While listening to Radiohead on my iPod and surfing around the Internet and while in Florida (all of this is potentially the proverbial “long story”), I came across this very cool drum machine flash animation. Enjoy.
The Humble Beginnings of Krause's Official Podcast
I Need To Do Some Updating….
See? I told you I wouldn’t stay away for long….
Anyway, a comment from someone asked when I was going to set up an RSS feed for this site, and even though that comment was really spam, they did have a good point. So I set up a Feedburner feed; I might do something different sometime soon.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this here or not, but I have been meaning to set up a podcasting element to the site. Since I went ahead anddid the feed….
I'll be away from my desktop…
Spring Winter Break is upon us at EMU, and, as you read this post (I actually wrote it earlier in the day), I am on an airplane to visit family in Florida for a few days. I decided not to take my laptop for both technical and, I don’t know, quasi-spiritual reasons. “Technical” because my ailing laptop which no longer will run on battery power has become a bit of a pain to haul around. “Quasi-spiritual” because I could probably use a few days where I don’t spend as much time at the keyboard.
This is not to say I won’t be spending any time on my short break doing computer work. My wife is bringing her laptop and I suspect I will be borrowing it from time to time. I just don’t know if I’ll be posting anything here or not.
In any event, see you next week. Possibly sooner.
Where have all the administrators gone?
As part of my blog reading and writing this morning, I thought I’d point people to Dean Dad’s post of a book I’m not liable to read anytime soon, the 2006 edition of The Search Committee Handbook: A Guide to Recruiting Administrators. He rejects the lame explanations in the book about why the pools of candidates for administrative positions have dropped in recent years and suggests instead that the reason why people aren’t applying for these jobs is because potential applicants just aren’t there. Universities and colleges haven’t hired enough faculty in the last twenty or thirty years, and these are the folks who would be applying for these administrative jobs now.
His explanation makes some sense, but from my point of view, I think it’s more than that. First off (and this depends a lot on who you listen to), a lot of administrative work has already been forced on to faculty. I say “depending on who you listen to” because I’m in a field (composition and rhetoric) where it seems pretty normal to do some administrative work, because I don’t think I have enough of a point of comparison to argue that the administrative work that faculty do now is so much more than it used to be, and because it seems to me that plenty of faculty managed to avoid this work by simply refusing to do it.
In my department, there are basically two types of faculty administrative work: the sort of thing that everyone does (most people pitch in to write silly program review documents, for example), and what I call “quasi-administrative” work, where a faculty member receives course release to head a program or a special project. For example, I am the writing program coordinator right now, which means I receive a course release a term to do stuff like advising grad students, scheduling classes, helping to recruit faculty, and other various paper-pushing activities.
Which leads me to reason number two: never say never, but I am unlikely to apply for a full-time administrative job (a department head, some sort of dean, etc.) because it strikes me as generally unpleasant and thankless, an opinion that I am sure has been formed in part by my experiences as a faculty member who has been called upon to do thankless administrative paperwork in the past. Being the writing program coordinator is kind of fun, mainly because it involves working with students and colleagues in my field. But doing this work full-time and doing this work with minimal contact with faculty and no meaningful contact with students seems like a bad idea to me.
Like I said, never say never. Administrators make more money than faculty, and there are some potentially interesting administrative jobs here at EMU. But this kind of work is simply at odds with my lifestyle as a happy academic. I like my job because I like to teach, I like to do research, and I like the extraordinary flexibility of my schedule (though it must be acknowledged it is both a blessing and a curse). Administrators don’t teach (well, some do, but they don’t teach much), they don’t do research (again, some do, but not as a rule), and they have to work regular and fixed hours (and they are expected to be at all kinds of administrator-like functions beyond 9-5).
Plus I don’t have the wardrobe.
To EMU Elevator Users in Pray-Harrold Hall: There Are Stairs….
Here’s a typical elevator scenario in the building I work in at EMU, Pray-Harrold Hall, one I just experienced a few minutes ago:
- I arrive and enter the building on the second floor, which I realize is confusing because the basement is actually the first floor. No one is really around, I’m with my wife (who is carrying a bunch of school stuff), I’m not in a hurry, and I’m feeling lazy, so we go to the elevators. Despite the fact that my office is on the sixth floor, I often take the stairs. A perfectly able-bodied person is also waiting in the lobby area for the elevator.
- The elevators are very slow and often barely functioning, so after an inevitable wait, one arrives. We get on and select floors. I select 6, another person selects 7 (the top floor), another 5. Able-bodied person selects 3.
- People who actually have a reason to use the elevator look at each other and then at able-bodied person, who has inexplicably waited several minutes for an elevator to go up one flight of stairs and subsequently slowed the rest of us down. Able-bodied person disembarks on the third floor. We discuss able-bodied person on our ride to the higher floors.
I don’t know what the deal is here, but this happens all the time. What is all the more amazing is that there are many times– between classes, for example- when the elevators are very busy and crowded and able-bodied peoples will still wait around for ten minutes or longer and then cram themselves into an already crowded elevator to go up (or even down!) a single floor.
