Actress, writer and director Adrienne Shelly has been murdered, apparently by a construction worker who was upset with her noise complaints. I, like most people, know Shelly best from her roles in the great Hal Hartley movies Trust and The Unbelievable Truth. Her main focus, though, was writing and directing comedies. I saw her first feature, Sudden Manhattan, and was suitably amused. Since then she has made another movie I'll Take You There, and had a third, Waitress (with Firefly star Nathan Fillion!) in the can.
The construction worker who allegedly killed Shelly is said to have punched the slight, 5'2" director. I bet he didn't realize he could kill her like that. He then (allegedly) took her body to her office and tried to make it look like a suicide.
She had a husband and a three year old daughter.
Stories here and here.
Hat tip to Carin.
Update: NYT Story here. Apparently she was still alive when the guy tried to fake the suicide, and only died later after he hung up her unconscious body.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
My Complete SLU Course Evaluations
As a part of my commitment to transparency in higher education, I have decided to put all of my teaching evaluations for my time at SLU online.
Here is single table summarizing of the numerical data for two key questions, Question 1: A high level of effort was demanded by this course, and Question 5: The instructor was an effective teacher. (Students are asked to agree or disagree on a seven point scale.) Molly made up these charts. Thanks.
Here are the university summaries for the quantitative sections, including all five questions.
2003-2004
2004-2005
2005-2006
Note that there is a screw up on these forms with 202A (Reasoning) and 203A (Ethics) from the Spring of 2006. I gave the Ethics forms to the Reasoning class, so all the Reasoning responses were tabulated by the university as Ethics. When it came time to give evaluation forms to Ethics, I discovered that I only had the 202A, Reasoning, forms to give out. I tried to compensate for the mistake by having the students write 203A:Ethical Theory on the form. The university refused to tabulate any form that had the extraneous marks on it. They did however tabulate 3 forms from students who did not follow my instructions. Of course, these were ethics students, whose three forms were then tabulated as Reasoning.
All of this is corrected in the summaries that Molly made up for me, and you can check it against the raw data.
OK, here is the raw data.
Fall 2003
Spring 2005
Fall 2005
Spring 2006
Ack, it's time to go home. I'll fill in the rest of these links later. Done! Also, there is was a summer course in 2004 on environmental ethics that I forgot completely about. I'm not even sure where the evals are. This will do for now, though.
Further Update: Let's also add a link to my page at Ratemyprofessors.com. Please note that 33.3% of the students reporting (N=3) rated me as "hot."
Here is single table summarizing of the numerical data for two key questions, Question 1: A high level of effort was demanded by this course, and Question 5: The instructor was an effective teacher. (Students are asked to agree or disagree on a seven point scale.) Molly made up these charts. Thanks.
Here are the university summaries for the quantitative sections, including all five questions.
2003-2004
2004-2005
2005-2006
Note that there is a screw up on these forms with 202A (Reasoning) and 203A (Ethics) from the Spring of 2006. I gave the Ethics forms to the Reasoning class, so all the Reasoning responses were tabulated by the university as Ethics. When it came time to give evaluation forms to Ethics, I discovered that I only had the 202A, Reasoning, forms to give out. I tried to compensate for the mistake by having the students write 203A:Ethical Theory on the form. The university refused to tabulate any form that had the extraneous marks on it. They did however tabulate 3 forms from students who did not follow my instructions. Of course, these were ethics students, whose three forms were then tabulated as Reasoning.
All of this is corrected in the summaries that Molly made up for me, and you can check it against the raw data.
OK, here is the raw data.
Fall 2003
- Introduction to Philosophy 100A
- Introduction to Philosophy 100D
- Philosophy of Science 301A (That year we did all philosophy of biology)
- Science: Questions, Methods, Reflections 101A
- Ethical Theory 203A
- Special Topics: History of the Concept of Mind 348b
Spring 2005
Fall 2005
Spring 2006
Further Update: Let's also add a link to my page at Ratemyprofessors.com. Please note that 33.3% of the students reporting (N=3) rated me as "hot."
Saturday, November 04, 2006
OMG, a textbook fallacy
Check this argument out:
In any case, there's one for Reasoning class on Monday.
The Rev. Greg Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church in Maplewood: "I thirst for water, and water exists. I hunger for food, and food exists. I hunger and thirst for God, so I concluded that God must exist."from this interview with Richard Dawkins. The interviewer asks Dawkins what he thinks of this quote. Strangely, Dawkins does not say: "is this the best you could come up with? I despair for the American education system"
In any case, there's one for Reasoning class on Monday.
