L'Art of Economics

In Karen Horn's article "The Serendipity of Genius" in Standpoint, she discusses the circumstances and situations of economists who became Nobel laureates.

The article is based on Horn's recent book Roads to Wisdom: Conversations with Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009).

Horn sees several common influences on the intellect, choices, and future theoretical pursuits of fledgling economists: "they were attracted by its questions," but only identified the field as a choice when they "saw it in class;" family background; worldviews; events; the serendipity of the muse; and individual character.

The final influence strikes me especially - the value of a university/liberal arts education. Vernon Smith (Nobel prize for Economics 2002)

was fascinated to discover at college that the topics that had been debated at the dinner table were actually "things you could study, that it needn't be only a matter of opinion. You could actually base your opinions on analysis, on investigation, on some kind of understanding about how society and how the economy work."

The growing trend to de-value the humanities and a liberal arts education has and will have far-reaching negative consequences. In all areas of human endeavour, we need the understanding that comes from knowing about humanity, its traditions, and its history. Similarly, Horn sees the need for economics:

Economics must also again be understood as an encompassing social science, deeply ploughing the rich common ground with philosophy, sociology, politics and history.

Skills training just won't cut it!

I would like to invite Karen Horn to my soiree.

The Zen of Reading Pirsig

   I first read Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the summer of 1983 on a driving trip around Vancouver Island.                                                        

There was a certain irony about driving in a car while reading about the connectedness of travelling on a motorcycle, but we were in an autocrosser and taking the vehicle way beyond its limits on the forestry roads. There was no chance for the glazed-over look of car passengers Pirsig describes.

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The road to Holberg was 90 minutes of especially memorable driving (and we had further time to ponder as we waited for the garage to fix the damage after the return trip to Port Hardy).

I began the book while sitting on the sand beside San Josef Bay in Cape Scott Provincial Park, after the 45-minute easy hike from the parking lot (and after the memorable 90-minute drive!).

The pictures of San Josef Bay cannot do it justice.

I "read" my way around the island, finishing in Cathedral Grove Park amidst the tall trees of the rainforest.

I will never know what influence the awesome settings had on my reading, but Pirsig's book has been one of those books that one always comes back to. I have re-read it a few times over the years.

I would like to invite Robert Pirsig to my soiree.

                    

Challenging Subjects

 In her article "Formative Years: Not Boys in Dresses" in Intelligent Life magazine, Tracey Camilleri  writes about her teen school years at Bryanston school in England from 1976 - 1978.

She was one of the first girls to go completely through what had been a boys-only school, and she speaks fondly about the experience that she felt was inclusive and not about teaching  the girls as  "boys in dresses:"

For example, our English teacher’s passion was Jane Austen, so there was no sense that we were following a male canon, or of the attitude that you teach to the boys and the girls will look after themselves.

One lasting value of Bryanston for Camilleri is that it helped her form an independent identity because the girls were both challenged and valued.

I am fascinated by what holds women back from being ambitious for themselves and speaking up in the moment and making themselves heard. At school in the classroom, shy as I was and not that I made a great splash, I didn’t feel constrained, I felt enabled. We were known as individuals, we had a good tutorial system, we were given the opportunity and expected to speak and were valued. I think we felt equal to the boys. The challenge for girls, especially if they are in a minority at school, is how to remain the subjects of their own lives and not the objects of others’. I think we remained subjects, we were able to be ourselves.

North American public schools have generally always been co-ed, but could learn much about creating a strong sense of identity for their students of both genders. 

Since the 70s, there has been more of a focus on students' self-esteem than there has been on their achievements - a failure because achievement is the best route to self-esteem and cannot be separated from it.

The challenge for students is largely missing, and we instill a false sense of self-esteem that is detached from real achievement and deteriorites into self-absorption and an overweening sense of entitlement. We could well use the methods of a 1970s-style Bryanston.

Camilleri's education has stood her in good stead; she is an associate fellow at the Said Business School, Oxford.