I’m not in charge here (and I think all of us, including myself, are thankful about that), but if I were in charge, I would make a rule. Unless you are pushing around something on a cart, have an enourmous amount of stuff that would be difficult to carry up a flight of stairs, you have a valid medical excuse and/or disability:
- You are not allowed to take the elevator up a single floor, particularly the second to the third floor.
- You are not allowed to take the elevator down a single floor, again, particularly from the third to the second floor.
- There are four stairwells in the building, and while it is kind of confusing that only two of these sets of stairs actually goes to the seventh floor, you should use them.
There– that is my effort this week at public service announcement and education all in one post.
Coldplay fun
Annette and I went to see Coldplay tonight at the (fabled) Palace of Auburn Hills and I’m all keyed up (which is why I’m still awake and posting on my blog at this hour). Here’s a few highlights:
- Somewhere in that photograph is the band. I’m pretty sure. It isn’t just that the camera on my phone is kind of crappy (which it is); it’s also that we had not good seats. We were in the 200-level, which is the upper-deck, and hey, guess what? I found out that there are 19 rows in the 200 section of the Palace. You know why I found this out? Because we were in row 19, and behind us was a freakin’ concrete wall and I could have touched the ceiling.
- As a result of this vantage point, it seems to me that the members of Cold Play and the opening act, Fiona Apple (more on her in a second), were remarkably small. Like two, three feet tall, tops. Actually, what did occur to me just now: do you remember that bit from Kids in the Hall where the guy holds his thumb and index finger together and he looks through it and says “I crush your head”? It was a bit like that. In any event, the lesson I learned is get tickets in the 100-level section or a low row in the 200s.
- Fiona Apple– and I will say at the outset that I am not a fan– was kind of bad. Besides the fact that she was not really able to deal well with the “arena rock” venue (she would have been much better in a club or a place like the Michigan Theater or something), she sang poorly and was as twitchy as a monkey on crack (and that might not be as much of a metaphor as I had originally intended).
- Coldplay was very good– a very polished, well-rehearsed, talented group. I especially liked their version of the Johnny/Roseanne Cash song “Burning Ring of Fire,” part of the segment of the show where they came off of the main stage for a more intimate “minor stage” performance out front. This seems very popular at big arena rock shows nowadays. And then there was a segment where Chris Martin (the lead singer) ran all the way to the other end of the arena and sang the end of one of the encore songs.
- But screw this “intimate moments;” the best part of the Coldplay show was the high tech/multimedia/super-duper lighting spectcle. Which was also one of the reasons why they were good in the arena rock format.
- The beer/wine situation and such was not great and kind of amusing at the same time. Between the Fiona “twitchy, cracky monkey” Apple set and Coldplay, I went out to go to the bathroom and to get Annette and I another round of drinks (we each just had one before). The bathroom line for the men was bad, but the women’s room line was just crazy. Anyway, after I finished my business in the men’s room, I noticed that in the line waiting was a young woman– a bit discreet, possibly on a dare, possibly because she had to pee and saw her chances with the traditional way.
- The line for beer and wine was just as bad as the men’s room, and, given that another beer would have forced me to pee again during Coldplay’s show, I made an “executive decision” and decided to skp the second round. Which turned out to be the right choice.
- Every time I venture east of the Detroit airport (Annette claimed this happens to her every time she goes east of Bombadill’s), I end up getting lost, and tonight was no different. Long story short: getting there was pretty easy, but getting back wasn’t.
- I’d like to see a basketball game there– if I could get decent seats….
Well, duh… or is that doh?
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You Are a Glazed Donut |
 Okay, you know that you’re plain – and you’re cool with that. You prefer not to let anything distract from your sweetness. Your appeal is understated yet universal. Everyone dig you. And in a pinch, you’ll probably get eaten. |
(Kind of a so-so quiz; I stumbled across it while commenting on a student blog and it distracted me and….)
The Beer Watcher: Brewing (really, bottling), part 3
How is the beer making going, you ask? Well, I am reminded of one of the audience call and response bits in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There’s a part where Frank-n-furter is adding weird chemicals/food coloring to the vat where his creation, Rocky, is being, ah, created. Half the audience calls out “Is it soup yet?” The other half responds “Not yet!” This goes on until Rocky’s head is revealed, at which point everyone yells “It’s soup!!”
So, is it beer yet? Not yet! (but almost).
We went through the last step in the process this past Sunday at Bill H-D’s place– the last step besides seriously drinking, that is– which is bottling. Here’s a run-down of what happened:
First off, this is it, what has been sitting around for about a month now: this, my friends, is beer. At least it’s beer still in the carboy (that’s what you call the big jar) with all the hops and other miscellaneous “stuff” floating around in there– again, think flavor crystals– and before bottling and subsequent additional aging (and carbonation). The little doo-hicky at the top is the air lock, which allows gases to escape (conveniently preventing an explosion) and yet prevents air from getting in.
Now, the first step in bottling is cleaning and sterilizing the bottles.
Here’s Bill getting bottles out of the dishwasher.
