ramble through the bronx

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Yes, Virginia, there is an eCheat.com

Thursday afternoon I was grading a student's paper and couldn't make heads or tails of it - it was incredibly awful. (this isn't the student I was complaining about before, with the plagiarized draft). It was a page too short, poorly argued, and had no works cited or bibliography. It was also completely irrelevant to our class, and further, the student had never cleared the topic with me. Already poised to give it a "D" on its own "merits," I decided to check if some of the introduction was plagiarized. I googled the first sentence, and found the whole essay online...

... on a site actually called eCheat.com. Priceless.

I present, for your amusement (the other graduate student teachers and I were laughing so hard we were crying), the last three questions of the site's FAQ:

Isn't the point of this site to help students cheat?
No, eCheat was created to provide a reference for students writing papers. The essay format is the most logical structure for conveying information, or a particular viewpoint in a concise manner. For more on this subject please refer to our Terms of Use.

Can I use this site without plagiarizing?
Yes! If you read essays to better understand a subject or to get essay topics you aren't committing plagiarism. You're only committing plagiarism when you copy someone else's work without citing it. All of our essays have an automated tool for properly citing our essays in the major bibliography formats (MLA, APA, Chicago).

If I turn in one of these essays as my own will I get caught?
Most likely not. Most teachers are not very perceptive. However if you are caught the penalties may be severe. If you copy other people's work often you will impair your ability to do complex assignments and will end up hurting yourself. Don't allow the school system get in the way of your education.

So there, my friends. Don't let the school system get in the way of your education. But you probably won't get caught. (I love the qualifier "OFTEN" -- "if you copy other people's work often you will..."). Hilarious.

The story, believe it or not, gets better. I write to the email address the student had emailed me from before, asking him to come to my office either that day or after his exam on 9.30 Friday morning. I hear nothing back. He's not there for the exam Friday morning. I (reasonably enough) figure that he knows the gig is up and is just going to accept a failing grade.

After the exam, I check my email and see a couple emails from students who missed the exam & wanted to write the exam with my other section this Tuesday the 20th; I grudgingly say yes. I would have refused had I gotten their emails before they missed the exam, but fuck it, they may as well just write it on Tuesday. The official Fordham policy is that professors can't schedule make-up exams for students, or let students write exams at any time other than the official time for their section, but this rule is pretty much never enforced.

Then I see Plagiarist's email, sent from another email address than the one I'd emailed Thursday:

From: [email address I've never seen@aol.com]
To: janedryden@gmail.com
Date: Dec 16, 2005 1:36 AM

Hi Ms Dryden its [student's first name]. Im Sorry i did not notice sooner but my english teacher scheduled his final for me at 9 00 friday morning because i am leaving wednsday to go back to my hometown for Christmas. Is there anyway i can take this test at a later date before finals are over?
-[student's first name]

So... this kid wants to leave early for Christmas, and so arranges with his English professor to write the English exam early, and only notices at 1.36 am that there's a conflict, and so figures that mine is the exam he can reschedule?!?

The kid's totally going to fail; even if he writes the final and gets 100% on it he'll still just get 49% in the class; but the last thing I need him complaining about is that the only reason he failed is that I didn't let him write the final. So even though I'm perfectly within my rights to not reschedule his final (he should have shown up for it!), I write him back:

Did you get my email to your other email account? Please come in and see me this afternoon, or make an appointment to see me Monday. I'd like to talk to you about your paper. I'd also like to talk to you about the class.

When you come in we can discuss the possibility of you taking the exam with the other section on Tuesday.

He responds, asking to make an appointment for Monday, and saying "and is there a problem with my report? because i know I forgot a work cited.."

Of course, I would love to see his works cited. It would be one work: the eCheat site.

So, I have an appointment with this kid Monday at noon. I wonder what he's going to have to say for himself. I wonder if he'll bother appealing? The whole thing is annoying, since I now have to fill out a report to the Dean so this kid will have a big red P for plagiarism on his record FOREVER. (Well, actually, they don't really take it that seriously. Nothing bad will happen to this kid. Fordham would never turn down his parents' money.)

Basically done grading papers, and now I have one section's exams to grade before I get the next round on Tuesday.

Oh, and Josh is organizing a birthday party for me tonight. Yay!!!

jane 11:59 AM [+]

Grading again...

Ah, yes, grading 70 papers, and then on Friday I get 35 exams, and then on Tuesday I get 35 more exams. Grading-tastic. here's a soupcon:

Aristotle also points out a way that we humans are in fact bound by nature. Aristotle quotes himself, "Man is by nature a political animal (Aristotle)".

Isn't it nice of that Aristotle to quote himself so pithily?

jane 4:46 PM [+]

Snow Day!

All campuses of Fordham University are closed today, Friday, Dec. 9, 2005, due to inclement weather. Information updates will be posted as necessary online and as recorded messages on the University's emergency phone numbers at (1800) 280-SNOW (7669), and (212) 636-7777. Information updates about athletic events scheduled for today will be recorded on the 2RAM Hotline at (718) 817-2RAM (2726).

Yay!!

jane 11:43 AM [+]

I hate plagiarism

And even more than plagiarism, I hate when students play dumb.

Sure, send me your draft Wednesday night, so I can look it over. Then send me an email the next morning (today, Thursday), asking me if I've had a chance to look it over yet. I get both emails today, and figure I'll look over your draft. Quickly, I begin suspecting that the turns of phrase are not yours. After googling for a bit, I discover that substantial chunks of your paper, including most of your conclusion, are cut and pasted from at least three different websites (including Wikipedia). With no quotation marks. Just cut and pasted. Sentence for sentence, comma for comma (you have changed a couple of semi-colons).

I email you back, saying I've looked at your paper and it's unacceptable. I ask you to please rewrite your paper, citing sources. I say that it's an interesting topic, and you don't need to throw it all out, but please do it properly. What I don't say explicitly is that I am showing you mercy, you fucking plagiarist.

You have the gall to write back and say, but I don't understand, Professor, what did I do wrong? You say my topic is interesting, but I have to rewrite it? But I was going to cite everything properly once you'd looked over the draft. Surely drafts are just drafts! Everything between the sources is my own! Really!

I scream, call my roommate over to witness this nonsense, pour myself another glass of wine. I restrain the urge to FAIL YOU NOW, which I entirely have the right to do, and instead write back:

[Name concealed],

Even in a draft, you should have quotation marks around the quotes that you use. Further, I'm having difficulty telling what are your thoughts and what portion of your paper is drawn from your sources. For instance, most of your concluding paragraph is a quotation, rather than being you summing up what you have managed to show:

You: [student's conclusion]
Internet source: [oddly enough, exactly the same words]

[Student's first name], this is your CONCLUSION. You shouldn't need to draw from other sources to help you write your very own conclusion. Further, when looking through your draft, I shouldn't have to guess at what is your own contribution and what is something you've drawn from another source. If you haven't clearly shown me (through quotation marks & accurate citing) what's yours and what's not, then how am I supposed to evaluate your draft?

Best,
Prof. Dryden

Does that seem fair?

Bloody plagiarist.

Let's see what she hands in tomorrow morning. Yup, that's when the paper's due.

jane 8:41 PM [+]

ABD

All but dissertation. Just finished the proposal defense. They gave me the thumbs-up -- and of course a whole host of concerns, questions, objections, etc., that I'm going to have to deal with. But those are OK. I have the thumbs up, and they've signed the paperwork.

off to grab dinner with some folks, then go drink!

jane 5:15 PM [+]

The NYU graduate student strike

...is now in its 24th day, and the administration is threatening to hold striking students' stipends for next TWO semesters if they keep striking. Since the National Labor Relations Board (not a great entity, under the Bush administration) ruled a year and a half (two years?) ago that grad students at private universities couldn't unionize (they were students, not workers), these administration threats are not illegal.

Debate between Michael Palm, the head of the grad students union and a philosophy professor, Paul Boghossian, representing the administration -- Boghossian is a smart guy, very well known in his field (he clarifies some of his points down in the comments section, linked below).

And comments by various folks about what all this means -- interesting stuff, especially coming from the perspective of having been an undergrad at U of T, where UT and York alternated strikes every year or so.

One of the commenters writes:

But Boghossian is certainly wrong to claim that the students aren't workers. These students are doing work that the university does need in the gra.d scheme of things. More than that, if the students are striking, that indicates to me that they either need or truly feel that they deserve more than they're getting. Graduate students are not children, and I'm sure they take their work(indeed, their livelihood) very seriously. $19,000 is a lot of money. About twice what I'm getting in my program. But, NYC is a very expensive city. Between rent and virtually everything else costing much more than elsewhere, I'm sure $19,000 isn't worth much.

