It’s nice to know that there are good people in the world. I was in a rush this afternoon, picking up a slice of pizza on my way to work, and I knocked my tray onto the floor in the Union with my awkwardly-positioned backpack. The slice of pizza was dust. An undergrad woman walked over and helped me get the mess off the floor, smiled, and joked, “I’d still eat it.” Then the woman behind the counter at the pizza booth saw what had happened and gave me another slice on the house.
Author Archives: Frank
Onward to Asthma
Well, time to break out the inhaler. Asthma has returned.
By the way, thanks, Steven and Bentley, for the Sudafed advice. I bought some today and it helped a lot.
Civic Engagement
It’s good to know that some people have nothing better to do with their time than write letters to their local newspapers (in this case, the Aberdeen American News in South Dakota) and ask whether any local libraries “carry” a “children’s book out right now that advocates homosexuality.”
The newspaper’s News Line helpfully identified the book(s) — King & King and its sequel, King & King & Family — and wrote in reply:
The books are not available at the Alexander Mitchell Library in Aberdeen. A search of the state’s library network revealed that no public library that is part of the South Dakota online database has them. However, several public libraries in Minnesota have the books as do some in North Dakota, though none locally.
Alexander Mitchell officials said that there are some public libraries in South Dakota that aren’t part of the state’s online network, and it’s possible the books might be found at any of these locations.
The News Line is correct — at least about the online network part of its answer. I checked the South Dakota Library Network online catalog. No hits for the titles or the authors (Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland).
Oh, by the way, in case anyone was wondering: Ann Arbor District Library has King & King — four copies !!!!! And one of them is checked out !
Ypsilanti District Library, however, does not have the offending title.
What a fine public service. The Aberdeen American News slogan: “Making it easier for South Dakota book burners to zero in on their targets, even if they’re across state lines.” Well, thank God that no easily identifiable South Dakota library has that trash in its collection. [Aberdeen American News story courtesy LISNews.]
Pollen and Punishment
No wonder my allergies have been so nightmarish the past few days. I took a look at Pollen.com. A lot of the pollen here is nothing I’ve ever really been exposed to before, at least not on any prolonged basis: cottonwood, poplar, cedar, juniper. The pollen I dealt with in Oakland was mostly mulberry, oak, and grass. Maple appears to be the only common variable so far (other than grass). The forecast is for the pollen count to be high for at least the next three days. Great.
Overheard
Two acquaintances talking on the 5 Packard:
“Happy Spring!”
“Yeah, right. I’m just glad to see a few hours of sunlight.”
Actually, it was fairly warm today, once the sun rose high enough in the sky. The morning was pretty damn miserable, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky (or, I keep forgetting, because, not “even though”). But it got up in the high 40s and maybe low 50s in the late afternoon.
Vernal Blues
That horrible sandpaper feeling in the back of the throat, endless post-nasal drip, a pseudoephedrine-induced sense of doped-up zombie lethargy all day long … yep, allergy season is definitely upon me. Yuck. This is why I can’t stand the spring.
No Fluke
Yep. Sneezing fits, congestion, a sudden need for constant Kleenex, itching eyes, and a scratchy, irritated throat and roof of the mouth. This after just 5 minutes out of doors this afternoon. The allergy season is here. I hope it stays just allergies and doesn’t trip over into asthma.
“Academic Bill of Rights”
Meanwhile, on the home front, David Horowitz continues to storm around the country shouting that the halls of academe are actually Marxist-Leninist think-tanks in disguise (as though we don’t already have enough right-wing think-tanks to fill a state the size of Minnesota). Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights has been introduced almost verbatim as a “nonbinding resolution” (H.Con.Res. 318) in the House of Representatives by Jack Kingston (R-GA).
The “Bill of Rights” includes the following language:
1. All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.
…
4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities ad social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate.
…
8. Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation. To perform these functions adequately, academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.
The reality of all of this beautifully-worded laguage, of course, is at root deeply and firmly anti-intellectual, anti-freedom, and anti-academic. As the American Association of University Professors points out, “When carefully analyzed, … the Academic Bill of Rights undermines the very academic freedom it claims to support. It threatens to impose administrative and legislative oversight on the professional judgment of faculty, to deprive professors of the authority necessary for teaching, and to prohibit academic institutions from making the decisions that are necessary for the advancement of knowledge.”
The most trenchant quote from the Times was the one from the Brown University student who whined because he had been “assigned” Karl Marx “four times” in the course of his underprivileged academic career. “Adam Smith? Not even once.”
What a tragedy. Apparently this nimrod has never heard of checking a book out from the library. He probably only knows who Adam Smith is because some right-wing ideologue told him that he was an “important” thinker (and ignored Smith’s less pigeonhole-able views, such a that “natural liberty” cannot be attained if government is left to “the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind.”)
