I’m reading Nelson Lichtenstein’s new book on the impact of Walmart on American life. One development he stresses throughout is the shift from manufacturers having all the data about customer habits — they know what’s selling where based on orders and such — to retailers, particularly Walmart.
Last week, while searching for the new Bob Dylan Christmas record at Best Buy, I asked an “associate” where to find it. She pulled up the screen for this album and this long list of data emerged: which store was selling the most copies, how many copies were selling each week and each day, how many copies were in the store and available in the warehouse…I only get a few second glance at this screen but it was amazing just how much information they had about EVERY SINGLE product in their store.
All posts by history
School Budget Announced
So a new budget has been announced. Two curious paragraphs from the Inquirer’s coverage of this development:
There’s also a cut of about 0.5 percent in individual schools’ discretionary budgets.Asked if principals had been notified of the cut, which amounts to a savings of about $1.2 million, Masch said: “I hope so.”
Michael Lerner, president of the principals’ union, said his members had not heard a word.”They have neither been notified nor consulted on the budget cuts,” said Lerner.
Second snip, which will undoubtedly show up in the casework of a special education attorney:
Masch said the district was able to reduce costs by dismantling some “self-contained” classrooms and putting those children into regular education classrooms with teachers able to teach students at multiple levels.
quote from ACLU director
“No democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing evidence of its own misconduct.”
Full article here.
Wendy and Lucy
Powerful little film. The crazy part: apart from one minor, peripheral reference to a cell phone, it was hard to locate this movie in time, which was definitely part of its appeal.
Poverty and film
I liked these two paragraphs from A.O. Scott’s review of Precious and The Blind Side:
Both movies tell stories that suggest a way out of poverty, brutality and domestic calamity for certain lucky individuals while saying very little about how those conditions might be changed. For all their differences, they ultimately occupy a common ground that is both optimistic and, at the same time, curiously defeatist. Both locate the problems facing their main characters in the failure of families — of mothers in particular — and find solutions in better families, substitute mothers (Ms. Rain and Leigh Anne), whose selflessness and loyalty exorcise the biological monsters who have been left behind. The fact that “The Blind Side” is based on a true story lends credibility to this sentimental idea.
Snipping a bunch to get to this line:
We believe she (Precious) will be all right because we would rather believe that than confront the failures of institutions, programs and collective will that leave so many other Preciouses unrescued.
One more reason why The Wire rules.
Harry Smith quote
Fan of Greil Marcus…re-reading the Basement Tapes book and found this quote from Harry Smith (the assembler of the Anthology of American Folk Music):
“When I was younger, I thought that the feelings that went through me were — that I would outgrow them, that the anxiety or panic or whatever it is called would disappear, but you sort of suspect it at thirty-five, and when you get to be fifty you definitely know you’re stuck with your neuroses, or whatever you want to classify them as–demons, completed ceremonies, any old damn thing.”
Soothing on a Friday when one’s book manuscript seems miles from completion.
Gordon Wood
So I found this article a few days ago, a brief essay by Gordon Wood describing the “choices” made by historians about writing analytic vs. narrative histories. And it got under my skin a bit…he writes:
“Instead, most (new historians) have purposefully chosen not to tell stories; that is, they have chosen not to write narrative history.”
While I have great respect for Professor Wood’s work, he’s not really being fair here. There are many graduate students and scholars who would love the opportunity to chose to write narrative history. But those sorts of books will not get you tenure at many, if not most, places. The initial choices made by “new” historians are those that will best serve them if they want to remain university based historians. He’s also fails to acknowledge the historians who can do both — write a book within an analytic framework that still offers a compelling narrative. Two recent books, Lisa Levenstein’s A Movement without Marches and Hilary Moss’s Schooling Citizens, manage this quite well. And both books are written beautifully.
Either way, why isn’t there at least a paragraph on the ways in which scholarship is evaluated in the university? And why isn’t there a paragraph asking why senior historians, who have tenure, don’t chose to write larger narratives? Or why those that do are not always successful?
C. Wright Mills
“Caught in the limited milieu of their everyday lives, ordinary men [and women] often cannot reason about the great social structures—rational and irrational—of which their lives are a subordinate part. Accordingly, they often carry out series of apparently rational actions without any idea of the ends they serve.”
will post full citation later.
taken…
I pride myself on being an internet dork, but this hoax got me. Guess I really want a dog.
what does this mean?
quote from Superintendent Ackerman, cited on the KYW1060 site:
“And I think we need to support them more in what they do really well, not ask them, one size fits all, so you’re an EMO, and you have to all do the same thing. I think that we build on their strengths and expertise. And as I’ve been talking to some of the EMOs, they really, really like that. They sort of cut for themselves an area or a sphere of expertise. And I think we should open it up for all schools.”