But graduate students can eat dust for a few years and come out better in the end, right? Not really. Graduate students are generally in their mid-twenties to early thirties. These people have families. They need money to live, money to save, and benefits to support their partners and children. And, at least in philosophy, it's not a rigorous 2-3 year ordeal. It's a rigorous 6-7 year ordeal. That's an awfully long time to eat dust and pray for good health and fortune. My partner and I have decided it would be foolish to have a child while in graduate school. But many people aren't willing to put their life on hold for 7 years. Why should they? 7 years is a long time. Some people want a family and an academic career. Do we really want to exclude them? Academia could miss out on a lot of brilliant people that way. Still others enter graduate school with one or more children, already. Are the doors of education to be forever closed to these people?

(Selfish reason I care -- I just want to say -- with their previous contract, the NYU grad students got a $19,000 stipend PLUS benefits. I have a $17,000 stipend (it was $15,000 when I got to Fordham, because I had a special fellowship; my friends/peers were making $12,000) and no benefits. New York is freaking expensive. I want the NYU kids to win, for private universities everywhere. Not that I think a union is necessarily the best move for Fordham (that's a long story), but if conditions at the other private universities keep going up, Fordham ultimately has to follow.)

(Non-selfish reason I care -- well, justice. And to stick it to the Bush-appointed NLRB.)

Oh -- addition -- here are some comments from Benjamin Hellie & Jessica Wilson, two new philosophy professors at University of Toronto at Scarborough (how lovely that they have a blog).

jane 9:36 PM [+]

My dad really is losing it

He's been sending me & a couple of his friends endless links to new comments on articles in the Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, and so forth. Sometimes the papers don't put his comments up, such as this letter to the editor at the Montreal Gazette:

>From: alexander dryden
To: letters@thegazette.canwest.com
Subject: Zillions of dollar$
Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 22:03:48 -0500

Dear Gazette,

I think it's absolutely wonderful that tens of thousands of lunatics should
descend for two weeks on Montreal with nothing to do but celebrate the End
of the World, and spend zillions of dollars doing it.

I have seen it before -- the spending of zillions of dollars -- but not the
celebration of the End of the World that accompanies this Kyoto thing ...
what is it ... this LIE that carbon dioxide etc. etc.

it is a lie. It is a nonsense. Every single piece of scientific fact --
fact, not hypothesis -- fact, not pre-programmed computer-model premise --
completely and absolutely shows that all this Kyoto so-called "science" is
... a scam.

Yes. A Scam -- a deliberate attempt by Maurice-Maurice Strong, best friend
of Prime-Moron Pinocchio (sp?) Martin to get western countries to give
zillions of dollars (with Strong and friends collecting commissions) to the
third-world's murderous dictators (including China), whose leaders would
have to do nothing at all -- except pay their commissions to Strong et al.
and get extremely. very rich.

If the Gazette has not done its journalistic duty in exploring this story,
I recommend that it publish this letter, with some wee sentence that says
it's upholding the freedom of speech -- however weakly.

Best regards for a newspaper I once respected,

Alex Dryden
Ottawa

So that's a little c razy -- but this one, I think, shows my dad actually falling off his rocker -- (it starts from the bottom of an email to me and some of his cronies)

PS: here's another one, with refernce to a money-laundering "job-offer" from Workopolis, jointily owned by the GliberalMail & TurdStar, sent to the RCMP:

--

I have wished a couple of times, including this time, to inform you of what
I think may well be a "scam" -- or, indeed, in this case, an
institutionalized form of money-laundering.

Your (i.e., the RCMP's) Web site is completely, absolutely and utterly
incapable of handling such information.

Is the RCMP still working in the Trudeau days? Has it regressed, but not
recovered from the cretin days?

Is the RCMP really, seriously, honestly interested in getting info. on crime
over its Web site?

Frankly, I doubt it.

If you want such information as I have, or if you want some REALLY SERIOUS
ADVICE about how to do your info. job properly, please reply.

((PS: Whoever receives this note should be assured that the msg. and its
time of transmission has been copied to a number of other recipients,
including some of a political nature.))

So, that's a little bizarre.

In other news, I've been looking at student drafts. Oh my....

jane 6:03 PM [+]

Dorothy Allison quote

I'm putting together my lecture for tomorrow, which is using the first two essays in Dorothy Allison's book Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1994). That said, I'm also procrastinating on actually writing the lecture, so I'm rereading the other essays in the book. Thought I'd share this tidbit (from p. 150 on Skin):

When straight people wear their tolerant expressions, I am reminded of Baptist Sunday school sermons from when I was a child in South Carolina. The preacher would talk about hating the sin but not the sinner, a line that has since become a cliche, btu one that even back then I did not trust. I remember watching his face, shiny-pink and stern, and knowing that he did not make any such distinction. It was like the conversation I had with a relatively mild conservative lady from Houston. She was looking at the table of feminist journals I was selling and looking at me with the most awkward expression of polite distaste.

"I know," she said, "you must be a fine young woman, and you think you can't help yourself." Her face was very patient, very Christian. "But my dear," she concluded, "I will always think your life is a tragedy."

I couldn't help myself. I leaned forward and deliberately touched her, taking her hand. "I understand," I said. "And it's sad. That's just what I could say to you."

jane 6:58 PM [+]

YES!!!

I got my first email from a student who's now interested in philosophy. I feel so excited and happy! She's thinking of majoring, and now wants advice as to what kinds of job prospects it offers (she mentions law and teaching, and wants to know if there's anything else). Anyway, I'm going to think a bit before I write her back -- I feel as if she's taken the philosophy bait & now I should reel her in to majoring! -- so I want to make philosophy sound, you know, promising.

Any advice?

Oh, and I also got a new comment on Rate my professor.com (and, for the record, I removed the one that Someone Who Will Remain Nameless posted -- it was the last thing I needed up there with Stalker Boy around!)

jane 5:13 PM [+]

Damn those French-educated communist utopians!

Commenting on the right-wing blog discussions praising Bush's Veterans Day (a.k.a. Remembrance Day north of the 49th), Brian Leiter notes that Bush's comparison of Bin Ladin to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot is ridiculous. After noting that the reason it was important to worry about Hitler and Stalin is because, hey, they had whole countries and armies, and that bin Ladin after all is merely "a man currently hiding in a cave", Leiter writes,

Bush's mention of Pol Pot underlines the point, since he is, in some ways, the closest analogy to bin Laden (though, yet again, bin Laden's horrors pale by comparison to Pol Pot's). The U.S. destruction of Cambodia, in the course of its invasion and obliteraion of Vietnam, made Pol Pot's rise to power possible. (Think of the U.S. role in driving the Soviets from Afghanistan, and how important that was to bin Laden's rise to power.) After an orgy of murder, inflicted only upon the people of a single country, Pol Pot was deposed after only a few years, and never posed a threat again. At no time did the U.S. need to declare "global" war in order to defeat "all South East Asians" or "all French-educated communist utopians."

I argue: maybe we should declare global war in order to defeat those French-educated communist utopians.

This means you, Alain Badiou!

(ok, so that was a self-serving plug for the Fordham conference. But hey, Badiou's so adorable, that if he were to ever try to take over the world, it would be very hard to take him down. He's such a sweetie! And trained in mathematics!)

jane 1:14 PM [+]

Guitar hero

Well, all the Canadians will see this in their Saturday Globe and Mail, and I'm not really sure if any of my American friends ever really look at this blog, but it's worth posting anyway -- Six String Nation - a guitar made of Canadiana. This is awesome.

As the fate of the nation hung in the balance, an inner voice spoke to Mr. Taylor, commanding him to build a guitar that contained Canada's national mojo.

“It was weird,” says Mr. Taylor, a CBC radio host and lifelong music enthusiast. “But it made sense, too.”

Mr. Taylor understood that the guitar must contain materials from each province, and that every element had to be infused with authentic Canadian spirit. He soon had a long list, including a canoe paddle used by Pierre Trudeau, a plank from the deck of the Bluenose, mastodon teeth excavated in Alberta, copper from the roof of Parliament, and a hockey stick used by Paul Henderson to defeat the Soviets in 1972.

“A guitar is the universal instrument,” says Mr. Taylor, who is nearing the realization of his oddball dream, which he has dubbed the Six String Nation project. “It's Canada's talking stick. We need one that sings with all our voices.”

The guitar will be made by Nova Scotian master luthier George Rizsanyi. He and Taylor decided on making it an acoustic guitar, rather than an electric, as it's then suitable for any occasion -- campfire or rockin' out. But check this out:

Making the guitar a hollow-body acoustic, however, vastly complicates the task of building it. As musical construction goes, Mr. Rizsanyi's task could be compared to that of Dr. Frankenstein's efforts to create a human being from a collection of scavenged body parts. Among the items now in Mr. Rizsanyi's workshop are Pierre Trudeau's spruce canoe paddle, oak from Sir John A. MacDonald's board room table, a hemlock board from the world's longest covered bridge in Hartland, N.B., a length of mahogany decking from the Bluenose, a creosote-soaked beam from Halifax's Pier 21, and two sections of hockey stick — one was used by Wayne Gretzky at the peak of his NHL career, and the other wielded by Paul Henderson when he led Canada to victory in the final game of the 1972 Soviet series.

