Running Chicken

Course Evaluations

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:54:43 -0500

Last semester’s course evaluations are in for my courses on modern political philosophy — which I call “Liberalism and its Critics” — and on the Israeli/Arab conflict … so, as usual, I thought I’d post some of the highlights.

As is the case every semester, students reported that they were overworked but that they enjoyed themselves more than they expected they would. Also, as in previous semesters, every time one student made a suggestion for improvement, three or four students said the exact opposite. And, finally, as is pretty much always the case, thoughts about the class were relatively limited and reflections about the professor’s personality dominated the evaluations.

Liberalism and Its Critics:

“It was intimidating at first, but it was refreshing to have someone challenge us.”
“A lot more fun than I thought it would be.”
“When people come to you for help, try not to be Nietzschean.”
“I was a fool and thought it was about American left liberals, but the topic turned out better.”
“Best course ever. So glad I came to UNL for poli sci.”
“Very excellent at teaching, engaging, humorous, strict but fair. My favorite professor.”
“When I came to college as a freshman I expected courses to be this hard. This is the best POLS course I have taken thus far.”
“Seems to enjoy flunking students.”
“He was sensitive to [gender, race, and ethnicity], yes, but not sensitive to stupidity.”
“Funny, sarcastic, edgy, slightly crazy.”

Israeli/Arab Conflict:

“I learned what most Americans won’t ever understand without classes like this. More material, more nuance than any other class.”
“Funny and opinionated, but often I couldn’t tell what those opinions were. He let us figure it out ourselves.”
“Please include a study guide.”
“Unique assignments (blogging, simulations) as well as awesome text books.”
“He knows way too much about everything.”
“Loved the blogging, loved the peace summits.”
“He has his style and even though some hate it, I loved it.”
“[Kohen] wasn’t afraid to let students know they were wrong.”
“He’s much smarter and funnier than what I expected.”
“I learned how to use Tumblr, so that’s good.”

Admittedly, this set of evals seems a little “braggy” to me now that I’ve typed them in. Previous semesters were probably funnier because students were more mixed in their opinion of me as a human being; these students all seemed to like both me and the class they took. It really was a fun semester and I’m quite proud of this set of evaluations … especially #9 on both lists above.

Guatemala’s constitutional court has overturned a...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:08:46 -0500

Guatemala’s constitutional court has overturned a genocide conviction against former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt, throwing out all proceedings against him since a dispute broke out in April over who should hear it.

Ríos Montt was found guilty on 10 May of overseeing the deliberate killings by the armed forces of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil population during his 1982-83 rule. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

But the constitutional court said it had thrown out all proceedings in the case that took place after 19 April. It was then that the trial against Ríos Montt was suspended after a spat between judges over who should take the case.

Sebastian Elgueta, Amnesty International’s researcher on Guatemala outlines the serious and far-reaching problems raised by the constitutional court’s ruling:

“The legal basis for the ruling is unclear, and it is uncertain how the trial court can hit the reset button to get back to a point in mid-April. What is clear is that the Constitutional Court has just thrown up formidable obstacles to justice and accountability for a harrowing period in Guatemala’s recent history.

“With the sentence on 10 May, the trial court had sent a strong signal that crimes against thousands of Mayan victims would not be tolerated. The Constitutional Court has now questioned that message, putting the right to truth, justice and reparation at risk in Guatemala.”

I used to think that Millard Fillmore was just a funny example...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:38:13 -0500

I used to think that Millard Fillmore was just a funny example of a president no one really cares about … like Chester Arthur, John Tyler, or Martin Van Buren.

But, thanks to Lapham’s Quarterly, one thing I learned today is that Millard Fillmore is a vampire who still walks among us:

While working on the bio for Millard Fillmore for the next issue, we noticed something…uncanny.

Since Tumblr’s all about GIFs, here’s the best...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:27:09 -0500

Since Tumblr’s all about GIFs, here’s the best ancient Greek philosophy GIF you’re going to find, via Luis:

Aristotle and Plato in GIF form.

Class is in Session

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:18:02 -0500

Class is in Session:

Today’s the first day of the Summer 2013 Pre-Session here at the University of Nebraska and I’m teaching a three week course on the theory and practice of international human rights.

In lieu of traditional writing assignments, my students will be blogging on Tumblr. Each student will have his or her own blog and will be tasked with posting at least three times each week through June 7, on human rights topics in the news and on our class readings.

