February 7, 2012, 02:35 PM ET
Life isn't always the kind of thing you can celebrate with greeting
cards. Valentine's Day, especially, often evades responsibility for
the kinds of events crying out for attention on February 14th
especially if they don't include candy, balloons, and something
with sparkles. Even doggerel should have its day, and we
believe its day is February 14th. For example, one of my brother's
best friends in the world is having surgery on Valentine's Day.
There's no card for that. There's nothing you can get where, let's
say, a unicorn is removing somebody's gallbladder or a teddy-bear
is inserting drug-releasing stents below the knee; there's really
nothing for that particular occasion, not even in your fancier
stationary stores. So, being the poet he's always been (under that
JD and MBA), he wrote a series of what I believe to be well-crafted
poems in celebration of his friend's impending...
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February 7, 2012, 02:13 PM ET
A number of years ago, a university public-relations official
approached me with an invitation. Her office was coordinating a
series of columns called “Health Talk and You,” which were
published in about 50 newspapers around the state. The columns were
short, simple, and straightforward – about 500 words, she said.
Would I be interested in taking part? Without giving the question
much thought, I said yes. Then I read her email more carefully. I
had initially thought I was being asked to write an
article. In fact, however, I was being asked to lend my name to an
article which the public relations office would ghostwrite, but
which would be published under my byline. A reporter would
interview me on the topic of my choice and write an article based
on the interview. When I called the public relations officer back,
I explained that it seemed deceptive to take credit for an article
that...
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February 7, 2012, 11:56 AM ET
I can't help but be fascinated by the bizarre nature of bad words
and naughty gestures. Some words we can't say because they're just
plain offensive, like the "n" word or now the "r" word. In my
house, the "r" word is a point of contention between my daughters
since one says it cannot be uttered while the other says it just to
annoy her older sister and poke holes in her holier than thou
attitude. As you can see, the whole situation is a slippery
slope that makes us skate around painful histories and structures
that imbue these insults with such power. What words can be said
and what can't remains a thorny legal and cultural issue and Super
Bowl Sunday clearly brought this to the surface. By now, everyone
knows that MIA shot up her middle finger while dancing to Madonna's
"Give Me All Your Luvin'." According to a
BBC article,
The middle finger is documented to have expressed
insult an...
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February 7, 2012, 09:52 AM ET
Americans like higher education and American philanthropists like
to give to higher education. According to
The Chronicle, 19 of the top 50 donors last year gave to
colleges, more than to any other cause. "Of those, 10 provided
support to institutions that were not their alma maters.
Altogether, the 19 donors gave colleges more than $1.5-billion."
Perhaps the fact that half of these philanthropists did not simply
write big checks to their alma maters (though they're probably
doing that as well) is a good sign. Maybe donors are looking more
at the quality of the school and the worthiness of its programs
than simply giving out of nostalgia because they had a good time at
the football games or because that's where they met their future
wives. Last week, there was more heartening news on this front.
Judge Richard Bray, the CEO of the Beazley Foundation, decided to
suspend its giving to...
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February 7, 2012, 06:25 AM ET
An interesting thing has been happening in Costa Rica, something
that points to a social policy which, believe it or not, both
liberals and conservatives might endorse. This week, as the local
school year begins, there are 12,800 fewer students enrolled than
previously, and this despite a continuing influx of Nicaraguans.
What’s particularly interesting is the likely reason for this
decline: An innovative national law, the “Ley de Paternidad
Responsable” (Responsible Fatherhood Act), which took effect in
Costa Rica in 2001. This law, the first of its kind anywhere in the
world, identifies paternal obligations in terms of the right of
children to know their fathers and to be supported by them and, in
so doing, also removes some of the stigma for children born out of
wedlock. The landmark legislation established an entitlement
procedure whereby single mothers could identify the...