These wooden parts will be joined by a long list of metals and artifacts, including a walrus tusk, pieces of copper from the roof of the original library of Parliament and — providing that an underwater recovery operation can be mounted — a scrap of metal from the sunken wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes freighter immortalized by singer Gordon Lightfoot.

Although he has some preliminary plans — such as using the parliamentary copper roofing as inlays on the frets — Mr. Rizsanyi says he won't make a final decision about where each object will be used in the guitar until he's collected them all.

“I need to look at them all, stir the pot, and consult the mystics,” he says.

All I can say, is that my new Mission in Life, is to someday touch this guitar, should it ever be completed.

Mr. Taylor realizes that the project has become something of an obsession, but refuses to scale back his plans.

“People at various times — usually with my best interests at heart — suggest that I trim the project to a more modest, manageable size,” he says. “To which I usually answer: ‘No, I want to make something huge and sweeping and diverse and beautiful and full of contradictions — like our country.' ”

jane 9:42 AM [+]

Day after US Thanksgiving, I check the news, and find Harper's face

Ewww....

"Stage set for government defeat" is the CBC headline.

A vote Monday the 28th? A rash of spending promises? I think there should be an election Jan. 6, so I could vote in it in person, but obviously they can't plan around little old me.

Anyway, I throw it open -- how to make heads or tails out of all this?

jane 10:06 AM [+]

Surprisingly good news....

McDonalds' will offer FAIR TRADE coffee in New England! Here's hoping that spreads.

Yes, I know, it's a marketing ploy that they know will go over well with consumers, but hey, it has good consequences.

jane 1:50 PM [+]

Robots!

From the New York Times, an article about how Google may destroy newspapers' funding base by destroying their classified ad section and its accompanying revenues, the following wonderful paragraph:

News robots can't meet with a secret source in an underground garage or pull back the blankets on a third-rate burglary to reveal a conspiracy at the highest reaches of government. Tactical and ethical blunders aside, actual journalists come in handy on occasion.

Robots can't do that... OR CAN THEY?!?!

Wouldn't it be awesome if they remade All the President's Men with ROBOTS as Woodward and Bernstein?

jane 1:06 PM [+]

Working at the reference desk all day today...

And no one else is really around; I'm just here by myself. Doo doo doo. Anyway, I'm going to work on my syllabus for next semester & read articles.

Hey, the NY Times has a good editorial on the Jose Padilla case -- I quote the best, most salient paragraph (very nicely argued):

The Padilla case was supposed to be an example of why the administration needs to suspend prisoners' rights when it comes to the war on terror. It turned out to be the opposite. If Mr. Padilla was seriously planning a "dirty bomb" attack, he can never be held accountable for it in court because the illegal conditions under which he has been held will make it impossible to do that. If he was only an inept fellow traveler in the terrorist community, he is excellent proof that the government is fallible and needs the normal checks of the judicial system. And, of course, if he is innocent, he was the victim of a terrible injustice.

jane 10:31 AM [+]

Sigh...

How am I related to this man?

As you may see from the link above, my dad has been commenting on the Globe & Mail website again. This is the story upon which he was commenting. I think it's sweet that he forwards me his comments on articles, but I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say, other than, Dad, have you ever heard of a straw man argument?

jane 9:10 PM [+]

Canadiana

You should read Sandy Carruthers's comic strip Canadiana: the New Spirit of Canada -- just the kind of superhero we need! (To go to the start, click on this link).

Good times. In Canadiana 24, our heroine meets Tom Thomson!

(Yes, I picked up a few shifts at the library reference desk this U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. So expect some random blog postings....)

jane 5:12 PM [+]

I got the word!

I'll just quote the whole thing. I'm very excited:

Dear Jane,
Sorry for not responding sooner. I've been in NJ since Friday (it's now Monday), and browswer-based access to email was blocked ALL WEEKEND! So I was stranded in New Jersey (blocked from email) and unable to communicate until now (browser-based access to email started up again only this afternoon, Monday). My answer to you is: yes, you can go ahead and submit your proposal, based on the revisions you've made to date. And of course, send me a copy of the very copy you are sending to them. You should also invite your readers/examiner to make suggestions (if they have any), so that you can address any remaining concerns between now and the time of your proposal defense. Once people have had a bit of time to go over your proposal, I will be in touch with them, just to make sure that there will be no surprises at the defense itself.
Best,
MB

YES!!!

jane 1:40 PM [+]

Comments?

Well, here I am, a bit depressed that my advisor still hasn't gotten any comments to me since I got the revised copy of my proposal to him Nov 8th, and I'm planning on handing in the final copy of my proposal today or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting article by Jennifer Baumgartner (author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, which I quite liked), on the negative perception of women who have multiple abortions, even among the pro-choice community. I've heard this kind of talk before -- "wow, more than one, she must have been careless" -- but the article makes an interesting point:

In the clinic world, repeat visitors are called, not unkindly, "frequent flyers." The reason that casual term is not an insult is simply due to how common multiple abortions are. "You have 300 possibilities to get pregnant in your life," says Peg Johnston, the director of an abortion clinic in Binghamton, New York. "A one percent failure rate -- assuming the best possible use of contraception -- is still three abortions," she says. "In what endeavor is a one percent failure rate not acceptable?"

Anyway. I'm inviting your comments. I know I've certainly raised a mental eyebrow when someone has told me that they've had three abortions ("what must they be doing wrong with their use of contraception?"), but at the same time, I recognize that yes, even the best methods fail.

Hey, is Plan B available over the counter in Canada? I may stock up when I'm over there....

jane 10:59 AM [+]

Mississippi Goddamn


So, Mississippi might lose the last clinic offering abortions. As a Planned Parenthood article writes, "When the Jackson Women's Health Clinic (not affiliated with Planned Parenthood) first opened its doors in 1995, there were still four clinics in Mississippi that offered abortion services. But since last August, the Jackson clinic has been the only one to serve the entire state."

More:

Fertile Ground for Restricting Access

Hill had good reason to be pessimistic. Mississippi has one of the most anti-choice atmospheres of any state in the U.S.:

* The Democratic Party in Mississippi claims itself a "party of life."

* Eighty-six percent of Mississippi women live in a county without an abortion provider.

* Abortions after 16 weeks are virtually nonexistent, because no facility performs them.

* The state passed legislation last year to stop clinics from performing abortions after 12 weeks. (It was recently struck down by a U.S. district judge as unconstitutional.)

* The state is one of only two in the U.S. that requires a minor to obtain permission from both of her parents to get an abortion.

* Women must endure a 24-hour waiting period before they can have an abortion. During that time they are given state-mandated information that is often distorted or even false, such as the erroneous claim that there is a connection between abortion and breast cancer.

* The state requires that a physician give out this information, which adds to the cost of the abortion, especially for a clinic such as the Jackson Women's Health Clinic, which flies in two of its three physicians from other states.

* Mississippi also has the nation's most sweeping so-called "conscience clause," which allows any health care provider to refuse to provide abortion-related services, including referrals, to those in need.

And more:

Hill also says that the clinic regularly receives phone calls from women asking what they can do to end their pregnancies themselves. "One woman called a few weeks ago, saying she couldn't come to the clinic but told us she had taken 20 Tylenols and hoped that would do the trick." Hill says she also hears Vera-Drake-type stories about women in the Delta who help women with unintended pregnancies, but "we don't have any specifics about it."

"It's hard to get the time off to go up twice," says one student at the University of Southern Mississippi, who wishes to remain anonymous. "I had to get off work and get out of classes to drive up there and then go back later [because of the mandatory delay law]. It was a couple of weeks before I could take the time off again to have the abortion. And believe me, around here, you can't tell your boss why you need the time off."

On November 8, a PBS Frontline episode focussed on this struggle in Jackson. As the Frontline site says:

"… [E]ver since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, people got the impression that abortion was safe; Roe v. Wade was safe," explains William Saletan, the author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. "All the pro-choice people went home."

In the years after Casey, the pro-life movement has dramatically changed the landscape of abortion politics. In Mississippi alone, they helped pass 10 laws regulating abortion. And in the last two years, the state has passed legislation on fetal homicide prosecution, new clinic regulations, requirements to report abortion complications, rights of conscience, and a law that would prohibit the state's last abortion clinic from offering abortions beyond the first trimester.

Americans United for Life (AUL), the nation's oldest national pro-life organization, considers Mississippi an example for the nation. "Mississippi has an impressive track record," says AUL senior legal counsel Clarke Forsythe. "Our goal is to see that other states pass the type of legislation that Mississippi has passed over the past decade, and we see a lot of legislative activity."