So … of you’re interested in human rights, you can follow the class blog and the students themselves, and participate in our conversations.

Yahoo vows not to “screw it up” with Tumblr Yahoo is acquiring...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:58:03 -0500

Yahoo vows not to “screw it up” with Tumblr

Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion cash, a bold bet by Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to revitalize the struggling Internet pioneer by co-opting a Web property with strong visitor traffic but little revenue. The deal will use about a fifth of Yahoo’s $5.4 billion in cash and marketable securities.

“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,” Yahoo said in a statement on Monday.

Photo: REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Well, one thing’s for sure: I plan to continue working from home.

My last post was just a quick tongue-in-cheek response to all...

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:24:04 -0500

My last post was just a quick tongue-in-cheek response to all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that I’ve seen over the past 36 hours or so from Tumblr users about the many ways in which Yahoo! would destroy Tumblr.

This post is a bit more serious.

If Tumblr is sold to Yahoo! in the near future, I have to be honest and admit that it’s just not going to be a big deal to me. On the one hand, Yahoo! might find ways to improve on my Tumblr experience and, as anyone who reads this blog likely knows, I’ve had some problems with the way Tumblr unveils its updates and deals with massive service interruptions (along with other more minor issues).

On the other hand, if Yahoo! breaks Tumblr (as pretty much everyone thinks is assured), then I’ll just stop using it. I own kohenari.net so I can just keeping writing here and most people who read what I write on a daily basis won’t notice much of a difference. In fact, once all the Tumblr notes and assorted junk disappears, they might just think the interface finally got cleaned up. I’m not sure what would happen to the thousands of Tumblr users who currently follow my blog, but I presume that some of them would continue to read what I write even if — gasp! — they now have to actually point their web browser to my blog instead of seeing it on their Tumblr Dashboard. If I’ve built enough of a “brand” over the past few years, traffic might even pick up a bit since virtually no one from Tumblr ever actually clicks on a link to my blog right now — they just read and share behind the scenes — and they’d have no choice but to actually visit my blog if I leave Tumblr or if Tumblr is wrecked by Yahoo!.

What I’d miss, of course, is the social networking aspect of the website and, in particular two groups of people. The first group consists of the many excellent Tumblr bloggers I’ve gotten to know and with whom I regularly interact. Happily, I’ve become Facebook friends with the majority of these people over the years so I’m sure we’ll continue to communicate and interact with one another even if Tumblr isn’t around in the future or if I’m not using it.

The second group is populated by the wingnuts and trolls who have supplied me with an almost endless stream of material about which I have written these past few years. These are the folks who are planning to outgun the tyrannical American government, who are deeply in love with guns, who are convinced that racism is a thing of the past, who have completely baffling conspiracy theories, who write to me every single day, who are Holocaust deniers, who accuse opponents of the death penalty of racism, who love Slavoj Žižek more than life itself, whose anti-Israel sentiment tends to slide effortlessly into anti-Semitism, and who think that I’m part of a distinct race of Satanists mentioned explicitly in the Bible. If I’m lucky, these folks will follow me wherever I go.

The truth is that Tumblr’s creators are almost certainly going to do what they think is best for themselves — why wouldn’t they?! — and the millions of people who use their service for free are then going to have to decide what they want to do with whatever Tumblr looks like going forward.

Either way, I’m going to be blogging at kohenari.net and my non-Tumblr audience — which is the bulk of my audience — can expect to see very few substantive changes as a result of Yahoo! either buying or not buying Tumblr. If you liked what I’ve been doing, I’ll still be doing it. It’s my Tumblr audience — who might or might not have been paying attention to me all this time anyway — that will need to make some decisions about whether or not to actually visit my blog on a daily or weekly basis if my posts suddenly stop showing up on their Dashboard at some point in the future.

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:51:00 -0500

"The heroes have not been heads of state, the heroes have not been ministers of finance … the heroes..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:53:01 -0500

“The heroes have not been heads of state, the heroes have not been ministers of finance … the heroes have been presidents, chairmen of central banks.”

- That’s Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, making the case for heroic central bankers last month.

Mercifully, Neil Irwin — author of the article from which I quote Lagarde and of a book about three central bankers dealing with the global financial crisis, The Alchemists — concludes that Lagarde is wrong … even as he also concludes that they really did a very good job:

There is no question that the leading central bankers acted with remarkable unity and common purpose during the final months of 2008, when they deployed trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to contain the most intense phase of the global financial panic. They were widely attacked, then and now, for deeply unpopular steps to rescue a financial sector that had caused the crisis to begin with ….

