Up From Facebook

I was on a Facebook thread recently questioning why kids should be *required* to learn cursive these days. I was casting around for an analogy to illustrate both the fact that cursive *could* have utility and acknowledging that in the third decade of the 21st century, it is an anachronism.     One example is reading a clock face. Most kids these days don't even own a watch--they use their cell phones to tell time. Most clocks today are digital--for example, the ones in our microwave oven and our radiant heat oven. But I wear a clock face watch. I learned expressions like "quarter after" and "quarter till" that reflect having learned how to read a clock face, what some have called “cursive time.” I wouldn't advocate forcing all kids to learn how to read a clock face, although I can testify to its utility.   Another example that came to my mind was driving a manual transmission car. When I was growing up, my parents only had stick shifts, so I learned on that....

I’ve had Iranian colleagues throughout my faculty career. Unsurprisingly, none were anti-American.   Here’s an interview with Juan Cole and  Mojtaba Mahdavi, two Middle East experts, on the current events in Iran. They discuss the politics in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora. Both Cole and Mahdavi point to the Netanyahu ambition of hegemony in the Middle East as a major driver of current events. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing, but as a teaser, Prof. Cole compares the likelihood that the late Shah’s son will come to power after the current war to the rumors that the Tsar’s daughter Anastasia had somehow escaped Bolshevik Russia and would reclaim the throne there. Mahdavi and Cole cut through the bothsidesisms of the MSM and the propaganda of the US and Israeli administrations to articulate the nuance and diversity of Iranian public opinion, the impact of Islamophobia as a driver of war propaganda and Western orientalist discourse and the retreat into colonialis...

While crowing about how it’s sinking the Iranian economy, the Trump Administration is literally keeping it afloat. “ In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water,” Bessent said on Fox Business Thursday. The US is already allowing Iranian oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and that nation has about 140 million barrels afloat now, the Treasury chief said.” While claiming that Iran was an existential threat to US national security in order to justify its war/not war/excursion, the reality is that the real existential threat is to the political future of the Trump GOP. Yes, I realize that only 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz on a good day, and only a fraction of that is Iranian oil. But if you ask the average American, they have no idea about the impact of the war on exports of fertilizer, aluminum or helium. They only understand the price at the pump, and that’s what’s got Trump on the run. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/en...

I posted earlier about my interest in whether higher oil prices would favor freight trains over trucks. Now, not only is the Trump administration driving up fuel prices, it’s also cutting truck drivers. “About 200,000 immigrant truck drivers - virtually all of them in the U.S. legally - will begin losing their commercial driver's licenses under a Trump administration rule taking effect Monday. “The rule, which will bar many noncitizens from getting new commercial licenses or renewing existing ones, creates challenges for the trucking industry, already struggling with high fuel costs and high driver turnover, according to The Washington Post. Existing licenses will continue to be valid until they expire. “Among those affected are asylum seekers, refugees and DACA recipients.” No, 200,000 manly-man White Americans aren’t going to suddenly materialize to drive these trucks. There’s a reason they were hiring immigrants. You know who gets hurt by this? Middle class and working-class con...

For the past couple of decades, whenever oil prices spiked, I wondered if this would be good news for railroads. Trains in Europe are still very much a thing, and I’ve traveled by train in England, France, Germany and Spain. There are rail connections from Providence to Boston and to New York City. Of particular interest to me, though, is the economics freight rail vs semi tractor trailers. It seems to me that freight trains should be a more efficient use of petroleum, albeit trucks can travel to more places. Last fall, I noticed a bunch of trees that had been chopped down next to what I had assumed were disused railroad tracks near the Ten Mile River Bikeway where I walk every other day. A few days later, I saw a half dozen freight cars pulled by a Providence & Worcester locomotive pass by. This morning, I saw a short set of freight cars pulled Providence & Worcester engine headed Northeast, and thirty minutes later, the same train was traveling the other direction. I don’t kn...

Saint Louis University has a phased retirement program for tenured faculty with sufficient time in service. For up to five years, a qualifying faculty can drop to 70%, 50% or 33% effort, with a commensurate reduction in compensation. They can start at 70% or 50% and drop to a lower level, but they can’t go up to a higher level. Part of the contract is that by the end of the five-year period, the faculty fully retires. This isn’t institutional magnanimity. It’s a kind of buy-out. Indeed, the university has offered tenured faculty buy-outs now and then: quit now, and you walk away on day one with a full year of compensation. These are ways of off-loading tenured faculty who can’t otherwise be fired except for cause.  I took the phased retirement, mostly because I wasn’t emotionally ready to quit cold turkey. And I stayed at 70% of my last pre-phase compensation the entire time, which netted far more money than the buy-out. At the end of the five years, I was ready to be unemployed/re...