I would like to invite Tracey Camilleri to my soiree.

Soiree's Past Week

At My Soiree's Posts for September 20/09 - September 25/09

Sit back and enjoy.

September 20th - A'Court Concert - about Charlie A'Court

September 23rd - Serious Foodie - about Ed Levine

September 24th - Transmitting Education - about Frank Furedi

September 25th - Red Soiree - images

Red Soiree

Red is one of the most elegant colours and very appropriate for all things "soiree."

Flowers for the soiree - image from Photoyogi (Flickr).




What would a proper soiree be without flowers?

Food for the soiree - image from marco_n65 (Flickr).



An elegant red food for the soiree.

Ahh! Sometimes the little black dress might not be the most elegant.

A dress for the soiree - image from The Heart Truth (Flickr).














         And, a cocktail. of course.


Image by rick (Flickr).






Red Soiree is possible because of Creative Commons and Idee Inc. The Visual Search Company .

Creative Commons 

is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

Idee Inc.

develops advanced image identification and visual search software.

The photos come from a search with Idee's Multicolr Search Lab flickr Set - Flickr Creative Commons images based on colour (try it!).

Transmitting Education

 I first encountered  Frank Furedi's writing and ideas in his article "Flat-pack degrees" in The Guardian, April 2008  (see my post in Dixi). In this article, Furedi explains why students should be able to learn about selling furniture, just not at university.

For some time now, the government has sought to reorient the work of universities towards supplying the skills demanded by business and commerce.

This is happening here in British Columbia,Canada, and I greatly appreciate a clear articulation of the arguments against the practice:

Vocational courses have always had an honourable place in higher education. However, recent plans are not confined to the provision of high-quality vocational education, they are about accrediting employment training. The likely outcome will be to blur the distinction between education and training, and to lose sight of the purpose of what a university does

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After reading a second article "Specialist pleading" in The Australian about the overreach of experts into the realm of moral authority, I decided to further explore Furedi's  work.

 In his forthcoming book (October 2009) Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating, Furedi discusses that purpose of the university and education( as opposed to training) that he addresses in the Guardian article:  Education 

regards the transmission of cultural and intellectual achievements of humanity to children as its defining mission.

As an educator, I find comfort in the sane and rational defense of the purpose of education.

Frank Furedi is a sociologist at the University of Kent.

I would like to invite Frank Furedi to my soiree.

Serious Foodie

Food, glorious food!

What would a soiree be without glorious food? And what a great topic for soiree conversation!

Ed Levine eats, reviews, writes, and blogs about food, glorious food.

He began Serious Eats, a blog/community which encompasses Serious Eats, a pizza page, a hamburger page, and a New York page with "Ed's Reviews." The food photo gallery has awesome photos. And there's a newsletter, too.

Levine's most recent books are Pizza: A Slice of Heaven andThe Young Man and the Sea (with David Pasternack).

I would like to invite Ed Levine to my soiree.

A'Court Concert

Years ago, my cousins and I would often gather with our families at my aunt and uncle's house.  My aunt Joyce Poley is a professional singer/songwriter, and it was always special whenever she could be coaxed to bring out her guitar and sing a few songs.

I was reminded of those impromptu concerts last evening at a home concert by Nova Scotia singer/songwriter Charlie A'Court. Charlie sang from his albums:

Bring on the Storm; Color Me Gone; Alone; and Live at the Marigold.

It was fun to sit in a friend's living room and listen to Charlie's tuneful, joyful songs. I love acoustic guitar and Charlie delivered. Charlie's music roams to folk and country places and briefly triggers many sound-sense memories for me - did I hear a John Hammond riff in there?

The concert happened because of the Home Routes organization which exists to bring home concerts with world-class musicians to as many Canadians as possible.

I liked the idea when I heard about it; now I can say that I very much liked the experience as well.

Charlie A'Court is nominated for best Blues Artist/Group Recording and Male Artist Recording at the 2009 Nova Scotia Music Awards for the Live at the Marigold recording, and also for Bell Aliant Entertainer of the Year.

