read between the lions

McLemee in IHE on gutting the research collection at NYC’s public library.

Scott Sherman’s Nation piece of 12/19/11.

quarterly report

i’ve posted nothing here for several months.
i don’t exactly *plan* to return to regular posting;
we’ll see what happens.

fall quarter was much the busiest i’ve been
with actual *paying work* in several years…
so there’s my excuse if any were needed.
i started the quarter with a 2-section
Teaching Assistant post (Calc 4; 3D stuff
and whatnot). then 2 grading positions
came along (Abstract Algebra & Intro Analysis)
and i snapped ‘em up. finally, several weeks
into the quarter, the instructor for a
Linear Algebra class took a rest-of-quarter
medical leave and i stepped in and took over.

i also posted *almost* nothing in
MathEdZineBlog. again, i make
no claims about my future behavior.

my “home” connection, never reliable, appears
to be getting worse. meanwhile, my mac is
almost three years old and more and more
online software refuses to deal with it
until i download this-or-that; it’s worked
these three years *without* taking such risks
and’ll probably go right *on* working
for three more if i keep refusing;
meanwhile the net will become useless
to me on that particular box. i’ll still
have *TeX* and “garage band” if i can just
learn to move the files around. you’d think
i was joking but i sadly assure you i mean this.

very likely i’ll get a new, internet-capable, phone.
it’s making me sick to my stomach just thinking it,
but there it is. university people just assume
you’re well-connected and will cheerfully refuse
to deal with you if you can’t keep up. businesses,
too.

i’ll have told the story before somewhere but
here it comes again: i was, for once, an early
adopter when i got a t-mobile “sidekick” in early
2003 and they fucked me but good. there was a
yearlong contract and it quit working in june.
when i tried to get it fixed i was three-quarters
of an hour on the phone before anybody even
*claimed* to be able to help me. and maybe
they could’ve… but they didn’t (i was supposed
to be sent a new username-password combo
but never got it). so i decided to hell with it.

naturally, when i got online (on somebody else’s
connection) to report the bug and explain why
they weren’t gonna get any more monthly checks
i was confronted with a robot rat-maze designed
to gather information about me without helping
me in any way and i soon quit. so the bills
kept coming in and i kept throwing them away.

which would be the end of the story if the
account hadn’t originally been set up on
my then-wife’s credit card. they kept dunning
*her* and she kept wanting *me* to do something
about it. it got pretty fucking emotional.

well, now she’s gone and of course the
whole “mobile phone” racket has undergone
umpty-blue-million updates. meanwhile,
literally millions of people have signed on
and now use the god-damn things routinely.
so how hard can it be? even without
mountains of money or endless patience?

on the other hand, “go with your gut”;
i’m not kidding about this making me
want to throw up.

how public like a frog

video of me playing three-string guitar. recorded by john martin. studio space, computer, and wi-fi connection by madeline.

sit in front of a microphone and open a vein

i’ve finally learned how to upload “garage band” tracks.
here’s my “soundcloud” page.

i’m posting a lot in MEZB, btw.
updates might get more frequent here but
don’t count on it. music stuff will probably
end up in the livingston review.

friend-of-a-friend

you-tubes of dave getz & his slideback guitar.

posted at a pizza joint with wi-fi in the next town over

in other news, my “gmail” account appears not to allow me to “send” (or to “reply”, which may be more to the point). i *expected* everything to have gone to hell by about now but it still *bothers* me…

i’m not there

we can’t maintain an internet connection
and are giving up even trying. not that
i expect to have the same phone for long
but that looks like the way to go:
614.704.4531
.
that probably won’t last much longer either
but there it is. my p.o. box is in effect for
several more months:
box 9679 columbus oh 43209.

what a monumental disappointment
*this* turned out to be.

madeline’s guest bathroom; daadd n+1

is this a self portrait by me?
or by Legion (my MacBook),
using me as part of the medium?

the medium is *at least*
half the message here so
let me just endorse these
“window crayons” i bought
a couple hours ago. erases
from glass with a damp
paper towel. i blended
the orange; there are black
blue green yellow and red
crayons in the set of five.
also i can’t resist mentioning
that that’s a track-3 razor
in the upper left just under
the sunlike glow of the flash.

chad c. mulligan used to be a sociologist

zed shaw on why the lucky stiff. while i’m at it, the master, the expert, the programmer.

ralph fiennes is evidently directing himself in coriolanus. biggest news since the age of kings.

s,n! is still at it. yay. self-reliance. nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. peace peace when there is no peace.

the web has evidently killed my camera. trust no one. more light!

dan kennedy’s math ed stuff via JackieB.