Posted on No Comments on summer pool

summer pool

Now that I no longer live in Williamsburg, I miss out on the McCarren Pool parties. It was one of those ideas that just was so brilliant it took off and became co-opted in the span of 30 seconds. Being at these shows was a blast the summer before last, and I’m sad to have missed Every Single One this summer. (The free ones are the brain-child of my good friends at Jelly NYC, FYI. It was their idea first, Live Nation!) I take small comfort from the fact that the Times has allowed one of my favorite blogger people, Andrew Kuo (in the blogroll on the right as ‘Emo + Beer = Busted Career‘), to provide his chart-review music events, most recently, on the Pool Parties (and here’s one of Cat Power). I’ve said it before, this guy’s a hipster Edward Tufte. Here’s a part of the chart (click here to see the rest):

summer pool graph

Just imagine if the AAUP delivered a similar chart for the news a few posts down. Suffice it to say, I’m going to begin to push my students to think about different kinds of presentations of data…

Posted on No Comments on punk + emile

punk + emile

A student passed along this old piece from The Onion. I guess the upshot is that getting students to connect social theory to everyday issues is out there in the zeitgeist, which is a good thing. Parody from The Onion, however, less so. There’s even a nice echo of what I have to write in the margins every week:

Basile, who has not yet decided on a grade for Hoyer’s paper, said he encourages “thinking beyond the textbook” and has no problem with students expanding an assignment to incorporate non-traditional subjects like punk rock. He noted, however, that he “would ideally like to see at least a 50/50 ratio.”

“Look here on page 6. This long section on the anti-societal statements punks made by wearing torn clothing and dyed hair is an obvious place to work in something about Durkheim’s distinction between societies maintaining mechanical versus organic solidarity,” Basile said. “But instead, he just keeps hammering home the same point about Malcolm McClaren’s ‘Sex’ shop.”