When he wins these awards, I will shamelessly name drop and let everyone know that I was at a small, exclusive home concert with the artist!!!

I would like to invite Charlie A'Court to my soiree.

Pop(ping) Cultural Studies' Balloon

Michael Berube, in his article "What's the Matter with Cultural Studies" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, discusses the history and effectiveness of cultural studies, mostly in the United States.

He takes on the role of devil's advocate, questioning the past successes and failures of cultural studies - and the possibilities and prognosis for the future.

Berube also discusses the misunderstanding of what cultural studies is and the frequent practice of "'doing'" cultural studies by critiquing pop culture:

The result is that cultural studies now means everything and nothing; it has effectively been conflated with "cultural criticism" in general, and associated with a cheery "Pop culture is fun! " approach. Anybody writing about The Bachelor or American Idol is generally understood to be "doing" cultural studies, especially by his or her colleagues elsewhere in the university. In a recent interview, Stuart Hall, a former director of the Birmingham Centre and still the most influential figure in cultural studies, gave a weary response to this development, one that speaks for itself: "I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos."

Too many in English departments (the department most influenced by cultural studies, according to Berube) have abandoned more conventional pursuits in favor of studies of pop culture divorced from a literary context.

A thesis on TV depictions of King Arthur with historical comparison to slightly older movies, but with no knowledge of or reference to Tennyson or Mallory, galls me for its ignorance and arrogance (and worries me for the future of human knowledge).

Berube is hopeful for the future of cultural studies, believing it can improve from its present state and practice:

...cultural studies can do a better job of complicating the political-economy model in media theory, a better job of complicating our accounts of neoliberalism, and a better job of convincing people inside and outside the university that cultural studies' understanding of hegemony is a form of understanding with great explanatory power—that is to say, a form of understanding that actually works.

Let's hope he's right and, in English departments at least, we see less superficial "study" of tattoos and TV.

Two of Berube's books are Life as We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child and Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities.

I would like to invite Michael Berube to my soiree.

Unveiling Abstraction

Robert Fulford writes about Marnia Lazreg in The National Post article The politics of the veil:

Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation.

In the book, Lazreg writes about, what Fulford calls, "the most potent human symbol on earth," although it is not a symbol for piety. According to Fulford, Lazreg believes:

In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.

Further, any woman wearing the full body and face covering is erased:

...Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction.

In the Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra ( nom de plume of Mohammed Moulessehoul), a woman must be executed, but the individual woman under the burqa is not really the issue. The identity of the prisoner is never verified because the need to assert control over all women is so strong - any woman will do and must die.


The execution is concrete enough; but the whole process is symbolic of political ideology and male power. The woman becomes an abstraction.

Marnia Lazreg teaches sociology at Hunter College CUNY. She elucidates these issues on behalf of us all, as she studies, lectures on, and writes about development, gender, and geopolitics of Islam.

I would like to invite Marnia Lazreg to my soiree.

Greenbacks and Green Stunts

Elizabeth Kolbert criticizes eco-stunt(er)s in her article "Green Like Me" online in The New Yorker  (August 31/09).

Eco -stunts, or as Kolbert calls them "nouveau-Thoreauvian conceit[s]," don't seem to have a definable purpose - from Colin Beavan's No Impact Man to

spending a month eating only food grown in an urban back yard, as in “Farm City” (2009), or a year eating food produced on a gentleman’s farm, as in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (2007). It might involve driving across the country on used cooking oil, as in “Greasy Rider” (2008), or giving up fossil fuels for goats, as in “Farewell, My Subaru” (2008).

Kolbert further likens the eco-stunters to Thoreau and his Walden Pond experimant.  "The nouveau Thoreauvians have picked up from “Walden” its dramaturgy of austerity" (for this sentence alone, Kolbert is welcome at the soiree!). Unlike Thoreau's results, though, those of neo-stunters make some serious money.

