{"id":15312,"date":"2012-04-12T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15312"},"modified":"2012-04-12T08:10:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T15:10:29","slug":"what-ive-been-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15312","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;ve Been Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t been posting as much I would like&#8211;something that is, I hope, starting to change&#8211;but I have been reading, and so I thought I&#8217;d put up a list of the pieces that have interested me for one reason or another:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ladycaz.com\/2012\/04\/it-is-what-it-is.html\">It Is What It Is<\/a>, by my friend Cassandra, about her\u00a0&#8220;round, high, and in your face [ass] &#8212; a brazen and rebellious personality that dares anyone, including me, to\u00a0<em>attempt<\/em>\u00a0to silence her.\u00a0 She invites stares, welcomes gropes and revels in praise &#8212; she is not one to keep quiet.&#8221;\u00a0Cassandra&#8217;s new to blogging, so if you have a chance, go over to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ladycaz.com\/\">LadyCaz<\/a>\u00a0and let her know what you think.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ladycaz.com\/2012\/03\/that-dreaded-skirt.html\">That Dreaded Skirt<\/a>, also by Cassandra.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/culture\/the-best-birth-control-in-the-world-is-for-men\/#.T4G0Ge1r12f\">The Best Birth Control in the World is for Men<\/a>: &#8220;The procedure called\u00a0<a title=\"RISUG\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newmalecontraception.org\/risug.htm\" target=\"_blank\">RISUG<\/a>\u00a0in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years.&#8221; But don&#8217;t look for it any time soon in the US, since it&#8217;s not a big money-maker for the drug companies.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/culture\/could-this-male-contraceptive-pill-make-a-vas-deferens-in-the-fight-against-hiv\/#.T4G0Ge1r12d\">Could This Male Contraceptive Pill Make A Vas Deferens In The Fight Against HIV?<\/a>: &#8220;To cut right to the chase, it\u2019s affectionately dubbed the \u201cclean sheets\u201d pill due to the fact that it inhibits release of any semen whatsoever&#8230;while still permitting the circular muscles to contract&#8230;.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2008\/11\/06\/adjuncts\">Evaluating the Adjunct Impact<\/a>: &#8220;Using large samples of community colleges, studies find that as colleges use more part timers, their students are less likely to graduate or transfer to four-year institutions. And another study finds that as part-time use goes up, institutional averages in class participation (for\u00a0<em>all<\/em>\u00a0faculty members) go down.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2010\/05\/03\/adjunct\">What Adjunct Impact?<\/a>: Cites studies that contradict the studies cited in the previous article.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2012\/04\/02\/new-faculty-group-takes-workforce-focus-community-colleges\">Completion at What Price?<\/a>:\u00a0&#8220;[T]he debut report&#8230;takes on the \u201ccompletion agenda\u201d and its heavy emphasis on workforce development [at community colleges], a fixation that the report said threatens academic quality and student access, as well as social mobility.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/04\/04\/the_disposable_professor_crisis\/singleton\/\">The Disposable Professor Crisis<\/a>: &#8220;[A]s growing numbers of institutions turn to contingent (or adjunct) faculty to cut costs, while keeping pay as low as possible for the support staff who keep campuses running[,] students suffer&#8230; [T]he number of available services are reduced, class sizes increase, and educators are less able to provide direct assistance and mentoring to the students they are there to teach.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2017919292_afghanboys06.html\">&#8216;Dancing Boys&#8217;: A Tale of Sexual Exploitation<\/a>: &#8220;The practice of wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to Afghan human-rights researchers, Western officials and men who participate in the abuse.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/07\/31\/beyond-translation\/\">Poetry, Medium and Message<\/a>: &#8220;Here is a question that has been confounding or even infuriating poets for eons.\u00a0So what is your poem\u00a0<em>about<\/em>?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tasteofhome.com\/Recipes\/Curried-Lamb-and-Barley-Grain\">Curried Lamb and Barley Grain<\/a>: A recipe I made recently that I really, really liked.