It’s easy to understand where Christine Lagarde is coming from in viewing these actions as a form of heroism, and had the central bankers not had the courage to take some bold actions over the last six years, the world would almost surely be in a darker economic place. At the same time, I wonder if there is a soft bigotry of low expectations at work.

The activism and boldness of the central bankers is, as Lagarde says, a contrast with the work of heads of state and finance ministers, which has been consistently been behind-the-curve and, with notable exceptions, not on par with the scale of the crisis. It was the European political leaders who couldn’t agree to a unified backstop of the continent’s banking system in the fall of 2008, and American politicians who failed to create a financial rescue fund until after Lehman had gone down. The central bankers were clearer-eyed about the risks facing the world economy, and more decisive and timely in addressing them.

So are the central bankers heroes? No. They’re guys who did their jobs, in some cases quite well, at a time that plenty of other key leaders didn’t do theirs.

I’m not sure anyone — other than the head of the IMF and those who were bailed out — would consider the bankers to be heroes. And, indeed, I’d guess that a whole lot of “ordinary” people would be eager to dispute the notion that the bankers “did their jobs, in some cases quite well.” Considering the magnitude of the crisis, the pace of recovery, and — of course — the complete lack of personal sacrifice or risk, “hero” probably isn’t a word most people are likely to toss around with regard to central bankers.

And that’s a good thing.

Given the way that the idea of heroism is overused and abused in our culture, it’s good to see that this example is still a bridge too far. It’s instructive, I think, if people will look closely at the example and why it clearly isn’t heroism on display here.

Microsoft Bing’s Facebook advertising campaign is, for...

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:44:14 -0500

Microsoft Bing’s Facebook advertising campaign is, for some odd reason, focused on keeping you safe from accidental nudity.

Of course, that’s all well and good until you type in the words “accidental nudity” on the Bing website, in which case you get more than a million NSFW results.

Gee, thanks, Bing!

Life 1969, Milton Glaser

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:55:16 -0500

Life 1969, Milton Glaser

"If Governor Scott would just sit with me and others like me, I know he will veto this bill that, if..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:54:28 -0500

“If Governor Scott would just sit with me and others like me, I know he will veto this bill that, if it had been law, would have ended my life.”

- That’s Seth Penalver, who was exonerated after 18 years when evidence of innocence was uncovered.

Here’s what he’s talking about:

In the final days of the legislative session, the Florida legislature passed a bill which limits the appeals and speeds up the execution process of those on death row.

On Wednesday, at an event sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union, two former Death Row inmates who were later exonerated plan to publicly ask for a meeting with Governor Rick Scott to urge him not to sign the measure.

HB 7083, the so-called “Timely Justice Act” limits appeals and requires that when these limited and shortened appeals are exhausted, “Within 30 days after receiving the letter of certification from the clerk of the Florida Supreme Court, the Governor shall issue a warrant for execution if the executive clemency process has concluded, directing the warden to execute the sentence within 180 days, at a time designated in the warrant.”

So, you know, it’s either timely “justice” or it’s grave injustice. But either way, it’s quick. And apparently Florida legislators just like their justice or injustice to happen quickly.

If you have to kill a few innocent people in order to get revenge as fast as possible against several dozen guilty people, well, that’s a good deal, right?

I’ll just go ahead and answer my own question: No, Florida, it’s not.

(Via)

I don’t know anything about Rep. Steve Stockman, a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:53:28 -0500

I don’t know anything about Rep. Steve Stockman, a Republican representing Texas’ 36th District, but I do know comedy when I see it.

In other news, at what point will Republicans exhaust themselves in their endless attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Is it never? If it’s never, just tell me so I can stop paying attention.

Today is my son’s 3rd birthday! I’m so proud to be...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:28:36 -0500

Newborn

One Year Old

Two Year Old

Three Year Old

Today is my son’s 3rd birthday!

I’m so proud to be this amazing kid’s dad and I can’t wait to see what this year has in store.

So far today, he woke up early, rushed downstairs, saw some presents waiting for him, screamed with joy, opened the Thomas and Friends toys (two new engines and a pirate shipwreck playset!), and then played with them for two hours! We’d still be playing if we didn’t have a little party planned for him and his friends at day care this morning.