The title of Kolbert's article hints at Black Like Me, the 1961 book about John Howard Griffin's experiences of travelling through segregated areas of America as a black man. Although the experiment and subsequent book had its detractors, generally Griffin's results were positive in raising awareness.

Kolbert beleives it is questionable whether the new eco- stunts and the publicity they generate raise awareness or raise only revenue. And, ultimately, they are misguided forays into environmentalsim that often end up leaving more of a footprint in an unexpected area than is reduced in the intended one.

Elizabeth Kolbert is on staff at The New Yorker. Her most recent book is Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006).

I would like to invite Elizabeth Kolbert to my soiree.

The Belatedness of Criticism

In his recent article "Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Bauerlein laments what he sees as redundancy in a vast sea of literary criticism, which demonstrates

the shift from criticism-as-explanation to criticism-as-performance. Instead of thinking of scholarship as the explication of the object—what a poem means or a painting represents—humanists cast criticism as an interpretative act, an analytical eye in process.

Bauerlein argues that the overwhelming number of works comes from not only the demands of theory, but also as the consequence of the publish or perish imperative for those who seek tenure - especially for those experiencing belatedness in criticism. What to do when all the good stuff's been said?

For tenure decisions, Bauerlein recommends that committees look only at 100 pages of material. He further suggests that

subsidizers should shift their support away from saturated areas and toward unsaturated areas, in particular toward research into teaching and even more toward classroom and curricular initiatives.

The shift in subsidies should occur because the numbers of students who do not attend or pay attention in classes is quite staggering:

in the 2007 Your First College Year survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute, ...70 percent skipped class, 62 percent "came late," and 44 percent fell asleep. Their engagement with instructors outside of class is similarly tenuous. Their engagement with instructors outside of class is similarly tenuous. On the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, 38 percent of first-year students "never" discussed ideas from readings or classes, and 39 percent did so only "sometimes."

More "research into teaching and...classroom and curricular initiatives" as the solution to the problem puts the onus on faculty to somehow counter the effects of the digital age Bauerlein writes about in his book The Dumbest Generation.

The digital age and resulting drop in reading, the self-absorption in juvenile pursuits and interests are surely the business of faculty, but should hardly drive research in the humanities.

I agree with Bauerlein's premise that there is too much redundant performance criticism out there, but I do not agree with his solutions. Still, it is refreshing to see someone tackling the issues.

I would like to invite Mark Bauerlein to my soiree.

 

Old Philosophy in Best-Selling Bottles

Santiago Montenegro is an economist and a 2008 visiting fellow at the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy.

His most recent book is Crisis Mundial, proteccion e industrializacion (2007)

In his recent article "Innovation and Philosophy" in Project Syndicate , Montenegro discusses the many trendy books on innovation. He is frustrated because the information in them is a re-hash of older philosophy. Many of the leading experts writing about innovation seem not to even be aware of the roots of what they write about or the demands of scientific method pressing against their ideas. As Montenegro notes:

No book on innovation that I have read makes the connection between innovation and the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science. This is unfortunate, because the theories of innovation may be subject to all the questions, conjectures, and answers that these disciplines have developed with respect to scientific knowledge.

I have found that the readers of books on innovation and proponents of innovation are even less aware of what they are talking about than are the authors. Adopting innovation means (as with adopting any pop theory without the background knowledge) that it can never be questioned; rather, it's a top-down assertion.

As Montenegro shows:

Once a plausible hypothesis is formulated, it must be tested against all existing theories and against all available experience and information. It has to be subject to open criticism from all directions, and only if it survives these tests and criticisms may it be adopted as tentative and conjectural new knowledge. Science and knowledge are made up not of winners, but of survivors of continuous and systematic efforts to refute. Theories are never certain and must always be prepared for an uncertain future. Or, as Karl Popper put it, truth is never definitive and error is always probable.

Hooray liberal arts education! Hooray for science education! If we need any prodding at all to value university, one reason might just be to protect ourselves from all the self-professed gurus who process old ideas into misunderstood pap.