Name that philosopher
So I'm cruising department websites while working on job applications, and I see this page which is decorated with unlabeled pictures of philosophers. I cannot recognize the last three on the lower right. Also, I'm assuming the picture on the far left is Wittgenstein on a bad hair day, but it is not a photo I've seen before. Any ideas?
Thursday, November 02, 2006
livejournalesque
I'm tired. I haven't entirely worked out what I'm going to say about Jose Padilla tomorrow. And I've got this framing thing for the talk about moral emotions and story telling which doesn't quite fit with my other framing thing about the importance of fair trials. But I'm tired.
I also see that I've already started missing job deadlines, some for good jobs. I keep saying to myself I'm going to send out my material, but then I think...my teaching portfolio isn't how I'd like it to be...oh but no one cares about teaching, it's only research...people think it's weird enough that you have put so much effort into your teaching portfolio...but if I could make it more succinct it would all make sense. IN any case, I’ve got to get my butt in gear for job stuff in the next couple days.
I also see that I've already started missing job deadlines, some for good jobs. I keep saying to myself I'm going to send out my material, but then I think...my teaching portfolio isn't how I'd like it to be...oh but no one cares about teaching, it's only research...people think it's weird enough that you have put so much effort into your teaching portfolio...but if I could make it more succinct it would all make sense. IN any case, I’ve got to get my butt in gear for job stuff in the next couple days.
Of course, the teach in is tomorrow, and Saturday Bérubé is appearing on our campus, and Sunday I have an extra class I agreed to teach for reasons which escape me now. And I’m already blowing off the Fulbright seminar on teaching Islam, even though they were kind enough to give me all these free books, and one of them even discusses the definition of religion, which is something that I’ve always wondered about but never formally researched, and I hear that one of the other seminar participants has good things to say about the topic.
But in any case, I’m tired. And my hands hurt from typing too much.
Some resources for detainee stories
- Cage Prisoners: an non sectarian islamic human rights group.
- Amnesty's Real Lives page.
interrogator commits suicide after refusing to commit torture
Aparantly, some people are resisting the orders to torture prisoners, but there is a price. This is the full story from an Arizona NPR outlet.
Update: This article leads with something that I didn't even notice in the shorter NPR piece: the death occurred three years ago, and the reasons for it are only coming out now.
10/31/06 (2006-10-31) Army specialist Alyssa Peterson was an Arabic speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at the Tal-afar airbase in far northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. According to the Army's investigation into her death, obtained by a KNAU reporter through the Freedom of Information Act, Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.Via Majikthise
Instead she was assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was sent to suicide prevention training. But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle.
Alyssa Peterson graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona, before being deployed to the Middle East in 2003.
Update: This article leads with something that I didn't even notice in the shorter NPR piece: the death occurred three years ago, and the reasons for it are only coming out now.
Fun Spam
Header: New york naked-eared
Body: elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to acknowledge the substance of"the person of whom i speak is a gentleman, and a stranger."
The body is a mash up of a couple lines from Pride and Prejudice. The intended payload of the spam--presumably some obscene jpegs, were stripped away by the spam filter.
Body: elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to acknowledge the substance of"the person of whom i speak is a gentleman, and a stranger."
The body is a mash up of a couple lines from Pride and Prejudice. The intended payload of the spam--presumably some obscene jpegs, were stripped away by the spam filter.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Torture: It's not just for grown ups anymore
Omar Khadr: When stories about the use of child soldiers in Africa hit the Western media, the reaction was largely one of sympathy. The child soldier was someone who was victimized, brainwashed, forced to do horrible things. The questions asked were "How can we let these kids just be kids again? How can they be brought back into human society?"
Our leadership seems to think that everything is different if the child is a muslim, though. Then the question is "how can we torture this child for information?"
Omar Khadr was fourteen or fifteen years old when he was picked up by US soldiers in Afghanistan. No one denies that he was a soldier for Al Quada. His father is one of bin Ladin's lieutenants. Although he mostly grew up in Canada, he also lived in the bin Ladin compound, playing with Bin Ladin's children. No one denies that he threw a hand grenade that killed an American soldier. But none of this makes him significantly different than the children kidnapped into African armies and taught to kill. The fact that the abuse came from his own blood family is irrelevant.