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February 6, 2012, 11:56 AM ET
As I watched the outstretched arms of “the Gronker” (née Rob
Gronkowski, the Goliath-sized New England tight end with hands the
size of flat-screen TV's) poised to haul in Tom Brady’s desperation
Hail Mary pass at the end time of Super Bowl XLVI, I heard
myself--I admit--pronounce the name of God. (Modified by an
adjective that I cannot bring myself to admit.) My hunch is that
120 million or so Americans--believers and nonbelievers alike--
were invoking sacred and/or profane words right along with me as
time ran down. Why is it that the experience of football is so
bound up with religion? “I mean the Super Bowl,”
mused half-time performer Madonna, “is kind of like the holy of
holies in America right?” I do think Madonna was on to something.
Though perhaps the insight was lost on the singer M.I.A. who
middle-fingered our righteous nation (half of whose citizens
may have...
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February 6, 2012, 11:31 AM ET
This semester I am teaching a new (for me) course: "White People."
The course considers the historical formation of whiteness as well
as its current cultural and economic manifestations. For me,
teaching "white people" is an obvious way to work through some of
the key issues of critical race studies: How did our current racial
categories form and under what conditions? How are these racial
categories intertwined with one another? How does race depend on
class, gender, sexuality and often geographic location to make
sense? Of course, when you teach a course called "White People,"
you are bound to take some teasing. Someone suggested that it's a
course to "paint white people as bad." Another friend said I'm just
trying to "relieve my liberal white guilt." But I reject both the
claim that all white people are the same and the claim that to
critically examine one's racial position is...
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February 5, 2012, 06:02 PM ET
When I was in 7th Grade, I first heard the terms "definite article"
and "indefinite article"--or rather, "l'article indefini" and
"l'article defini." It was in the first French class I
took. I hadn't learned about articles in English Language
Arts courses in elementary school, and when I did diagrams of
sentences and other grammar exercises in English in 7th and 8th
Grade, the basics didn't stick as well as they did in French class,
which I took for the next five years and in college as well.
There's a lesson. Foreign language study helps with the
understanding of native language. It also deepens one's sense
of philology, etymology, phonetics, and idiomatic, slang, and
formalized expression in general. To pinpoint a curious word
in a text under study in a college literature class such as
"deliberate" or "fabulous" and ask the students, "What is the
etymology of that word?" and...
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February 5, 2012, 12:11 PM ET
By Lisa Russ Spaar
Anticipating winter, Rainer Maria
Rilke begins the last stanza of his autumn poem “Herbstag” this
way:
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr. Wer jetzt
allein ist, wird es lange bleiben, wird wachen, lessen, lange
Briefe schrieben . . . (Whoever now has no house, by
now will not build. Whoever is alone now will stay alone, will wait
up, read, write long letters . . . ) Gaston Bachelard, who calls
winter the “oldest of the seasons,” writes in
The Poetics of
Space: “Although at heart a city man, Baudelaire sensed
the increased intimacy of a house when it is besieged by
winter. In
Les paradis artificiels he speaks of
Thomas de Quincey’s joy when, a prisoner of winter, he read Kant,
with the help of the idealism furnished by opium. The scene
takes place in a cottage in Wales. ‘Isn’t it true that a
pleasant house makes...
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February 5, 2012, 10:07 AM ET
I think since I started writing for
Brainstorm, this is
the longest period I have been without making a contribution. The
reason is very simple. This last week the little unit I run down
here at Florida State has been undergoing what is known as a
“Quality Enhancement Review.” My tiny Program in the History and
Philosophy of Science has been looked at by an outside examiner, by
high-level university officials, and is also being mulled over by a
committee of strangers instigated by something known as the
“Graduate Policy Committee.” Frankly, the whole experience has been
a bit like having someone film your colonoscopy, knowing that
before you recover from the anesthetic the whole procedure will
have been posted on
YouTube. I have been squiring people
around campus to talk to folk, who close the door firmly and leave
me sitting outside in the corridor, an object of pity by all...
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Brainstorm, The Chronicle Review's blog on ideas, culture, and the arts, features some of the best minds in academic and policy circles.