I would like to invite Santiago Montenegro to my soiree.

He's a Cocktail Wizard

Every soiree needs exciting drinks - trendy and traditional recipes excellently prepared. Even better would be an expert on cocktails who can discuss the history, making, and drinking of said cocktails.

Enter David Wondrich, one of six instructors and partners in the Beverage Alcohol Resource of NYC, a company that offers

A Program for the Appreciation, Understanding
and Responsible Service of Adult Beverages.

 The company's mission:

to propagate the healthy and responsible use of beverage alcohol products through innovative and comprehensive training programs and seminars.

Wondrich is also a historian of cocktails and has published books on the subject, mosy recently Imbibe! (2008). The book won the "Best Book About Wine and Spirits" for 2008 from the James Beard Foundation.


I discovered an interview  by Laren Spirer with Wondrich on Serious Eats New York - a fabulous site (I joined!).


I would like to invite Dave Wondrich to my soiree.

Telling Truth

Thomas King is a writer and professor of English at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He teaches Native Literature and Creative Writing.

King gave the 2003 CBC Massey Lectures which have since been compiled into a book: The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative.

The CBC Massey Lectures began in 1961, broadcast yearly in November. Each year, a famous scholar gives five lectures on the CBC show Ideas. Some other past guest lecturers include Northrup Frye (1962), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967), John Kenneth Galbraith (1965), and Noam Chomsky (1988).

King's begins each lecture with a Native oral story:

There is a story I know. It's about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle. I've heard this story many times, and each time someone tells the story, it changes.

King underlines the importance of Native storytelling with this changing opening tale, but also uses the changed story of each lecture to demonstrate the many myths, ideas, caricatures, and lies that Whites tell and have told about "the Indian of fact" ( House of Anansi, jacket cover).

Kings claims remind me of Edward Said's in Orientalism, where he argues that Europeans created the demon Oriental, a whole construction of myths, ideas, caricatures, and lies about, mostly, Muslims - a construction which supposedly justified whatever ill treatment Europeans devised. King's lectures should be added to Said's in any discussion of post-colonial literary theory.

Narratives can destroy and demonize, but according to King, they are also the only hope for understanding.  I appreciate these lectures; they helped me to understand.

I would like to invite Thomas King to my soiree.

Inviting Writer

Lola Lemire Tostevin is a Canadian writer (in both French and English) of fiction, poetry and criticism. She taught at York University in Toronto, where she now lives.


I met Tostevin at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. She was writer in residence for one week in the hot summer of 1990. I was a graduate student doing a course in contemporary Canadian literature, and Tostevin shared her work and her thoughts, both at the university and at off-campus social events.


My most vivid memory is of Tostevin reading "Le Baisir de Juan-Les-Pins," part of her in-progress novel Frog Moon (1993).

We sat in a room next to a courtyard, with doors open, hoping for even the smallest breeze. Tostevin began to read and, after a very short time, the room was pin-drop silent, as we forgot the heat and were transfixed by the story and her quiet, but dramatic reading style.

 

Off campus, we congregated at a small backyard cottage rented by one of the other grad students. The conversation and the wine flowed in the evening heat. Tostevin shared her ideas on literature and feminism, and her advice for would be writers.

 

Tostevin was fun, talented, and generous with her time, her work, and her advice.

 

I would like to invite Lola Tostevin to my soiree.

Dancing Makeover

Melanie LaPatin is one of my all-time favourite guests on the TLC show What Not to Wear (October 2004). She is fun, energetic, enthusiastic, and totally owned the changes in her makeover.

 LaPatin is the only subject of the show that I have ever been intrigued with enough to check out further.

LaPatin and her partner Tony Meredith are ballroom dance champions and have done choreography for the hit TV show So You Think You Can Dance.

The partners also own and run the Dance Times Square Latin Ballroom in NYC and have written a book on ballroom dancing.

I would like to invite Melanie LaPatin to my soiree.

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