With an ever-increasing number of state abortion regulations and a steady decline in abortion providers, the procedure, while still legal, has become daunting and expensive in Mississippi and elsewhere. Nationwide, there are now fewer abortion providers in the U.S. than at any time since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 -- 87 percent of U.S. counties don't have one.

(By the way, there are some useful links on the PBS site, if you follow that link). Anyway, so with all this going on, the Feminist Majority Foundation is asking for donations to help save the Jackson clinic. Because, as the Americans United For Life quote above indicates, Mississippi could just be the first step. Further, no woman should be forced to swallow 20 Tylenols because she can't make it to a clinic.

Half of your emergency contribution will support the FMF National Clinic Access Project’s work with federal, state, and local law enforcement, community leaders and the Jackson clinic to counter the protesters and prevent deadly attacks.

And the other half of your emergency contribution will be put into a special fund created by the Jackson Women’s Health Organization to help poor women in Mississippi obtain abortions.

It's mostly sad that half of it needs to get spent on law enforcement... argh.

jane 3:44 PM [+]

Also a sbout-out

I'd like to point out my roommate Emily's new website, which I have listed in the column on the left of this site, below Emily's blog. She's on her way to rock stardom. You should check her out... I'll try to talk her into posting some mp3s once she has some good recordings done.

jane 7:48 PM [+]

So I hope I don't regret this...

Tonight the Leafs are playing the Rangers. I have a hard-core Rangers fan in my 11.30 class, with whom I have a pretty good rapport. I made a few comments during the lecture today about how the Leafs were totally going to win (yes, believe it or not, I was able to fit these into a Descartes lecture!), and so after class he was hanging around giving me a hard time, saying no, the Rangers were going to win, since, after all, they're pretty high in the league right now. They lead the Atlantic division, in fact.

So he said he'd bet me a bottle of scotch that the Rangers would win. I said no, that probably wouldn't work, Fordham wouldn't like a professor buying a bottle of whiskey for a student, or vice versa, and that I didn't think he was 21 years old yet. He asked whether I could doubt that he wasn't 21 yet. (Anyway, that's funny if you've been reading lots of Descartes. Honestly.)

Anyway, we chatted about it for a bit, and ultimately settled on the following bet, in front of three witness (three other students). If the Leafs win, he has to sing the Canadian anthem (which he doesn't know) in front of the whole class.

If the Rangers win, I need to sing the American anthem. In front of the whole class.

Fortunately this is the class I get along with.

But anyway, here's hoping the Leafs win.... I've got them on internet radio, since of course the local broadcast TV stations don't carry hockey.

jane 7:11 PM [+]

So were the Leafs asleep all that time?!?

Listening to the Leafs game on internet radio. They just scored 3 goals in fucking overtime! What the fuck?!? Why weren't they scoring like that in regulation?

Oh well.

---
Updated Wednesday Morning, 8.50 am -- (hey, almost the title of a Simon & Garfunkel album) --

Oops. Well, that's the problem with internet radio. Hard to follow sometimes. And the NHL site that I was checking for box scores & play by play wasn't working well. So, replace the word "overtime" with "the last chunk of the third period." Not overtime at all. Thanks, CBC coverage. It's all much clearer now.

The CBC overview is worth it just for this, from Colaiacovo:

"I can take them any way I can get them," Colaiacovo said. "It's one of those funny ones to remember - a hot potato."

jane 9:39 PM [+]

It's getting closer and closer....

Christmas? No!

Well, yes, Christmas IS getting closer, as is the date of my birthday (when I will receive my banjo; and Josh is throwing me a birthday party, which is one of sweetest things I ever did hear). But also...

My Proposal Defense.

If all goes well, my proposal defense will be Wednesday, December 7th, in the afternoon. So far it looks good; I've just sent an email out to my committee confirming that date as good for them. They'd all said earlier this week that it would be fine, but I know a lot of other people are scheduling defences in December, so I have to check. My friend Rosa is defending her proposal Dec. 14. Katie Kirby's dissertation defense will be sometime in early December. Amy Peters' defense will be sometime in December. Maybe some others... my friends Paul and Ariane are also getting close to defending theirs.

Once it's defended, I'm officially A.B.D. -- which, obviously enough, stands for "All But Dissertation." It means that all that stands between me and my PhD is writing the damn thing. This proposal defense is the last hoop I have to jump through until I defend the actual dissertation.

Anyway, the proposal "defense" is mostly my committee making sure that my project sounds good and doable... it's more a chance to make sure I'm on the right track, mention things I should make sure to include, that sort of thing.

Here's the committee: My advisor, Dr. Michael Baur (who did his PhD in Toronto with Graeme Nicholson, lovely lovely Graeme), my two readers, Dr. John Davenport and Dr. Merold Westphal (warning, that's a pdf file), and my examiner, Dr. James Marsh, who is retiring at the end of this year.

Wish me luck getting this damn thing scheduled, and getting the revisions to my proposal finished in time! I'll have to hand in the final copy of my proposal two weeks before the defense date.

jane 12:43 PM [+]

Happy Hallowe'en!

OK, the stalker note, that I found when I went into my office Friday morning, read, on a scrap piece of the student newspaper, as follows:

Hey Jane! It's 3.37 AM and you're amazing. (See you in class)

Preliminary investigations concluded that it was not a prank by a fellow graduate student, as (1) I don't have any classes with other grad students right now and (2) everyone likely to have left such a note was out of town at a conference.

I think it's my smart-alec student. The one who, in class, when I called on him ("You have a grin on your face -- do you have the answer?") replied, "I always have a grin on my face when I see you bouncing around up there." yes. He said that! I think I kinda looked stunned, as he went on, "Oh, and I also have the answer..." and I went on with the discussion. That was about a month ago.



In other news, there was a Hallowe'en party on Saturday. As you can see, I was an evil dead cowboy. Do you like the bullet wound in my temple? I also wore my BRAND NEW COWBOY BOOTS. I had bought them earlier in the day, after attempting to go to the Hallowe'en store on 4th ave, and seeing that the lineup to get into the store was around the block. Fuck!

(Also, on the same day, to keep on with the cowboy theme -- Josh and I went wandering around the music stores on 48th street -- and I found my banjo! Yes, the Goodtime Banjo! It was in the window of one of the stores, and I got to play it! I love it! love love love love love love love love love love! I also got to play some of the several-thousand-dollar banjos as well. There were also cool. But I love my Goodtime. Now I just need to wait 'til my birthday.)


As you can see from the photo on the right, I evilly attacked the pinata. The pinata was hard to break. And, to be completely truthful, I sneaked a look at the pinata the second time I took an aim. And I still didn't succeed in bringing it down. Too bad I didn't have a cowboy sixshooter. A Colt? I don't know -- what kind of pistol would a cowboy have? An evil dead pistol?

Emily came to the party, too, wearing devil horns, a red feather boa, and a blazer - we figured she was a yuppie demon, or something. She also had my red cigarette holder. It worked, I think, but alas I have no photos of that.

Speaking of scary things -- yay fun new Supreme Court nominee. Since Harriet Miers was liked by no one, Alito is now up for the Supremes. As the MSNBC article states: "The judge has earnt himself the nickname of 'Scalito' for having a judicial philosophy similar to that of fellow Italian-American Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia." Yee-haw!


Oh, and I may as well post these two photos from the party Emily and I had at our place over Canadian Thankgiving/US Columbus Day weekend -- we were jamming on some guitars. The guitar sitting by its lonesome represents Emily, who took the photos with her cellphone camera. (Ah, technology.)








(Natalia -- pictures, and the stalker note. Is that a good enough blog post, do you think?)

jane 3:00 PM [+]

almost finished grading

sigh... I've been trying to get through grading midterms & papers as quickly as possible, so I haven't really been able to take the time to share anything with you all. but this is priceless (and I'm almost done...):

The Republic proposed many different opinions about the soul. The source is a remarkable achievement to have been written, in the times before Christ. Although there is little reference amongst modern philosophers, the works of Plato remain a historical hypothesis that started this wave of "thinkers" that is still very popular to this day.

Sigh.....

jane 6:19 PM [+]

Check this out --

Harriet Miers has a blog. Well, I doubt it's really her. But that would be cool. I'd like a Supreme Court Justice with such a pretty pink blog.

jane 7:32 PM [+]

taking a break from grading

So... if you were to think of a few music albums that should be in everyone's music collection -- that are so good that it doesn't matter what genre they're in -- what would they be? I'm listening to Gillian Welch's "Time (The Revelator)" and would definitely nominate it as being one of these transcendently good albums.

jane 2:16 PM [+]

Harriet Miers. Her one qualification her lack of paper trail.