And here’s the sanitation assembly line. I handed a bottle to Bill (seated), who filled it with the food-grade sterilizing solution (which is in the same container we will later use to fill the bottles with beer), and he handed it to Steve B.
Man, I love to sanitize!
After we were done sanitizing (and thus we now had an empty and sterilized bucket), it was time for bottling. In this picture, I am adding the “priming” mixture (I believe just disolved corn syrup and water) to the bucket. The idea here is that the remaining yeast in the beer will be reactivated in the bottles, thus producing carbonation and more complete beer-y goodness. In the background, you can see Bill holding the siphoning apparatus.
This is where gravity comes into play: Bill has stuck one end of the siphoning hose into the carboy with the beer. Connected to the hose is a long plastic tube which has a filter on it (the hops and other flavor crystals have done their job) and which reaches to the bottom of the carboy. In the hose, Bill has added a bit of water. He dropped the hose with a bit of water into the bucket, that started sucking out the beer, and thus beer started moving from the carboy to the bucket, as seen here:
I feel I look especially fat and stupid in this picture, but I thought it was useful to a siphoning photo, and I look even more idiotic in this picture. The point is that with our friend gravity (it’s not just a theory, it’s the law), the carboy was empty in a matter of minutes. Keep this in mind if you have to siphon gas or something– much more pleasant than sucking on the hose.
Here’s Bill working to suck out every last drop, though I think we still ended up with a good five bottles worth of beer stuck in the sludge.
So we sampled a tad of beer to test the alcohol content with the hydrometer (around 7% alcohol, if I recall)….
… the color of the beer is admired…
.. and the beer is sampled. Actually, I kid with this look where I was going for a sort of pirate-like “ARRRRGGGG!” It’s very very tasty beer, much like Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, as was promised by the recipe we picked out. And of course we get to taste the satisfaction of the home-made brew.
Then, it was bottling time.
Basically, it was pretty much a repeat of the sanitizing process: I hand Bill a bottle, he fills it with beer, and he passes it to Steve B. There was one additional step though:
The bottles were capped. On Alton Brown’s Good Eats episode where he makes beer, he poo-poos the capping thing in favor of those Grolsch-styled bottle stoppers that attach to the top. Maybe, but I have to say the capper is pretty cool.
The old hops/brewing spooge was dumped out of the carboy, some things were cleaned up, and:
Beer.
Steve B. and I took our individual cases (really, about 16 beers I think– we ended up with a little less than expected), and then it was time to (what else?) go out and have some beers and lunch. The whole process took us about 2 and half hours, considerably quicker than it took Bill the last time he did this all alone.
So, was it worth it? Will I do it again? Well, I don’t think it’s worth it for me to go out and buy a kit of my own. But it is a pleasant-enough social activity, and Bill and Steve B. and I are already talking about another round of brewing (this time at Steve B.’s house since he has a bigger kitchen), perhaps a lovely wheat ale. In the mean-time, it’s a couple of weeks in the bottle and then drinkin’ time.
Academic Blogging (No Kidding…)
Jeff “Yellow Dog” Rice has a nice piece in his favorite internet publication, Inside Higher Education, called “Serious Bloggers.” Lots of good stuff here, most of which I agree with.
Four thoughts:
- I completely COMPLETELY agree with the bit about anonymous academic blogging, a practice I have thought problematic for a long time. See, for example this entry and this one from the distant past (oh, okay, a year and a half ago). But I really like Jeff’s turn on the term “seriousness” in this essay. He writes:
The consequences of this seriousness can be quite problematic, more problematic than whether or not a reader will take offense (or even retribution) at one’s postings. The consequence of this seriousness is stagnation. When we become too serious about novel ideas too quickly, we deny ourselves the ability to experiment with and develop the very innovations in communication we are attracted to in the first place. In turn, we replicate processes already in circulation; i.e., we maintain a status quo and fail to explore possibilities raised by the new medium. One hears that stagnation in the repeated refrains of “fear� pseudonymous bloggers express or the tropes of general complaining many pseudonymous weblogs turn out.
- Some of the comments on this piece strike me as misguided. Folks, when Rice suggests we need to take the form of blogging “less seriously,” I don’t think he is talking about “being funny” per se.
- On the other hand (#1), academic bloggers often want their blog writing to be taken “seriously” in an academic sense of it “counting” for something. Many of the folks in this circle of bloggers has written about this in the past– possibly even Jeff.
- On still yet another hand (#2), academic (and other) bloggers, serious ones and not so serious ones, always self-censor in the sense that no one ever reveals everything about their lives on their blogs. As a simple example, while Jeff’s blog is indeed a mix of all sorts of different things, I don’t think you’ll find him complaining about his students or his colleagues on his blog. Conversely, it seems to me the main purpose of a lot of anonymous academic blogs is specifically to bitch about the people the work with and the students they have to teach. (Okay, maybe Bitch, PhD doesn’t really do that, but I couldn’t resist the link.)
That’s enough– I don’t want to take this too seriously, and now I have to get on with the day a bit.