This isn’t to say that I don’t think there’s no such thing as left-imposed political correctness on some campuses under certain circumstances. But I don’t think there is any generalized ideological litmus test in place for hiring faculty or making pedagogical decisions, no matter what some conservative professors may think. I encountered just as much conservative thought — often shoved down my throat — at Stanford as I did “liberal” thought, and the same has been true at the University of Michigan.
I think the conservative backlash of which Horowitz’s galloping crusade is the most visible example is a much bigger danger to academic institutions than any so-called leftist bias.
Cuba Clamps Down on Internet Use
Another Amnesty International Report, released in January, says that the Castro regime on January 10 put into effect a law which forbids access to the Internet except “to those, such as officially recognised businesses and government offices, with special telephone accounts payable in US dollars.”
The Amnesty International report adds: “This prevents ordinary Cuban people from accessing the service.”
But no. The Castro regime is a glorious apotheosis of the socialist vanguard, a beacon of liberty and freedom and human rights.
They wouldn’t do anything like restrict Internet access. They wouldn’t throw people in prison for 26 years for owning a private library!
Supercomputer Flash Mob
A gigaflop flash mob at the University of San Francisco’s Koret Gym yesterday. My time in 503 has demonstrated that I’m no computer science natural, but I still think this is pretty darn cool.
Nemesis
Having gone outside to let the beagle do his thing, and counting how many times I’ve sneezed in the past fifteen minutes, I have to think that my old nemesis — spring allergies — has returned.
Cuban Librarians
Last March and April, 79 dissidents in Cuba were rounded up and tried on charges of treason for conspiring with the United States to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Most of the dissidents were sentenced to between 6 and 28 years in prison. In Castro’s own words, “We are now immersed in a battle against provocations that are trying to move us toward conflict and military aggression by the United States. We have been defending ourselves for 44 years and have always been willing to fight until the end.”
Some of these dissidents were academics. Some were journalists. Some were librarians. Or—correction: they ran private “libraries” in their homes.
The dissidents have been imprisoned in locations distant from their families. Some have been held in solitary confinement for extended periods of time. According to Amnesty International, when one prisoner, journalist Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, complained about how he was being treated, “he was reportedly dragged to the floor by three prison guards and beaten on the face and body. Guards allegedly trapped his leg in a door to immobilize him during the beating.” Many of the prisoners are reportedly seriously ill. Nat Hentoff has written a number of columns on the subject of these dissidents, including 10 private librarians, for the Village Voice. They are essential reading.
One US librarian wrote to the Village Voice, “Many of us disdain the idea that our cherished professional values should be enlisted in the service of the wrong-headed and provocative foreign policy of our own government.” This is an allusion to the suspicion that many of the imprisoned librarians were not only not professional librarians, which admittedly none are, but were dupes or operatives of the US government’s ongoing efforts to get rid of Castro.
José Luis García Paneque, a plastic surgeon who directed a private library and engaged in dissident activities in Las Tunas, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment and sent to Villa Clara Provincial Prison. According to Amnesty International, “García reportedly suffers from claustrophobia. Reports received in October 2003 indicated that he may have been suffering increased mental distress at his confinement.”
Ricardo Severino Gonzélez Alfonso, a correspondent for the organization Reporters without Borders who ran a private library in his home in Havana, was sentenced to 20 years and sent to a prison in Camagüey Province. Gonzélez Alfonso staged a hunger strike and was placed in a “punishment cell” for 10 days.
Leonel Grave de Peralta Almenares, who ran a private library called “Bartolomé Masso” library in his hometown of Juan Antonio Mella, was sentenced to 20 years and sent to a prison in Pinar del Río.
Iván Hernández Carrillo, who is a journalist and ran a private library in his hometown of Colón, was sentenced to 25 years and sent to Holguín Provincial Prison. He protested prison conditions in October and was placed in a “punishment cell,” upon which he began a hunger strike.
José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández, who ran the private “Sebastián Arcos Bergnes” library in his hometown of Güines, was sentenced to 16 years and sent to a prison in Pinar del Río. According to Amnesty International, “In June 2003, it was reported that … Ubaldo Izquierdo fell while handcuffed, requiring nine stitches in his head and treatment for two wrist fractures. He was transferred to the Provincial Hospital in Pinar del Río.”
Julio Antonio Valdés Guevara, director of the private library of the opposition group Unión de Activistas y Opositores “Golfo de Guacanayabo” (Manzanillo, Granma Province), was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and sent to Ciego de Avila Provincial Prison. According to Amnesty International, “Valdés is believed to be suffering from kidney disease, and is said to be in need of a transplant. In addition, he reportedly has dizzy spells and high blood pressure. Due to his ill health he was apparently transferred in January 2004 to Salvador Allende Hospital, known as ‘La Covadonga,’ in Havana city. There is no further information available on the state of his health.”
I am fully aware of the history between the Castro regime and successive US administrations since Kennedy. I am also fully aware that there are people with influence and money, many of them who live in Florida and have intimate links with the US government, who would like nothing more than to find any pretext to take Castro out. I am opposed to the US embargo against Cuba.
