IT heroes save the day at Nipissing University

Call it involuntary distance education.  But it all worked out for the best.

This morning I woke to the biggest heaviest snowfall I have seen in a long time.  I have a very long country driveway that can be cleared by hand if the time is available, or plowed if our neighbor is available.   Looking out the window I knew that handscraping was not going to be possible. Certainly not before my 10 o'clock class.  My three-hour seminar starting at 12:30? That would depend upon my neighbor.

By 11 o'clock it was pretty clear that he was not going to show up in time.  (It turns out that he was having tractor trouble.) What to do? Cancel another class? That thought really bugged me. This was the last class before our in-class midterm, and there were things I wanted to get done.

One faint possibility occurred to me. What if I used Skype to communicate with the students? It might not be an ideal way to run  a seminar discussion, but surely it would be better than an unplanned disruption. I called the IT helpdesk. Could they set up a computer in the classroom to be a Skype station? Would they?

No hesitation. I am sure they had plenty of other things to do, but with great willingness and competence they set up my classroom so that I could discuss the upcoming term test and run a discussion on queens and other wives in sixth-century France.  I would not have you think it was perfect, but it was better than the alternative: sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine… Wait a minute, was that a possibility?

I was glad in any case not to lose the class meeting. Thanks, Marg!  Thanks, Greg!  Thanks, whoever else pitched in (that includes at least one student)!

Sometimes this really is a great place to work.

Image:  hmm...

Jimi Hendrix would have been 69 this month

That little laugh he used for punctuation says so much.

Writing errors that make you look dumb

I don't know if any of my current students read this blog, but any who do might consider that I think this article is right on the money!

Get out the vote!

The Arabist on today's Egyptian elections. Enthusiasm?

Digging the lost harbor of Theodosius

This week the CBC TV show The Nature of Things had an episode on the discovery and archaeological rescue of one of the major harbors of Constantinople.  I missed it, but fortunately the whole episode is on the web.

The reason that this harbor was found was the construction of a train tunnel across the Bosphorus.  Both the construction of the tunnel and the archaeological rescue are technological wonders.  This is a technological nerd-fest.

And the photography of Istanbul is great, too.

Did I mention that they found 37 medieval ships?

Image:  rescue archaeology.

Thanks to my audience

In North Bay, Ontario, you can fill a room late Friday afternoon, late in dreary November, with faculty members, students, non-university community members and a dean or two, to listen to a paper on the fears and insecurities of 14th century men-at-arms.

Who knew?

Thanks for coming, people.

Image:  Someone else's seminar, in Hong Kong.  They had a bigger audience.

Newt Gingrich, the Republican candidate with the history PhD, analyzes our current troubles

As summarized by Jim Wright:

Apparently, according to Newt, America’s current economic woes stem from two sources: greedy middle school janitors and unemployed children.
Newt’s solution? Fire the janitors, hire the kids. 
Like chocolate and peanut butter, or feeding the homeless to the hungry, kids and janitorial work naturally go together.  It’s just so, so obvious when Newt points it out, isn’t it?
Fire the janitors, hire the kids.
Brilliant.
First we recoup billions in janitor salaries.
Those goddamned janitors and their outrageous salaries. Who can forget those greedy maintenance men commuting to school each morning? Their private helicopters landing on the roof of the gymnasium, flying in from the Hamptons after a weekend of booze, blow and hookers? Their chauffer driven limos blocking the school bus loading zones?  Oh yes, let us never forget who caused this financial disaster, them with their 24K gold handled mops and gilded toilet plungers while our children could barely afford to chew gum and stick it to the bathroom mirrors? I tell you, nothing chaps my ass more than when those key-twirling broom jockeys took billions in taxpayer bailouts and then gave themselves millions in bonuses. Personally I think it’s a Goddamned outrage that they get taxpayer funded lifetime pensions and golden parachutes even after being found guilty of ethics violations and forced to resign from their jobs. Honest to God, folks, how many more countries could we have invaded if these jumpsuit wearing sons of bitches weren’t bleeding us dry? How many more faith based programs could we have funded? How many high school girls had to graduate because those damned janitors stole money for abstinence only birth control classes? How many aircraft carriers could we have built?  Ask yourself this, how many more tenured history professors could we have hired if we hadn’t had to pay those stinkin’ greedy Janitors? Hell, we could have filet mignon and caviar in the Congressional lunchroom three meals per day instead of, well, ok bad example, but I think I’ve made my point here.

There's more, and all of it equally on target.

P.s.  When was the last time you heard someone in the public forum speak up for more tenured history professors?  Oh, I know it's satire, but even still...