I just want to say that as I'm writing this, I'm listening to Toronto's Mojo 640 radio on the internet, and wearing my Leafs jersey (my vintage Daryl Sittler jersey, actually). Go Leafs! (Of course, around here, all people are talking about is the first round of the major league baseball playoffs... blah blah blah, Yankees won last night against the Angels, whatever)

Anyway. I just wanted to bring this to your attention; I don't often read the conservative commentary, but it kind of made me scary when I ended up agreeing with some of Pat Buchanan's analysis:

A paper trail is the mark of a lawyer, a scholar or a judge who has shared the action and passion of his or her time, taken a stand on the great questions, accepted public abuse for articulating convictions.

Why is a judicial cipher like Harriet Miers to be preferred to a judicial conservative like Edith Jones?

One reason: Because the White House fears nominees “with a paper trail” will be rejected by the Senate, and this White House fears, above all else, losing. So, it has chosen not to fight.

Other things, of course, that Buchanan said were just scary. But that's normal.

This article had some creepy moments -- from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Some groups on the right were angry at revelations that Miers had filled out a Lesbian/Gay Coalition of Dallas survey in 1989 stating that gay men and women should have the same civil rights as heterosexual men and women.

A conservative Web site, covenantnews.com, alluded to Miers as a "sodomite" in reference to the issue.

Ooh! Scary! Civil rights!! Apparently this is enough even to reflect badly on Bush:

At one point in his news conference, Bush felt compelled not only to defend Miers' qualifications to serve on the high court — "I picked the best person I could find" — but also to respond to questions about his own politics.

"Are you still a conservative?" a reporter asked.

"I'm still a conservative, proudly so, proudly so," he replied.

Meanwhile, oddly enough I also find myself in agreement with the hyper-conservative, kind of nasty James Dobson (from Focus on the Family):

Still, Mr. Dobson said he intended to keep a wary eye on the confirmation hearings. "This is for all the marbles," he said. "It is a scary moment for many of us."

(That last bit was from the NY Times.)

jane 7:23 PM [+]

Compromise of the Century!

I will change/clean the cat litter, and my roommate will handle the trash/recycling.

I think this is excellent.

Meanwhile, the CBC and its union are working out a deal, hopefully in time for hockey.

Huzzah.

jane 8:41 PM [+]

Good to know the Leafs are back to their old tricks

I'm listening to the Buffalo-Toronto game over the internet on my headphones as I get some work done for the Ancient & Medieval Philosophy Conference. Do you think the Leafs are enjoying their penalties? Can anyone who was watching the game, rather than just listening to it, tell me if they really needed to give up all those powerplays? What did Belak look like with his jersey pulled over his head?

4-1 and it's only the end of the second. FUCK fuck fuck!

The commentators are saying the Leafs should work on their penalty killing. Maybe they could work on not having so many penalties? Maybe? You think? I mean, I'm all behind wacking the guy one if he really deserves it, but do they really need to give the opposing team so many chances? It's ridiculous.

Yeah. I really missed hockey. I really did. Thank god it's back.

jane 9:14 PM [+]

Sorry so quiet lately

Happy september! The new semester is upon us! I've already taught for two weeks -- I have 70 fresh-faced freshmen, with eager questions like, "Do we have to bring all our books with us to every class?" and "What's a syllabus?" Huzzah!

off to Canada tonight for the wedding of the lovely Melanie this weekend.

When I return, I will post about the two Courtneys in my 10.30 am section, one of whom is a Scientologist and the other of whom lacks arms and legs.

Seriously.

jane 1:55 PM [+]

The New York Times does hangin' out

Guess what, everyone! The latest cool thing is to hang out with your friends, maybe drinking, maybe making lewd jokes, maybe eating frosting. Oooh, boy!

(This is up there with the Times reporting cowboy boots as the "latest" trend, a good year after every hip chick south of 14th street had them. Oh well)

jane 2:58 PM [+]

Dropped off the first draft of my proposal with my advisor on Thursday

Here's the first page (introductory paragraph):

Statement of the problem

My dissertation will argue, roughly, that there is an important bridge that can be built between feminist work on relational autonomy, which derives mainly from Anglo-American feminist philosophy, and the conceptions of personal freedom and self-determination that can be found in German Idealism, particularly in the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel. There are two reasons that this is an important bridge: (1) the feminist work has not adequately explored the metaphysics of the subject involved in relational autonomy; namely, how a self who is constituted in and through social relations can still be said to be an autonomous individual; (2) the scholarship in German idealism, while acknowledging that the status of women has changed since the 19th century, generally fails to examine how the particular concerns of feminists are met by the idealists, and has not made any sustained attempt to view the idealist practical philosophy in the light of the important work that has been done by feminists on issues of subjectivity and relationality. No one who is strongly familiar with both sets of scholarship has made any recent attempt to bring the two to the table, despite the striking structural similarities in driving questions (how can we both be free and related? how is it that our social relations determine us and at the same time are part of our freedom?) and solutions (reflection, freedom through responsibility). Further, both of these sets of scholarship have been inadequately brought into the contemporary mainstream analytic discussions of autonomy; perhaps a carefully articulated view of relational autonomy that drew from both of these sources could dialogue with the mainstream discussion.

Anyway, I've given copies of it to my advisor, as I said, and to Doug and Stephen, and will print out a copy for Josh, in order to get comments/criticisms and so forth. I'm not expecting to hear from my advisor super-soon (he said he'd get to it once his life got back to normal), so it's nice to have an excuse not to work on it for a little while. Of course, I've already been thinking of additional things I'd like to fix about it. Oh well. It's just a proposal, it just needs to be good enough to convince five professors that it's a workable dissertation project. It doesn't need to be perfect.

If I can propose this fall, life will be very very good.

jane 1:33 PM [+]

Ah, Ann... a.k.a., GO ANARCHY! YAAAA!

Fave new Ann Coulter quote:

“Liberals promote the right of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and Communists. They instinctively root for anarchy against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason.”

(from Right Wing News, via Crooked Timber, who has posted a litany of wacky right wing nonsense lately.)

Sounds like fun!

jane 1:30 PM [+]

My brain is oozing out of my ears

Hey, I don't know what happened to the photos in the last post. They looked fine last week when I put them up, but now they look wonky. I don't know what's up with that.

in other news, I've been working like a madwoman on my dissertation proposal. Today I gave a first draft to my friends Stephen "the Machine" Minister and Doug "the Jesuit" Pierce. I'm going to tinker with it some more tomorrow, and then put a copy in my advisor's mailbox. It's not done, by any means, but it's definitely at the stage where others need to look at it & tell me what needs more/less emphasis, explanation, etc. I can't look at it properly anymore. It's about 22 pages; my bibliography's at about 7 pages.

Oh, and I'm almost done my syllabus for the fall; I dropped off some articles for e-Res (the electronic reserve system). So that's coming along.

Whew. Still need to write that book review, and get the abstracts ready for the Ancient & medieval conference. Oh, and Stephen "the Machine" named me hospitality coordinator for this spring's grad student conference. But I won't really have much to do with that until January (it involves booking the caterers, setting up the continental breakfast stuff, reserving a restaurant for the banquet, seeing that the visiting grad students are put up somewhere, that sort of thing).

jane 5:00 PM [+]

Update... various things

This will be relatively brief, as I should get to work on my proposal. I'm at my last shift at the reference desk at the library, and am here until 5pm. I should be able to get a lot of stuff done, but of course, there's always the lure of the evil internet.

First of all, for ex-Whitney-ites, there's a link off of Jennifer's blog to join the Whitney Hall group. (I don't know how to set up a button for myself. Oh well. This will probably do for now).

Second, I went to my friend Aaron's wedding last Saturday. It was truly lovely -- it was down in Chinatown, as Suesan, his bride, is Chinese Catholic. The church was pretty and very very old, down on Mott Street - the Church of the Transfiguration. It really stands out in the neighbourhood, as the photos show in the link. The wedding was lovely, albeit ultra-conservative Catholic (too much mass! aaaaugh!), and there was lots of very very very good food at the reception in the church basement (yummy Chinese buns and all sorts of goodies), and very very tasty at the banquet at the Oriental Palace Restaurant (103-105 Mott Street). There were even chicken heads.

People, of course, had to demonstrate their love for the chicken heads, as you can see below. Poor little chicken head. There was also lobster, and prawns, and steak, and abalone, and shark's fin soup, and everything.


Ah yes, lots of love for the chicken heads (there was lots of wine at the banquet, of course). Amy and Josh, both more or less vegetarians, had a special bond with the chicken head. Here's Amy, loving that head.


And Josh, in his old glasses that he recently found and has started wearing again (I think they make him look like a New York Intellectual), with the chicken head. LOVE IT!

Needless to say, there was a lot of frivolity.


In addition to eating good food and being super-happy for my friend Aaron, I also got to kind of meet Richard's new girlfriend. Her name is Bazhonka, or Bajonka, or something like that. It's some sort of Eastern European name. Anyway, you can see her & Richard in the back of this photo of me & Josh. (The one, to the left of Richard, in the black dress with the deep V; the woman Richard's actually talking to in this photo is one of our lovely philosophy department secretaries, Margaret)


She's also in the back of this photo.