But I have read some of the most bend-over-backward rationalizations I have ever read in defense of the Castro regime’s acts against these dissidents, including claptrap that should make any intelligent, thinking person blush.
Many of the defenses are in the vein of, “Well, they aren’t really librarians anyway, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be in prison if it weren’t for the US’s blockade against Cuba.”
Once again, the argument is: These are US-funded dissidents, not real librarians. So we should do nothing. They are getting what they deserve.
This strikes me as a completely absurd response to what is obviously a fierce and inhumane crackdown against prisoners of conscience.
Amnesty International has come out strongly against these crimes by the Castro regime and written several detailed reports on the prisoners’ conditions. So has Reporters without Borders.
What more does any self-respecting progressive need to see to realize that these are prisoners of conscience?
After the way the Cuban regime harassed and imprisoned Reinaldo Arenas in the 1970s, I have absolutely no romantic illusions about the unseen glories of Castro’s Cuba.
I don’t care whether these dissidents were professionally credentialed and trained librarians. I don’t care whether they have been approved and stamped by the Asociación Cubana de Bibliotecarios. I don’t care whether their “libraries” were nothing more than a couple of shelves of dusty books in their apartments with a sign calling them a “library” thrown up in front of them. I don’t care whether the dissidents were US spies in training. Castro’s imprisoning them and subjecting them to human rights violations is dead wrong.
That the ALA has done next to nothing in the dissidents’ defense seems, to say the least, problematic, given the ALA’s stated value of “commitment to intellectual freedom and access to information.”
The ALA governing council has expressed “deep concern” about the situation—nothing more. Hentoff himself has renounced an intellectual freedom award that he received from the ALA in 1983.
It is dumbfounding to me that some librarians seem to think that these were well-financed spies living the high life on the CIA’s dime, yet at the same time, they were such idiots that they couldn’t have used some of that funny money to purchase a decent, well-stocked library that would have passed muster as semi-professional in appearance.
Maybe if these people had had a decent acquisition budget, or not spent all their money on bombs, guns, Bibles, and exploding cigars, they could have gotten away with the “librarian” label, but since their “libraries” had nothing more than “four or five dusty shelves of books,” nothing more than what is “typical of [the collection] of any private citizen in the country” (to use one librarian’s description of what she saw), the prisoners aren’t fit to be called anything other than—what?—garden-variety criminals? Standard-issue miscreants?
Is a professional credential now a prerequisite for attention and asylum?
It is amazing to me that some librarians seem to think that in order for the ALA to take a stronger stand against these crimes against dissent in Cuba, the United States government first has to lift its embargo against Castro, and then the dissidents have to get distance MLS degrees from their prison cells.
Because right now they aren’t professional librarians.
So even though they’re being dragged across floors and chained and beaten and thrown into solitary confinement, why pay them any mind? They had it coming.
Of course, it is more than shameful that the US government continues to detain hundreds of “terrorists” at Guantánamo Bay without charge. But don’t get me started on that.
A Michigan Day
What a Michigan day ….. a nice warm sunlit morning and early afternoon (I wiggled my toes in amazement in the doorway, almost astonished to see sunlight bathing the threshold) followed in quick succession by an evening howling with wind and a mild rainstorm. Still, I walked to Kroger in it. I’m a freak, I know. There’s something about the rain I like here too, though. I can’t put my finger on it. Rain in San Francisco is a wet, cold, bitter, miserable experience, usually because when it happens it lasts for days on end and soaks you through to your bones. I haven’t experienced that sensation with the rain here yet, not to conclude that it never happens. The rain so far has been kind of soothing.
Traffic Nightmare
I get homesick for the Bay Area every now and then, but not on days like this:
Officials are continuing their negotiations with a man who has been standing on a railing on the westbound side of the Bay Bridge near Treasure Island since about 11 a.m. today, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Virgil Aguilar.
Westbound traffic is backed up to Highway 880 and Highway 92 and is getting worse by the minute as people aim to avoid the Bay Bridge snarl, Aguilar said.
“It’s Friday, people want to go home, and they’ve been working all week. This is causing major delays, especially because there is a Giants game tonight at SBC Park,’’ Aguilar said.
Drivers on the Golden Gate and San Mateo bridges are facing backups too.
Scheduling Nightmare
Next term doesn’t begin for almost five months but registration is already under way. I’ve registered for most of my classes already, but nobody has been able to explain why SI has decided that it’s not a problem to have at least three (if not more) high-demand courses scheduled on the same day (Thursday) and in some cases in the exact same time slot. As a result, two courses I really need to take are both at the same time, and there’s nothing I can do except decide which of the courses is more important (or more expendable). It’s not as though I’m choosing between a necessary class and an elective, either; both are “highly recommended” LIS courses. It’s absolutely ridiculous.