Khadr's parents have probably been telling him his whole life that Americans are devils. Everything that has happened since his capture can only have reinforced this message. He has apparently been beaten, kept in stress positions, denied medical attention, and smeared with his own urine and feces. The last story was reported by his lawyers in a press conference on January 16, 2005. Before you go blowing off this testimony, remember that we have smeared our prisoners in shit before. The guards at Gitmo also like to use the threat of rape, claiming all the time that they are going to transfer him to a foreign prison where they like little boys.
As with all detainees at Gitmo, the main goal of the imprisonment is to manipulate every aspect of the prisoner’s surroundings so that they are perpetually disoriented, lose their sense of identity and ultimately their will to live. The methods were developed by an Air Force called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) which was originally meant to train our soldiers how to resist torture. It is silly to describe the SERE techniques as somehow torture lite. They were designed very carefully to cause the most possible harm. It is also silly to deny that people at Gitmo are being subject to these techniques. They are built in to the organization of the facility. As a writer for the Rolling Stone put it: "This is Guantanamo Bay: To be held there is, per se, to be tortured."
How can anyone condone the torture of children?
Wikipedia, Rolling Stone.
Our leadership seems to think that everything is different if the child is a muslim, though. Then the question is "how can we torture this child for information?"
Omar Khadr was fourteen or fifteen years old when he was picked up by US soldiers in Afghanistan. No one denies that he was a soldier for Al Quada. His father is one of bin Ladin's lieutenants. Although he mostly grew up in Canada, he also lived in the bin Ladin compound, playing with Bin Ladin's children. No one denies that he threw a hand grenade that killed an American soldier. But none of this makes him significantly different than the children kidnapped into African armies and taught to kill. The fact that the abuse came from his own blood family is irrelevant.
Khadr's parents have probably been telling him his whole life that Americans are devils. Everything that has happened since his capture can only have reinforced this message. He has apparently been beaten, kept in stress positions, denied medical attention, and smeared with his own urine and feces. The last story was reported by his lawyers in a press conference on January 16, 2005. Before you go blowing off this testimony, remember that we have smeared our prisoners in shit before. The guards at Gitmo also like to use the threat of rape, claiming all the time that they are going to transfer him to a foreign prison where they like little boys.
As with all detainees at Gitmo, the main goal of the imprisonment is to manipulate every aspect of the prisoner’s surroundings so that they are perpetually disoriented, lose their sense of identity and ultimately their will to live. The methods were developed by an Air Force called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) which was originally meant to train our soldiers how to resist torture. It is silly to describe the SERE techniques as somehow torture lite. They were designed very carefully to cause the most possible harm. It is also silly to deny that people at Gitmo are being subject to these techniques. They are built in to the organization of the facility. As a writer for the Rolling Stone put it: "This is Guantanamo Bay: To be held there is, per se, to be tortured."
How can anyone condone the torture of children?
Wikipedia, Rolling Stone.
My China Course
Travel to China
Environmental Ethics and Issues in China
(on campus course plus trip)
Philosophy 348 / Environmental Studies 348
Tuesday – Thursday 10:10 – 11:40
Professors Rob Loftis (Philosophy)
and Stephen Robinson (Geology)
Tuesday – Thursday 10:10 – 11:40
Professors Rob Loftis (Philosophy)
and Stephen Robinson (Geology)
China has the world’s largest population, fastest growing economy, and a history of environmental catastrophe. This course will look at attitudes towards nature in China and the policy issues they generate, starting with readings on traditional nature attitudes and ending with the current dilemmas facing China. This course will be truly interdisciplinary in nature with perspectives from philosophy, public policy, environmental science, and engineering. In addition to the campus section of this course, we will travel to China following exams to learn first-hand about several of the sites and issues from the class. Students will interact extensively with local people experiencing these problems and meet with local representatives of environmental non-governmental organizations searching for solutions.
Mandatory information session:
Friday November 10, 3:00 pm in Brown Hall 143-44
Permission of instructors required
Junior or Senior standing only
Monday, October 30, 2006
Pure Beauty
This animation explores the same idea musically, visually, and mathematically. It is hypnotic as fuck. Be sure to check out all the variations on the right, especially the hand crank version. I wish I could spend a semester studying it. via unfogged.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Virginia Slims ad
Hey look, I'm not blogging torture! In fact, I'm grading homework!
A student submitted this as a part of a "find a logical fallacy in the media" exercise. It just struck me as especially appalling.
Update: Oh yeah, this ad is available at the tobaccodocuments site.
A student submitted this as a part of a "find a logical fallacy in the media" exercise. It just struck me as especially appalling.
Update: Oh yeah, this ad is available at the tobaccodocuments site.
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