bad job

Saudi couple hammers 23 nails into their 49-year-old Sri Lankan maid after she complains of overwork. HERE.

the William James passage

I’m not sure it always passes so cleanly from one stage to the next; there is plenty of overlap in many cases. But the basic point remains true:

“All new doctrine goes through three stages. It is attacked and declared absurd; then it is admitted as true and obvious but insignificant. Finally, its true importance is recognized and its adversaries claim the honor of having discovered it.”

The last point here is the one at issue. And I’m not even talking about the Derrida controversy: I’ve now noticed at least two semi-anonymous people in the blogosphere who claim they thought up the idea of OOO themselves before ever hearing of us. (!) I guess it doesn’t matter too much as long as they start working on the right things. If it ever gets to the point of a true struggle over priority, then of course that will be an excellent sign.

college sports corruption

Not the least bit surprising:

“North Carolina expanded the inquiry into its football program to include allegations of academic impropriety involving a former tutor writing papers for players, sources said Thursday.”

One of the interesting side-issues of teaching at DePaul while a graduate student there is that we all had the chance to trade notes about fishy incidents involving basketball players… Things like one star player turning in his required course notebook in a suspiciously feminine script, or in my case one player “forgetting” to turn in his final paper before the conference tournament, and then suddenly it was FedExed to me in a good but not too good writing style that was a bit beyond his normal level.

My position on this issue has changed a lot over the years. I’m obviously a great fan of sports, including college sports. But there’s no longer any question to me that big-money college sports is inherently corrupting, makes a mockery of the student athlete concept, and to my mind no longer has a place in higher education. It’s become too lucrative to stay honest. Essentially, I’ve flipped to the other extreme on this issue and now would like to see major sports removed from American universities altogether and placed in clubs, in the European fashion. Every time I had anything to do with the process, it simply smelled too bad.

And that’s just the academic corruption side of things. Bring in the gambling angle, and it’s even worse. It’s common knowledge that college basketball is the easiest sport to corrupt. There are a small number of players on the court, the point guard will generally be doing most of the ballhandling at the end of the game, which means he will often be fouled by the other team and will be shooting free throws. It’s not that hard to miss a free throw intentionally while looking like you’re trying your best. Corrupt that one player and your chances of winning the bet are pretty good. How to corrupt him? There are lots of ways. For one thing, he’s likely to be from a fairly poor family. For another thing, you can get him addicted to betting on other sports, get him in the hole for $20,000 or $30,000, then start making threats while offering him the chance to pay it all off by just missing a few free throws at the end of the next game.

While I was still in Chicago, one of the Sun-Times columnists swore he was witness to a college basketball gambling arrangement one year. He was in a bar on the North Side before the beginning of an NCAA tournament game. Five minutes before the game, cell phones started ringing in the bar. Soon the whispers were passed throughout the room: the fix was in. And sure enough, the star player of the heavily favored team had a horrible game and the team lost.

And switching to college football… Don’t even mention to me the name of a certain star Iowa player in the 1986 Rose Bowl, someone who also later dropped an easy touchdown pass in the end zone in an NFL playoff game under suspicious circumstances. I still keep expecting him to write a “confessional” book about his gambling addiction one of these days; you had to see the 1986 game, and you’d know what I mean.

70th or so Cairo return

And I still always forget how fun it is. Cairo has to be a candidate for the liveliest city on earth, and there’s always some little quirk with whatever taxi experience you have from the airport.

Tonight’s cab driver was white-haired, 60’ish. He had an air of serious piety, not only with the Qur’an readings playing on the radio (not rare, especially during Ramadan), but through the fact that he seemed really delighted that I made a few remarks about them after wishing him a happy Ramadan.

However, about halfway during the ride, he insisted on switching to the techno station. Actually… he asked me if I wouldn’t rather hear that station, and when I said no (out of respect to the Ramadan radio programming) he changed the station anyway, tapping his steering wheel the whole way. My guess is he was tired and that was his way to stay awake, similar to when I once saw my grandfather zero in on “Billie Jean” during an all-night drive from Pennsylvania to Iowa.

one iPad correction

In my post a few days ago on the strengths and weaknesses of the iPad, I listed among the weaknesses the fact that you had to charge it through your computer. Michael Flower, who is an experienced and skilled user of the device, wrote in to say that he didn’t follow my meaning on that point. I didn’t follow his either, but figured he must be right given his great facility in using the device.