And of this one. Oh yeah, check out that wine bottle. For our table of 7 (Josh, me, Paul, Amy, Craig, Rosie, Sterling), we went through five bottles of wine, and Craig and Josh didn't even have any -- they had endless bottles of Tsingtao beer. Ah yes. Oh, and I had some beer as well. This is after the wine we had at the bar we went to between the reception and dinner.


This photo is after much, much wine. I think I'm a little flushed.


Anyway, do any of the St. Catherine folks vaguely recognize her, off in the back of the first three photos? I can send you a photo of her & Richard up close, but I'd rather not post it to my blog. Anyway, whatever. Who cares? (For the record, we weren't actually introduced -- Richard introduced her around to everyone else, but kind of avoided me... I ended up chatting with them both much later in the evening, as I was leading folks to the Bulgarian Social Club (a.k.a. Mehanata) at Broadway & Canal -- I was chatting with her then, about the bar, but didn't bother introducing myself at that point. Anyway... seems nice, but whatever. I'm over it!)

Besides, look how adorable Josh is.



In still other news, I'm almost done my proposal, but I'm not expecting my advisor, Michael Baur, to have a look at it any time soon... his wife, who was expecting twins (due Octoberish), went into the hospital last week for careful observation. Earlier this week they had to perform an emergency C-section -- they saved one, but the other, Jacob, was stillborn. Daniel, the one they saved, is in an incubator, and apparently has been doing much better. So we're all thinking about them and wishing them well. (so, so, so bittersweet.... hey, they have their first son... but to lose one as well...!?!)

I think German Idealism is the last thing on Dr. Baur's mind right now.

OK, that's all for now... expect more today as I procrastinate (though I did get lots of work done the last two days at the Hungarian Pastry Shop). (Oh, and I found out that if you have a photo ID from outside the NYC metro area, you can use the Columbia library - for reading, whatever - but if you have one from within the NYC metro area - i.e., a Fordham ID - then you can't go in! Grrr! I just wanted to use their air conditioning! Anyway. Too bad I lost my U of Toronto ID. I could have used that to get in. Grrr.)

jane 9:38 AM [+]

What have you been listening to lately?

So this weekend I picked up Legend - Townes van Zandt, a compilation of his music from 1969 - 1978, including some duets with folks like Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. I'm really enjoying it, and printed off a whole bunch of the lyrics and chords to his stuff. I'm totally hooked. Wikipedia includes the Steve Earle quote, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

I don't know about a Dylan-TVZ comparison, but it's really really good stuff. (Any other Townes fans? I only first heard of him a couple years ago, and it's taken me a while to actually pick up any of his stuff)

Also worth looking at is this list of top 25 country albums of all time, many of which I think I should actually pick up. (I mean, Gillian Welch's Time (the Revelator) is in there; how could it not be a good list?)

Does this mean I'm growing up into a country fan? It was just this past April that I totally loved the Country Music Hall of Fame and wandering around Nashville....

jane 6:05 PM [+]

Help... Halifax?

Does anyone any friends/relatives in Halifax who'd be likely to want to put up a complete stranger for a couple days, or, failing that, a suggestion of a good cheap youth hostel or cheap motel? There's a conference I'd really like to go to (Sept. 3- - Oct 3), but since I'm not presenting, none of my travel costs would end up covered by Fordham. (lots of good feminist stuff on agency & autonomy -- it's the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy conference)

I probably won't go (it probably makes more sense for me to just email the presenters who are giving papers I'm particularly interested in, & ask them to send me a copy), but it would be cool. Besides, I've never been to Halifax.

jane 6:44 PM [+]

YES!!

We keep Tie Domi.

Domi Agrees to Two-Year Deal With Leafs

By Associated Press

August 4, 2005, 10:20 PM CDT

TORONTO -- Tie Domi agreed to a two-year, $2.5-million contract Thursday with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team he's been with the last nine seasons.

The 35-year-old enforcer is third on the league's career penalty minutes list with 3,406 in 14 seasons. He trails only Dave Williams (3,966) and Dale Hunter (3,565).

Domi has scored 99 goals and assisted on 130 in 943 games. The 5-foot-10, 215-pound right wing spent a little over two years with both the New York Rangers and the Winnipeg Jets before returning in 1995 to the team that drafted him.

He had a career-high 29 points in 2002-2003. In his last season, 2003-2004, he had seven goals and 13 assists.

jane 10:52 AM [+]

Gorgeous new Governor General

Wow. Michaëlle Jean seems lovely. I think I've been out of Canada too long -- I haven't seen her on any of the English CBC programming they mention. What do y'all think?

jane 10:28 AM [+]

Just for Jennifer, so she doesn't have to look at the snarky NOW post





Is that better? And we will perform the ritual exercise of the un-snark:

Un-snark, nice nice nice
Nice nice nice, un-snark
David Miller you are beloved
Figure out a way to make the Leafs keep Tie Domi
Nice nice nice, un-snark
Yes, you can beat up John Ferguson
And maybe Tie can help you
Un-snark, nice nice nice

(OK, so some of my own issues sneaked through there... hope y'all don't mind)*





Meanwhile, speaking of lovely males, here's a photo of the Texas Kitty. Kitty's been settling in nicely, for the most part. He's a friendly little critter, and quite vocal. If you Meow at him he will meow back (I think he thinks he's people). I'm not sure he's ready to be mayor of a major city, or right-wing for a major hockey team, but he's definitely pretty clever (much more clever than Trouble, who's a little dumb, albeit adorable). If they tried to take over the world together, Kitty would be Brain, and Trouble would be Pinky. But Trouble's much bitchier than Pinky. Hm.... (can you tell I'm procrastinating again?)


* I was hanging out with genuine Texans (i.e., my new roomate and her husband) and they really said 'y'all'! It was wonderful! And discussed when it was & wasn't grammatical! (which her husband could do with great accuracy, being a Latin teacher and all)

jane 11:57 AM [+]

But no! we do love you!

Apparently, Tie Domi feels unloved. Boo! We want him! (If he goes to Pittsburgh to 'help protect' Crosby, I may have to start cheering Pittsburgh -- a pair o' cuties!)

Bad enough to lose Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts to the Panthers. Oh well.


UPDATE Aug. 2 4.42pm: More detailed info in yesterday's Star article (i.e,. how much the various other Leafs are making, how much the Leafs have left to spend - $10.3 million - etc.)

jane 1:30 PM [+]

Procrastinating just a little bit...

I'm working at the library today, and have gotten some more work done on my proposal (mostly typing up some bibliographical stuff). I figured it was time to take a break so I checked out the NHL schedule -- the Leafs aren't playing in NYC against the Rangers until February, so that gives me time to save up some money for tickets (the cheapest tickets, this season, are $29, and if I want to drag Josh I should probably buy his ticket too). Anyway, then I wondered what Tie Domi was up to these days, and found the Official Tie Domi website. There are some cute photos up; my favourite is this one:


Ah, Tie, you're so sweet. (There are also some lovely shots of his wife, which always remind me of the story told by a university friend about the time he saw a really hot blonde woman, started to yell "Hey...", then realized the man on her arm was Domi, and at the last second changed his yell to "Hey... it's Tie Domi!").

I wonder if Tie Domi wants to come visit me in the Bronx? My neighbourhood is getting more & more Albanian by the minute, but there's also lots of Italian food (which, according to the website, is his favourite.) Maybe when he comes in February.

What does Bryan McCabe's wife look like? Oh, wait, there's a photo most of the way down this page. mm, I think I'm cuter, but I'm kind of over Bryan anyway.

jane 12:55 PM [+]

Update -- cause for huzzah

1. Megan and Natalia are in town this weekend; we shall live fabulously. Huzzah.

2. My friend Dale from high school is also in town, so hopefully we can all meet up for drinks. More huzzah.

3. My roommate is moving in this weekend; she arrives in town tomorrow night. She seems cool. More huzzah.

4. Still more huzzah, I called my ex-roomie Mike today & he said he put a cheque in the mail on Monday for $100, leaving $700 he owes me. Hey, it's a start. Huzzah-licious.

5. My proposal's coming along... eek, it's almost August! Still, I'm up to ten pages or so. And no, you can't see it yet. (Once it's finished, I'll email it to anyone who really wants to see it, but I strongly doubt you will.) Someday it will be done. Huzzah-velous.

6. I raided the department supply closet today for office supplies. Huzzah!! Anyone who wants me to write them a letter on fancy schmancy philosophy department letterhead, let me know. It makes me feel very Professional. Huzzah-tastic.

7. I got another cheque from Father Stroud yesterday for another $100. Someday I will be able to buy myself a nice bottle of Talisker with the De Mello money. (Probably not de Mello's idea of spiritual goodness, but definitely mine!) Huzzah, and cheers!

jane 8:40 PM [+]

YES! I know this is what you've ALWAYS Wanted, a.k.a., I love the American Library Association

An Orlando Bloom poster from the www.ala.org American Library Association.