It’s the first year that he really understands what it means to have a birthday — even though he sang “Happy Birthday” for a whole week last year — and so he’s been excited about celebrating. As someone who loves birthdays myself, I’m thrilled to see how much he’s enjoying his this morning. He’s so much like me in so many ways — including the fact that he’s a much better looking little version of me — and I always love finding new ways that we’re similar.

For anyone who’s feeling nostalgic, as I am, you can actually go back to his actual birth day or even to the day we posted his ultrasound photos.

Not Hot Enough for Breitbart

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:28:00 -0500

Not Hot Enough for Breitbart:

Boy genius Ben Shapiro takes to Breitbart.com to complain that Maxim’s list of hot women includes two women that he doesn’t think are very hot. One of them — Hoda Kotb — is old, for crying out loud! The only reason women like Kotb would find herself on the list is that she’s a liberal and, of course, Maxim is well-known for only celebrating the hotness of liberals; it’s one of the pillars of the liberal conspiracy to take over America.

But Shapiro will have none of it. Making lists of hot women is something he obviously takes very seriously and he will not bow to the ghastly liberal agenda. After all, he’s the author of Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans so you can be sure he’s going to speak his mind about which women are hot and which women aren’t. Once Kotb and Kamala Harris hear that the boy genius thinks they’re not hot enough for Maxim’s list, you can be sure they’ll feel pretty bad about themselves. Luckily, and thanks to Maxim, millions of other men will continue to objectify them so I’m sure they’ll be just fine.

If you are bold enough to click over to Breitbart for this gem of an “article,” do yourself a favor and don’t look at the comments; they’re everything you expect and worse.

(Via LGM Blog.)

As a Red Wings and “Game of Thrones” fan, this is...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:26:07 -0500

As a Red Wings and “Game of Thrones” fan, this is amazing and wonderful in every way.

This week on the Hero Report podcast, we’re joined by...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:17:47 -0500

This week on the Hero Report podcast, we’re joined by Peter Georgescu, author of The Constant Choice. Peter writes on heroism, illustrating with events from his own story of escape from Communist Romania.

Tell us what you think about this episode, discuss these issues with us on Twitter (Matt Langdon / Ari Kohen), and join us every week on Google+ for our live broadcast (where you can chat with us while we’re on the air and contribute to the conversation).

Want to make the podcast portable? Subscribe via iTunes (audio-only).

Nebraska's Death Penalty

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:54:50 -0500

Nebraska’s death penalty is arbitrary, unfair, expensive, and useless … in short, it’s hopelessly, hopelessly broken:

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment, Nebraska has spent an estimated $100 million on death penalty cases and executed three people.

“Why do we have something on our books that is so inefficient? So costly?” asked Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln, who also once supported the death penalty.

Coash said Nebraska would never again carry out an execution because it was becoming increasingly difficult to get lethal injection drugs.

“There isn’t going to be another execution in this state,” he said. “It’s not gonna happen.

“What good has the death penalty done for our citizens? What good has been done?” Coash asked. “Without an execution, the death penalty is pretty meaningless. It hasn’t saved money. It hasn’t deterred any crime.”

But that doesn’t mean the the legislature is going to repeal the broken, useless, costly, and morally bankrupt “ultimate punishment”:

For the first time in 34 years, a majority of Nebraska lawmakers seems to support abolishing the state’s death penalty.

But a bill they considered Monday to do so appears to be going nowhere since a ”test vote” showed there probably is not enough support to stop a filibuster.

You read that right. A majority of legislators support repeal, but not enough to stop a filibuster or override a veto:

Custom dictates first-round debate on a bill can last as long as eight hours. At that point, it takes 33 of the 49 senators’ votes to end debate and move to a vote.

But after Omaha Sen. Beau McCoy launched a filibuster against the measure, Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha decided to float a trial balloon by filing a motion to kill the bill and then asking for a vote to gauge support.

A vote against killing the bill was, in essence, a vote in support of abolishing the death penalty. The tally was 18 for killing the bill and 26 against — more than the 25 needed to advance the bill to second-round debate but not the 33 needed to end the filibuster or even the 30 required to override an expected veto by Gov. Dave Heineman.

Lawmakers will reach the eight-hour limit Tuesday. Speaker Greg Adams usually will not bring a bill back for further debate at that point unless supporters can prove they have the 33 votes to end the filibuster.