Well, Michael was of course right, and it’s actually pretty simple… There is a plug in the box that easily allows you to hook the iPad into a wall socket. I couldn’t avoid noticing the plug, but for various accidental reasons didn’t notice the USB connection on it, and couldn’t quite figure out what it was for. I’m too absent-minded on technical questions, and always trust the word of others over my own eyes on such matters. The odd thing is, I was pretty good with computers up into my late teens, but then let those synapses die off, I guess.

Anyway, rest assured, you don’t need to charge the iPad through your computer.

watch out for overweight luggage

I bought too many books in Paris, no question. That happens every time, and is inevitable.

And yes, my luggage was 2.7 kilos overweight. The penalty for that? 100 Euros! They let me open my luggage and take some books out. I chose 4 books that looked like they might add up to around 2.7 kilos, and put them in a plastic carry-on bag.

Despite my general incompetence with the metric system, those 4 books weighed exactly 2.7 kilos. Not a bad guess.

Crayola party game

Something we got into last night: trying to brainstorm how many of the 64 Crayola crayon set we could remember. It’s quite a memory test, because surely it’s been well over 30 years since I picked up a crayon. (If you have kids of your own, no fair, because you’ll have seen the crayons recently.)

I remembered burnt umber, but had completely forgotten periwinkle. The most annoying color? Easily, white. I remember trying it a couple of time on black construction paper, but even that wasn’t very satisfying.

Most un-PC color? Flesh, of course.

I went and looked at the latest set of colors, and some of the names are pretty stupid gimmicks now.

Also, I remember thinking it was cute back in the 1990’s when I read that “macaroni and cheese” was one of the winnning new color names submitted by a child. But I finally saw it this morning, and personally I think it in no way resembles the color of macaroni and cheese. But perhaps there was a problem with my screen.

(As you may be able to tell, I’m killing some time at CDG right now. It is usually the world’s most stressful and terrible airport, in my opinion, but today it’s relaxed and empty for some reason, at least in this particular terminal.)

The Onion on the Mexican immigration debate

This editorial pretty much nails it:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/stop-making-delicious-food-i-cant-stop-eating-and,17951/

“And good riddance to them all! Except for Pedro at work, of course. And the Velázquez family, who’ve invited me to their family barbecue three years running. Talk about some grilling going down! I guess I’d miss Maria from the coffee shop; she must have the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen. Oh, and Danny, who sometimes plays golf with us. Can’t forget the Guzmáns. They’re more friends of my wife, but Manuel is full of hilarious stories, plus they turned me onto pollo en pipián. Who would have thought that a sauce made from pumpkin seeds could be so sublime? Yeah, and Dr. Gilberto, my dentist. I’ll miss him too. He’s a good guy.

But the rest of you, the ones I don’t know personally, I won’t miss you at all.”

the voice of Bergson

How did this happen? Somehow the voice of Henri Bergson suddenly emanated from iTunes? I have no memory whatsoever of downloading this, nor can I discover where I found it. But it’s definitely Bergson, in an old recording. Much more dramatic and theatrical than I would have expected.

Oh, maybe I downloaded it in Warsaw. Marcin had a bunch of good stuff that I was playing straight from his computer. Bergson must have copied. Good stuff.

new Heidegger volume available

Looks like Band 78, Der Spruch des Anaximander, is now listed as AVAILABLE rather than simply in preparation. (However, I’m still two volumes behind as it is. Some of the new volumes are simply boring, like driving the same interstate highway for the 50th time.)

But what the heck, there’s time to make one last over to Vrin to see if they already have it.

[UPDATE: Vrin had a note on the door saying they’re closed for all of August: false, since I’ve been there multiple times. But in any case, even Amazon.de doesn’t have the book available yet, though Klostermann says it’s ready.

Depending on what you count as a Heidegger volume, this is possibly the 91st volume in the set.]