They also have a pretty hip Batman poster. And a cute Sandman bookmark (the Neil Gaiman poster is actually a bit of a weird picture... Neil with facial hair!). OK, and a wicked Gandalf poster. And a Simpsons poster.

OK, and Ani DiFranco. And Salma Hayek. And Tony Hawk. And The Rock.

OK, everyone's getting ALA stuff this year. Like a Dewey Decimal System nightshirt.

I love the ALA. Here's the list of issues they're involved with. Such as Banned Books Week, which this year is September 24 - October 1.

Also, recently I decided that I loved interlibrary loan so much I want to make an i [heart] interlibrary loan t-shirt. I love it! I ask for things, and they come to me, from all over! so happy-making!!

Meanwhile, the Canadian Library Association does not have as much cool merchandise, though the picture on the Look. Men read. See men read fundraising calendar is kind of cute, and waterbottles and travel mugs are always handy. But sorry, the t-shirts are lame. And I want my Coolio poster (well, ok, maybe not that one in particular, but oh well).

jane 10:10 PM [+]

Handy website

Here's a list, straight from the Vatican's website, of Doctrinal Documents from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, a.k.a., the list of Church statements on various things, like certain theological positions, liberation theology, homosexuality, abortion, etc.

I draw to your attention:

* Men & Women in collaboration (i.e., us as vital helpmates. yee-haw!)

* Same sex marriage

* Hysterectomies - good if mom in danger, bad if just for sterilization.

* 'Respect for Life' - blarg. (Compare to the Jesuit statement, Standing for the Unborn, which emphasizes need for strong social safety net, public education, etc. Well, yeah, still pro-life.)

* Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons - yup, the act is still wrong; the inclination itself, well, sketchy, so better keep reminding 'em that the act is morally illicit!

* Liberation Theology - apparently not good as theology.

Oh well. I miss Doug the Jesuit.

jane 9:45 PM [+]

procrastination + archives = fun!

Hey, Jennifer, I never would have known you'd been lookin' through my archives until I found this comment, dated January 17, 2005 attached to this post, dated August 25, 2003 (for some reason it says "0" comments, but Jennifer's comment is there plain as day). Funny, too, that it's in reference to lookin' up old stuff on google.

OK, no more procrastination for me. Though it makes me wonder what else is buried back there....

jane 8:40 PM [+]

oh, those clever people at friendster, still trying to reel us in

Just wanted to say that, after a helpful and slightly pleading email from the people at friendster, I've added a link to my public profile URL up top (see? is that sufficiently small-capped and subtle?). As the email says,

Now all your non-Friendster friends can view your public profile without having to sign up or log in. So go ahead, don't be shy! Link to your public profile on your blog, list it in your email footer, write it on the bathroom wall, or publicize it anywhere else you please!

Well, I don't know about the bathroom wall, but, well, for what it's worth, there it is. But I'd be interested to know how many people actually use Friendster, on a day-to-day kind of basis, instead of just logging in now and then when some new friend suddenly "discovers" it and is all excited to add you as their friendster.

I seem to remember reading some article about that, actually, saying that friendster did indeed have the problem that no one really stayed logged in for very long - people don't really linger. I see they're all revamping it to encourage lingering, but... meh... has anyone reading this actually met a new person on friendster?

jane 6:01 PM [+]

The academic life

Huh. What a day.

10.00 am. Father Clarke, a 90-year old Jesuit, calls me to invite me for dinner.

11.00 am. Call Father Stroud at the De Mello Spirituality Center re. when I should stop by for him to show me what I need to do (I picked up another job 'round campus).

11.15 am. Sort laundry into two bags (hot/cold).

11.20 am. Clean up cat-sick on bathroom floor. Yuck. Trouble's been ill lately. I'm too broke to go to the vet....

11.30 - 12.30 am. Sit in diner, drinking coffee, eating sandwich, reading Hegel's essay, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy

1.00 - 2.15 pm. Meet Father Stroud in front of Faber Hall, get shown where the De Mello Spirituality Center is (just down the hall from Cardinal Dulles's office!). He and his assistant show me what to do (my new job involves mailing out books & tapes). He gives me a cheque for $100 for my hour & a bit's work. I'm supposed to go in 3-4 times a week, an hour a day or so, and keep up with the mailings, for $25 an hour. Sweet! Their secretary is ill. This job will last for a few weeks, and possibly into the school year. Huzzah, I can afford to take Trouble to the vet!

2.30 - 3.00 pm. Argue with Ariane about what the end of the sixth Harry Potter book means. (who else has read it? wanna discuss?)

3.15 - 4.45 pm. Laundry. Euch.

4.45 - 5.20 pm. Wonder what to wear to dinner. Sweat. It's in the mid-90s Fahrenheit here in NYC, and with the heat index apparently feels like 104F. Bleauch. I know no one in Canada has sympathy for me -- I've been seeing your heat warnings. Summer sucks.

5.40 - 7.30 pm. Dinner and drinks with Father Clarke in Loyola, one of the Jesuit residences (home of lots of old, old men). We talk about Aquinas, Fichte, Hegel, relational autonomy, feminism, substance, California, Ecstasy, raves (apparently there's such a thing as "liturgical raves"?!?), what happened to the Yale philosophy department a few years ago, etc,. etc. Fr. Clarke (a.k.a. "Norrie") gives me a paper he wrote about Aquinas, "To Be is To Be Substance-in-Relation" that relates to some of what I'm working on, metaphysically.

7.35 pm. Check my email in the department. 46 new emails regarding this fall's ancient & medieval philosophy conference. I decide to put off going through them until tomorrow (I already dealt with 30 emails yesterday).

8.00 pm. Blog post.

So, I feel like I've been working all day, even though I technically haven't. But it's hard to decide whether, say, having a conversation with somebody about philosophy (specifically, explaining my project to Norrie & getting his ideas on it) counts as doing work. It's not really. It all just sort of weaves together....

jane 7:49 PM [+]

Yay, it's a 'Gate'!

The whole Karl Rove / Valerie Plame / Miller / Cooper / CIA leak / Bob Novak / Fitzgerland thing is now a "-gate" -- as in, 'what did the president know and when did he know it'.

Huzzah! Just what we've all been waiting for!

(well, I'm sure Canadians have better things to worry about... but this is all we've been thinking about down here. Well, that, and when Rehnquist will resign, and what to do with O'Connor's vacancy, and baseball).

jane 4:11 PM [+]

argh!

Richard's dating a Canadian!

For some reason, this really bothers me. As does the fact that she's been to South Carolina & met his family and he's been to St Catherines and met hers. Already.

St. Catherines!

Why does this bother me? It shouldn't bother me! But it does! Grrr!

(remind me never to send "hey, how are you, how's your summer" emails to recent ex boyfriends... for some reason, I never like what I hear back...)

jane 5:48 PM [+]

Yeah, Johann Gottlieb's a bit of a jerk

Just reading some Fichte. Check this out, from the Science of Ethics, trans. 1907 by A.G. Kroeger --

To the non-philosopher it may seem curious and, perhaps, ridiculous to require anyone to become conscious of a consciousness; but this would only prove his ignorance of philosophy and his inability to philosophize.[p.37]

Ah, Fichte. OK, back to the Ego.

jane 6:47 PM [+]

So long, Froky

At first glance, this article about pet names might seem silly, but by the time I got to the end of it I was really touched.

just thought I'd share.

any good pet name stories, anyone?

UPDATE, JULY 13TH: 'Froky' responds -- and she's not happy about having been written about.

jane 3:42 PM [+]

Divine stick shaking

I have to love these people, even just because they use the phrase "more Gods than you can shake a stick at." Check out Godchecker.com, for all your godly needs. Complete with a God of the Day -- today's is Kokopelli, huzzah!

jane 8:26 PM [+]

Toronto the Good?

What the fuck is happening in Toronto? [scroll over the three highlighted words -- there are three links there]

I mean, it's not like these people had iPods or anything....

jane 10:07 PM [+]

The Germans! The Germans! Kant and freedom

OK, so where I left off last night (before Judith Miller went to jail and London rather than Paris (and certainly rather than NYC) was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics), was with the dilemma, within the feminist project of relational autonomy, of excessive, atomistic individualism vs. determinism -- in other words, the classical philosophical problem of freedom and necessity. How can we be both free and also be true to our important responsibilities to others and true to our social roots & values?

So, we go way back to Kant.

Kant's central problem is how to reconcile freedom and necessity. If everything in the physical world is determined by natural laws, then how can we humans still have free will? This is still an important problem -- witness all the nature-nurture debates, and the debates over consciousness, neuroscience, psychology, and the brain. Where is our free will located? Etc.

