the elite research institutions than you are. Like them, we already know how to "do it in our garages." Just like good fashion, ideas come from the street.
I would like to answer a question Brock implied.
Brock made a statement which I mentally rewrote as a question he was having trouble formulating. He stated: "You (read: tiny earthlings) don't have to do research (in relation to the last four days). You can just do a project (that he gets paid to study????)." What he may have meant was: "Wow. You seemed stressed. Just add a blog assignment to your class." Or " Why are you stressed?" We in the humanities do not have the time/infrastructure to "just do a project." We have to do research all the time--not curriculum development that we do and you guys study as we do it. For some of us, this is not the first workshop/curricular reform project activity at SDSU. For some of us, we have done so many of these projects that a special form of post-traumatic stress kicks in when we see the weird brown plastic coffee cups/holders (topographically speaking, what are they and will the coffee really stay in there?), no more coffee in the big icky silver thing (we're four minutes late and the coffee's already gone), and we're asked to "come up with new ideas for courses." We need to do research in relation to all other activities all the time.
Please do not look down us. No one shot stipend is worth giving up our dignity (all we have left).
Curriculum development in our world (the humanities) is despised (ranked lowest for you quantitative types) by all committees (from who decides which lecturer for which class to RTP) all the time judging all aspects of our lives (ranking, room assignment, use of Xerox machine). We get that you don't get that. We brought it up over and over for four days. You did not hear us yet. Each one of us in the humanities can explain our own, unique versions of lack of access to rooms, etc. What version would you like: a high level researcher from a country that is not the United States, a leader in her field, who gets invited to international film conferences constantly and can't get a smart classroom to teach film? She crosses the border from unnamed country, parks, goes to AH, checks out the equipment (laptop, whatever), carries the equipment upstairs. That's what we're talking about. Some of us can explain these counterintuitive relationships to you in several non-English languages. If what we do does not lead to an article in a refereed journal, it will not "count." We do what we do (teaching/research) without grant money, for the most part. Regarding the research, we do it, as in free beer, for free.
Sara warned us not to put things in blogs that we don't want to be there forever (or until The Singularity/the big black hole suck). I live a little less sad knowing that this pre-wicki still in blog form attempt at communication in which I try to get those outside the humanities to "understand" may never die. Please read it over and over. We can help you "get it." We won't be impatient explaining it to you over and over...
On a happier note, Qualcomm corporate headquarters is not what they showed us. It's HTH. Latest report (while driving to school) from my son on what he and Alex Dodge were discussing last night on line: the computing capabilities of a rock. Discussion began in relation to how far back the ability to lie goes. That (using John Nash's chart and the entire tradition of software and other research out of which it came, genealogically) was "caused" by concern with Bush's "lies" about Iraq and rhetorical tactics used by Hitler. They were discussing an issue in the field of rhetoric: how far back lying goes... So we in the unfunded humanities win this round...the kids are talkin' about "our" stuff (in relation to computing, of course). For free.
Off topic: today is my birthday. 54. Happy to be working with researchers...hopin' to move towards policy shifts...thank you Qualcomm. I applied to Stanford when I was twelve...they asked me to finish the sixth grade...the eighties were good...it's been hard...when my son quit making math the center of his life (may be temporary), I remembered I loved set theory...and now it's getting good again...
Don't forget to check out that journal Sara mentioned. Cool web site: http://www.reason.com/
posted by Emily at
2:02 PM
1 Comments:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
I have much to tell you...will send you something via a more private forum. You'll get a kick out of it.
--LA
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