Analogcabin: The Right is commencing an offensive standdown for a while as I burn off some of my ill-gotten vacation days.
Please, try to contain your disappointment.
This morning as I got to Devil's Island, the guys from the previous shift were out with a disabled 70s-vintage pickup truck. The owner had run out of gas and left the truck sitting there. We were going to call a tow truck for it, but were hampered by the fact that he had thoughtfully left his largish rottweiler on the front seat.
I thought, "I really need to get out of here for a while."
Anyway, to hold this space while I'm gone, a recent picture of the street-legal M4, a work in progress:
See you when I see you. Stay out of trouble.
Ofc. Krupke at 5:44 PM
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17 February 2005
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17 February 2005
Today one of our supervisors passed the word that the proprietors of a storage facility in Devil's Island proper had called to request increased police patrols for their gravel drive. They asked because someone has apparently been going in there late at night and doing donuts in the driveway, digging ruts in the gravel.
So, um, I guess I better stop doing that.
So, um, I guess I better stop doing that.
Ofc. Krupke at 5:19 PM
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15 February 2005
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15 February 2005
I'm such a strange amalgam of old-line things and new-line things. I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution. The CIA pays a thousand people and cuts them loose, and they will undermine any revolution in the name of freedom of speech.
-Attorney Lynne Stewart, from an interview with Susie Day, appearing in Monthly Review, Nov. 22.
Sometimes irony comes a-knocking at your door. Sometimes it blows its way in with a breaching charge.
-Attorney Lynne Stewart, from an interview with Susie Day, appearing in Monthly Review, Nov. 22.
Sometimes irony comes a-knocking at your door. Sometimes it blows its way in with a breaching charge.
Ofc. Krupke at 6:07 PM
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14 February 2005
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14 February 2005
I'm grateful to the indefatigable Shakti R. for broaching the subject of Ward Churchill, because I was somewhat reluctant to do so - it just seemed too easy. Not that Analogcabin: The Right is above whacking easy-but-deserving targets, but whacking Churchill is like fishing in an aquarium with a quarter stick of TNT.
Anyway, I'll spare you my predictable take on Churchill's statements themselves; suffice it to say that the man appears to blend the intellectual depth of a pothole and the moral imagination of a cockroach. Still, I agree with Shakti and Dahlia Lithwick that CU should not fire Churchill because of his statements, because frankly that lets CU off the hook way too easily for their gross negligence. They knew who this pinhead was, and they still hired, promoted, tenured, and made him department chair. They never should have done any of that, and their current scurrying shows that they damn well know it. That he's now become inconvenient is not grounds to fire him.
There is some discussion that he should be fired for apparently falsely claiming to be an American Indian, thereby committing academic fraud. I don't buy that either; ethnicity is not an academic qualification. The fact that many universities consider it such is a scandal, but it's hardly Churchill's fault. CU made its bed with Churchill, now it has to lie in it. They sacrificed anything approaching academic rigor to get them a real live Indian, but now he's bringing them tons of bad publicity, and turns out to not even be a real Indian after all. Justice.
Why do people care about any of this? Because Churchill is a monument to many of the things wrong with modern academia: the politics of tenure, the PC hucksterism, the bogus disciplines (HINT: if your curriculum can be succinctly summarized, "Everything is Whitey's fault", maybe it's time for a rethink), and the collapse of academic standards. Talk about roosting chickens.
I recall reading some time ago a soundbite by Robert Brandon, chair of Duke's Philosophy department, to the effect that the scarcity of conservatives in academia is a result of the fact that universities hire the smartest people, and the smartest people are liberals. Bob, meet Ward. I'm sure you two have lots to discuss.
Anyway, I'll spare you my predictable take on Churchill's statements themselves; suffice it to say that the man appears to blend the intellectual depth of a pothole and the moral imagination of a cockroach. Still, I agree with Shakti and Dahlia Lithwick that CU should not fire Churchill because of his statements, because frankly that lets CU off the hook way too easily for their gross negligence. They knew who this pinhead was, and they still hired, promoted, tenured, and made him department chair. They never should have done any of that, and their current scurrying shows that they damn well know it. That he's now become inconvenient is not grounds to fire him.
There is some discussion that he should be fired for apparently falsely claiming to be an American Indian, thereby committing academic fraud. I don't buy that either; ethnicity is not an academic qualification. The fact that many universities consider it such is a scandal, but it's hardly Churchill's fault. CU made its bed with Churchill, now it has to lie in it. They sacrificed anything approaching academic rigor to get them a real live Indian, but now he's bringing them tons of bad publicity, and turns out to not even be a real Indian after all. Justice.
Why do people care about any of this? Because Churchill is a monument to many of the things wrong with modern academia: the politics of tenure, the PC hucksterism, the bogus disciplines (HINT: if your curriculum can be succinctly summarized, "Everything is Whitey's fault", maybe it's time for a rethink), and the collapse of academic standards. Talk about roosting chickens.
I recall reading some time ago a soundbite by Robert Brandon, chair of Duke's Philosophy department, to the effect that the scarcity of conservatives in academia is a result of the fact that universities hire the smartest people, and the smartest people are liberals. Bob, meet Ward. I'm sure you two have lots to discuss.
Ofc. Krupke at 8:42 PM
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03 February 2005
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03 February 2005
Here's a thought: the quiz-kid boy geniuses in the Motor City who design the cable locking devices that hold spare tires under the chassis should be required, as part of the field-testing process, to personally change one in the traffic lane on the upslope of a busy interstate bridge over a river during rush hour. In the rain.
I'm just sayin'.
I'm just sayin'.
Ofc. Krupke at 5:42 PM
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01 February 2005
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01 February 2005
I read with much amusement this piece from the Village Voice about an art piece by New York's Wendy Cook, which consists of a recreation of those ugly astroturf-like green welcome mats. The Voice runs a close-up of the mat "to see what the regime's guests are wiping their feet on", and revealing it to be hundreds of little green army men. Ah, very clever.
Interestingly, the Voice seems to interpret this as a comment on the troops - Our Noble Troops - and their Tragic Misuse By the Bush Administration. But if you look at it, all the army men seem to be aiming their guns at the plastic flower. So it strikes me as just another knee-jerk, superficial anti-military statement, of a kind that has long been common as dirt in the art world. After all, before they were Our Noble Troops Criminally Misused, they were a pack of buzz-cut homophobic morons who beat their wives and were all secretly looking to off someone to prove their misguided machismo. This thing could have been made to attack Reagan in 1981 - the art hasn't changed, just the spin.
Later in the Voice piece, which ran 28 January, the writer refers to the Iraqi elections as "a joke".
Interestingly, the Voice seems to interpret this as a comment on the troops - Our Noble Troops - and their Tragic Misuse By the Bush Administration. But if you look at it, all the army men seem to be aiming their guns at the plastic flower. So it strikes me as just another knee-jerk, superficial anti-military statement, of a kind that has long been common as dirt in the art world. After all, before they were Our Noble Troops Criminally Misused, they were a pack of buzz-cut homophobic morons who beat their wives and were all secretly looking to off someone to prove their misguided machismo. This thing could have been made to attack Reagan in 1981 - the art hasn't changed, just the spin.
Later in the Voice piece, which ran 28 January, the writer refers to the Iraqi elections as "a joke".
Talk to the finger, buddy.