What Kant famously argued is that within the natural world everything really is determined by physical laws. However, the natural world is only the world of appearances, or phenomena ('phenomena' is basically just Greek for 'appearances'). We only experience this world of appearances -- how things appear to us. We don't actually experience the things in themselves.

Now this kind of division makes sense at first -- just think of the difference between the table as I perceive it and the table as described by physics (atoms, quarks, blah blah blah). But Kant wants to go even farther: the world as described by physics is part of the world of appearances, the phenomenal world. Everything we can possibly experience or have scientific knowledge of is part of this phenomenal world. This phenomenal world is governed by the laws of nature, which are deterministic, rather than free.

Wait! you might say. What about all the stuff that's come out about physics on the quantum level -- eensy weensy particules popping in & out of existence at random? That doesn't seem deterministic, does it?

Well, Kant would reply, it's still not free. For one thing, these things on the quantum level still seem to follow regular statistical patterns. For another thing -- and this is important for Kant and all the idealists following him -- arbitrary actions are not free.

What does that mean? It means that if Natalia suddenly jerks her arm and hits Paul, then she didn't freely hit Paul. Free actions require volition; they need to have been freely willed. True freedom is neither determined/forced by something outside of it, nor does it happen at random. The utterings of a Tourette's sufferer are not free. A free action on my part is something I meant to do.

Why is this important? Because I can & should only be held responsible for things I freely do, not for things that I did accidentally. (This principle goes back at least as far as Aristotle). Further, it means that the kind of free self-determination that will be important for autonomous action should also be self-determination that is accompanied by reflection & volition. I should be able to take responsibility for my autonomy. But more on that later. (that's not very well put, either... I'll work on that.)

OK. So, world of appearances = unfree. So where's freedom?

In addition to the world of appearances is the world of things-in-themselves (the noumenal world, the world of noumena). Freedom's over there. Even though we can't experience freedom itself, it's still there. Tricky, huh? I had a lot of trouble explaining the two worlds to my students. It's notoriously difficult to understand how we're really free, as humans, but not in any way we can directly experience. The only way we know we're really free is because somehow we recognize a moral law that is not part of our experience. Wacky, huh?

What we experience of ourselves is the way we're conditioned by our upbringing, by memories of traumatic experiences we had as youngsters, by our biology, by our social environment, etc., etc., etc. All these things are fairly deterministic. But in our ability to somehow rise above these things and freely decide for ourselves what the right thing to do is, in a way undetermined by considerations of greed, inclination, realpolitik, etc.*

When we act according to the moral law, therefore, we are not acting in a determined or in an arbitrary manner -- we are acting freely. And we are only acting freely when we act according to the moral law. When we act according to the moral law, Kant says that we are giving ourselves the moral law - accepting it for ourselves - and that we are therefore autonomous. We are heteronomous (the opposite of autonomous) when we are controlled by things outside ourselves - i.e., by our emotions**, by greed, by an unreflective allegiance to political or religious authority, etc.***

OK, so , for Kant: being free = following the moral law = being autonomous = being self-determining.
Being unfree = not following the moral law = being heteronomous = being controlled by something outside ourselves.

Capisce?

Hm, this post is spiralling out of control into a big Kant lecture. I'm going to read some Fichte now, and I'll get back to you on how this then builds into Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. But I promise, it'll be good.



* There's a whole debate over whether this works, obviously, and particularly whether it's right that Kant also wants us to rise above inclination -- since he includes emotions as part of inclination, and sometimes, surely, our emotions can also help reveal to us the correct moral action. That said, I'm going to leave that debate to the side for now.

** Yup, see footnote * again. It really is a big issue.

*** This is part of why Kant is such a hardcore Enlightenment thinker. Have a look at his essay, An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment" for a good statement of what all this freedom & autonomy means on a political level. He says things like "The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!" and criticizes the majority of folks for simply blindly obeying authority. (Actually, this might be a clearer translation)

jane 7:46 PM [+]

ewwww....

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite....

jane 3:47 PM [+]

Relational Autonomy: Resources in Feminism and German Idealism

Doesn't that sound like a good title? I met with Michael Baur today about my ideas for my diss* and he said he thought it was a very good project. Yay!

I had been worried that he wouldn't accept my project as it was and would suggest a lot of changes to it -- I didn't want to change it too much, because it's really important to me that it's my project, not my professor's. All he wanted me to do, though, was to spend a little more time clarifying where things stood with Kantian autonomy, and to include Schelling as well as Fichte and Hegel in my treatment of freedom.

That's all well and good, you say, but what does this all mean? Well, here we go, I'll try to explain what's going on as best I can, since this project is going to be my life for the next two or three years.** Your comments are much appreciated. I have until the end of August to write up a 20-25 page (not including bibliography, which will be at least 6-7 pages on its own) proposal, describing what I plan to do in more detail. But for now, this is it.

Whew.

OK.

There has been a debate in recent (say, the last 15 years or so) feminist philosophy about the role of autonomy. By autonomy, I mean roughly self-determination -- deciding one's own course through life, making one's own decisions, that sort of thing. Autonomy, of course, literally means 'giving oneself the law' -- deciding, for oneself, the rules that one will follow. Some feminist philosophers have argued that this is an excessively masculine ideal -- kind of a 'Cool Hand Luke' kind of thing: I'm going to do my own thing and damn the consequences! No one can tell me what to do! Fuck all y'all!*** They think that a more feminine/feminist
**** approach should involve more attention paid & more value given to the relationships between people, particularly relationships of care and dependency, and to the ways in which we are responsible to and for each other. So, for them, autonomy bad, relationality good.

Other feminist philosophers, on the other hand, have argued that this is kinda wimpy, and the last thing that one would want to suggest to, say, abused women, or oppressed women in certain cultures. Rise up, they want to say, claim autonomy and the freedom to chart your own course! Claim autonomy as a value for you, precisely because you have been held down for so long! They see autonomy as a liberating ideal for women, that should not be rejected for its masculinist overtones.

Of course, the project the last 15 years has been working out how to have our cake and eat it too. How can we articulate a view of autonomy (all the good aspects of self-determination) that also recognizes the way in which we are socially constituted, the way we enact our freedom in & through our relationships with others, and that values these important relationships of care & dependency? The union of these two seeming opposites has been called "relational autonomy."*****

Well, even though people say that there's a happy medium, the challenge is still in finding it. So some folks, like Marilyn Friedman, say that we're basically still free individuals making our free choices, but, hey, our social upbringing & relationships are important, and we should examine them in the process of becoming more mature individuals. But we're still super-separate. (This is the liberal view.) Others, like Nedelsky herself, emphasize the relationality aspect to a greater degree - the way in which, like it or not, we're formed by our relations with others, and the choices we make reflect back on those others. Nedelsky likens it to a field (like an electric field), in which we're all interconnected. (I could go on about this & the neat way she connects this to property rights & the difference between the US Bill of Rights & the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms, but I won't. It's neat though.)

In other words, we still have the same problem. Excessive individualism on the one side, determinism (social determinism) on the other. Both poles are to be avoided. But how can the middle actually work?

This is where I go back to German idealism. They're all about freedom & necessity. [Stupid Oakland! Scoring 2 runs in the 11th inning, after Toronto tied the game in the 9th! Grr!]

You know what, though? I'm going to come back to this later. I could say it's to leave you in suspense, but really it's 'cause I don't yet feel as comfortable summing up what's going on for the Germans without resorting to a whole lot of jargon. But I'll say for now -- Kant & Fichte start setting up the autonomy stuff. Fichte moves into the territory of dealing with other people & the importance of socialization & upbringing & so forth. Schelling then clarifies the nature of freedom -- that we can't just ignore the things (e.g., nature, biology, social determinism) that we can't control, but have to build these things into our understanding of our selves as subjects. Then Hegel comes along (mighty Hegel) and explains everything. Self-determination, socialization, spirit, our relationship to each other, our relationship to the state, the whole package. He partly gets it wrong, but the ways he gets it right are great. And, I think, when you feed that back into the current feminist debate, you get a view of relational autonomy that's quite robust.

But all that for later.******


* Meaning, of course, not "disrespect," but "dissertation." Though the two are, of course, entwined, as demonstrated in the following exchange: "Are you dissing my diss?" "Yes, of course I am, it's about fucking autonomy." "Oh, Well, then, carry on."

** Scary, huh? It'll also determine the types of philosophy jobs I can apply for. With this dissertation, I can market myself as someone who does 19th century German philosophy, German idealism as such, Hegel, feminism, and social theory.

*** This is clearly not Official Academic Prose. But it works, no?

**** And, of course, working out the differences/connections between these two words is an entirely different can of worms. Oh, my, what a big can it is.

***** Pretty much everyone credits Jennifer Nedelsky with coming up with this term, particularly in her 1989 article on redefining autonomy. I took a great class with her at the faculty of law in spring 2002, that helped form, to a large extent, my views on this subject.

****** Are you still even reading this? congrats if you are!

jane 9:43 PM [+]