That’s some mighty impressive leadership right there.

Apparently a teacher in Chicago has assigned a paper on the...

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:45:00 -0500

Apparently a teacher in Chicago has assigned a paper on the problems with online anonymity, as a whole bunch of people have been reading this old blog post today.

For those folks, and for all of you with an interest in the topic, there’s also this one, this one, and this one.

Also, if you happen to be that teacher, I’ll be really interested to know how much of my blog post your students plagiarized.

Here We Are Now Entertain Us

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:51:00 -0500

Here’s Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, putting forward what might be the motto of the contemporary edutainment industry:

I was taking an advanced calculus class and my instructor was reputed to be a fabulous researcher, but he barely spoke English. He was a very boring and bad teacher and I was absolutely lost and in despair.

So I went to the campus tutoring centre and they had Betamax tapes of a professor who had won teaching awards. Basically I sat with those tapes and took class there. But I still had to go to the other one and sat there and wanted to kill myself.

I thought at that time, in the future, why wouldn’t you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people’s heads?

We’re still not quite there. In university you’re still likely to be in a large lecture hall with a very boring professor, and everyone knows it’s not working very well. It’s not even the best use of that professor’s time or the audience.

I don’t want to argue that college lectures ought to be boring, far from it. I spend a great deal of time trying to engage my students and to make my subject matter — political theory, which some believe to be dry — seem relevant and exciting.

But I’m struck by the way that Wales really captures in such a short quote what so many students are looking for these days (incorrectly, I think).

First of all, Wales points out that his calculus professor barely spoke English; there’s no other justification given for Wales’ claim that the professor “was a very boring and bad teacher.” Speaking with an accent, not being “from here,” is a major complaint from students and, for some reason, it’s associated with bad teaching. I have a leg up on some of my colleagues simply because I’m obviously American and I speak in unaccented English. Does this make me a better teacher? Not necessarily, but the perception amongst students is that it does. I learned introductory German from a Chinese graduate student whose English was limited but whose German was not. Did I learn introductory German? I did.

Secondly, Wales notes that his professor was supposedly a first-rate researcher. He goes on to suggest that the professor’s time would be better spent on research rather than on teaching. In this case, perhaps; in general, I don’t think so. Great researchers are usually among the most effective teachers … even if you have one or two examples of bad teaching from your own education. Why? I knw that I’m a much more effective teacher because of the research I do, as I’m able to teach my students about the newest books and articles I’m reading rather than just teaching the same material over and over again each semester. If I wasn’t doing research, my courses would get stale.

Finally, and most importantly, is the central claim that the test of education is whether or not it’s entertaining. Wales asks, “why wouldn’t you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people’s heads?” Is there evidence that the most entertaining lecture is the one that gets “knowledge into people’s heads”? Again, I’m not suggesting that a boring lecture is going to do the trick, but I’m arguing that entertaining students doesn’t necessarily equate with teaching them something. When I lecture on Kant, I don’t think I’m really entertaining my students. In my opinion, Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals doesn’t lend itself to entertainment; it’s a dense text that needs some serious explication. Now, I don’t speak in a monotone and I try to find relevant examples to help them make sense of the material, but I’m not standing in front of the class hoping that they’ll all have a great time; I’m standing there with the express purpose of teaching them about Kant.

And, in fact, I’m convinced that they’ve learned about the categorical imperative and about perfect and imperfect duties; they can thoughtfully write about these topics in their essays and convincingly answer questions about them on their exams. I could tell jokes or show a video, and then present a watered-down version of Kant’s theory; this would probably be easier for me. But I hold my students in fairly high regard and I believe they’re smart enough to know when they’re being entertained and when they’re being educated. If you want to learn about Kant, you don’t want to watch a video; and if you want to watch a video, you don’t really want to learn about Kant.

Do my students enjoy my classes? On balance, I think they do. I care about the material that I’m teaching and I care about whether or not students are learning it. That, I think, is why a lot of students like the classes I teach. Does this mean I’m entertaining them? Not necessarily. Liking something and being entertained by it aren’t always going to be the same thing.

A university isn’t Disneyland and professors aren’t Mickey Mouse.

You can have a ton of fun in a class that doesn’t challenge you or teach you anything, just like you can have a ton of fun at a theme park. But professors aren’t tasked with making sure you’re having a good time; we’re here to make sure you learn something.