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/books\/2012\/03\/long-lost-fairy-tales.html\">Cinderfellas: The Long Lost Fairy Tales<\/a>: In these tales, &#8220;Cinderella is a woodcutter\u2019s daughter who uses golden slippers to recover her beloved from beyond the moon and the sun.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/culture\/2012\/03\/adrienne-rich-katha-pollitt.html\">Adrienne Rich&#8217;s News in Verse<\/a>: Katha Pollit on Adrienne Rich&#8217;s death.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcsweeneys.net\/articles\/sexting-ice-breakers-for-english-grad-students\">Sexting Ice Breakers for English Grad Students:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cMaybe we should consider using a rhetorical device; though, to be clear, I am not suggesting that we rely on that rhetorical device every time we cowrite a paper.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/therumpus.net\/2012\/01\/sunday-rumpus-fiction-ten-reasons-not-to-sleep-with-a-poet\/\">Ten Reasons Not To Sleep with a Poet<\/a>: &#8220;8.\u00a0Like other kinds of men, he will never understand the anguish of carrying a phone that does not ring. \u00a0Unlike other kinds of men, he will seem to fall off the planet for weeks at a time, lost in a place\u2014that goddamned place you know to be a space in his head and not an actual location.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.matthewhunt.com\/cunt\/index.html\">Cunt: The History of the C Word<\/a>: &#8220;In fact, the origins of &#8216;cunt&#8217; can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European &#8216;cu&#8217;, one of the oldest word-sounds in recorded language. &#8216;Cu&#8217; is an expression quintessentially associated with femininity, and forms the basis of &#8216;cow&#8217;, &#8216;queen&#8217;, and &#8216;cunt&#8217;. The c-word&#8217;s second most significant influence is the Latin term &#8216;cuneus&#8217;, meaning &#8216;wedge&#8217;. The Old Dutch &#8216;kunte&#8217; provides the plosive final consonant.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/iraninward.blogspot.com\/2012\/03\/women-publishers-in-iran-farkhondeh.html\">Women Publishers in Iran: Farkhondeh Hajizadeh<\/a>: &#8220;The process of growing censorship has reached a point that even the concept of censor does not apply to it. In a time when we all seem to be living in glass houses and have nothing left to hide, such approaches to book publishing is synonymous to a return to the Middle Ages.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/08\/books\/review\/language-the-cultural-tool-by-daniel-l-everett.html\">Repeat After Me<\/a>: A review of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780307378538\">Language: The Cultural Tool<\/a><\/em> by Daniel Everett, in which Everett claims to have found evidence to disprove the Chomskian theory of language universals.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/do-college-professors-work-hard-enough\/2012\/02\/15\/gIQAn058VS_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Do College Professors Work Hard Enough?<\/a>: A professor-bashing op-ed from the Washington Post that is nonetheless worth reading so that the rebuttals (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com\/2012\/03\/stupid-or-lying-wildly-overpaid-faculty-edition\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/blogs\/confessions-community-college-dean\/fish-check-barrel-check\">here<\/a>\u00a0(the most balanced of them), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philnel.com\/2012\/03\/26\/professorswork\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/virtualpaperballs.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/25\/the-shelf-life-of-total-b-s\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2012\/03\/27\/newspaper-op-ed-sets-debate-over-faculty-workload-and-faculty-bashing\">here<\/a>) will all make sense.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philnel.com\/2011\/02\/26\/busytown8\/\">What Do Professors Do All Week?<\/a>: Introductory post to a series in which one professor logged the time he spent on work-related activities during one seven-day week. It&#8217;s worth reading the entire series; the links are at the bottom of the post I am linking to here.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t been posting as much I would like&#8211;something that is, I hope, starting to change&#8211;but I have been reading, and so I thought I&#8217;d put up a list of the pieces that have interested me for one reason or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15312\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link-farms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15339,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312\/revisions\/15339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}