text:
Luxury watches enjoy immense popularity, thanks to the emotions associated with them. The most frequently cited argument for buying one is pure passion for ultimate precision, complicated mechanisms and meticulous craftsmanship.
The filter discs are fitted with processcustomised multi-dimensional YMAX® type mesh and vertically installed in the filter head.
A premium manufacturer located in the Swiss Jura, about an hour from Berne or Lausanne, produces clockwork components that ensure the promised precision and reliability in the world's most prestigious luxury watches. The so-called ébauches – finished blanks – and bridges manufactured here are main components for the movement of high quality mechanical watches. The factory produces tens of thousands of ébauches each year according to state-of-the-art manufacturing standards.
The platine
The precision of these clockwork components depends to a great degree on the plate, also referred to as the 'platine'. These pieces are processed using doubledisk grinding technology. For the filtration of the cooling lubricant for the doubledisk grinder, the company set out to find a filter system that combined a small footprint with high performance and costefficiency. To meet the surface roughness requirement of 0.8 μm for the surface of the platine, the cooling lubricant has to be filtered with a retention rate of ≤ 5 μm at a throughput rate of 220 l/min. They chose the Maxflow CS 1000 compact filter system made by GKD.
Prominent watch manufacturers live from the good reputation of their products. To achieve the quality of these products cost-effectively, these companies complement traditional techniques, manual finesse and the watchmaker's loupe with computer-controlled processes and state-of-the-art processing machines. This is also how coveted Swiss watches are made.
Alongside the watchmakers there are many engineers here working in close alliance with the craftsmen to achieve up-to-date interpretations of the old techniques through modern manufacturing methods. The basis of every piece of mechanical clockwork is the platine, on which the countless parts of the movement, many of them only few tenth of a mm in size, are mounted.
Each platine will have gone through up to five grinding passes in the double-disk grinder.
Important role
Bridges also play an important role. They support the moving parts and are screwed to the platine. It is the individual construction of these two elements that gives a luxury watch its unique character. And the evenness' parallelism and surface roughness of the workpiece are the decisive quality parameters that ensure the promised accuracy rate and power reserve.
The precision manufactory in the Swiss Jura has a staff of more than 150 employees who are working in the platine processing zone. The manufactory also produces other watch components for internationally renowned watch manufacturers. The basic pieces are 50 x 50 mm rectangular brass plates with thicknesses from 0.7 to 4.5 mm. After each work stage, machining, milling, drilling, a new grinding pass is required in which the platines are face ground in a double disk grinding machine to the respective depth.
For this process they are automatically transported from the various processing zones to the grinding machine in small trays. After the grinding pass, they are removed from the machine by a robot and deposited back into their different trays. By the time all the necessary drilling and milling has been completed, each platine will have gone through up to five grinding passes in the double-disk grinder. Most of the plates are thermally treated before grinding to guarantee a perfect flatness. To give them a uniform surface finish, all the platines are then bead blasted, and oil and swarf are removed in a washing line before further processing.
Next, a computer-controlled inspection unit conducts three-dimensional measurements to ensure that all finishing details have been accomplished to the required level of precision. In the final stage, the perfectly dimensioned round platine is milled out of the rectangular form of the original platine. The processing from the rectangular blank to the round milled platine takes up to 60 minutes. In this way, several hundreds of these platines are produced here every day. This process is followed by surface treatment and decoration of the platines. In this stage, for example, the company name of the watch manufacturer is laser engraved and the letters are blue or black lacquered for better legibility.
All in all, about 250 parts like cogwheels, springs, flywheels, arbors, hammers or balance wheels are mounted into drilled holes on different levels of the platine. Subsequently, a watchmaker will work hours to assembly the finished blank with all the movement parts in a clean room, test its accuracy rate, and oil and move all the parts. Only when he is certain that its functions are absolutely flawless.
Efficient filtration of the cooling lubricant for the double-disk grinder makes a significant contribution to compliance with high standards of quality and process reliability. Particle-contaminated cooling lubricant would scratch the ultra-smooth surface and compromise the roughness average required for exclusive product quality. The prime task of a filtration system in precision processes like this is, therefore, to keep the cooling lubricant at a high level of purity for as long as possible.
The Swiss clockwork manufactory had been using a conventional precoat filtration system for more than six years. The plant had a huge footprint and was also expensive to run. Every six months, the old filters had to be replaced with new ones. On top of all that, there was also the cost and effort involved in the dirty job of cleaning the tanks and pipe systems. The company was looking to replace this plant with a compact filter system that would guarantee a filter fineness of ≤ 5 μm at a throughput rate of 220 l/min – and at the same time reduce the costs of consumables and do away with laborious handling of contaminated sludge.
After each work stage, machining, milling, drilling, a new grinding pass is required in which the platines are face ground in a double disk grinding machine to the respective depth.
Compact filter system
On the recommendation of the grinding machinery manufacturer, the maintenance manager of the clockwork manufactory contacted the specialists for filtration capital equipment and engineering: GKD in Düren in Germany's Rhineland. GKD presented the Maxflow compact filter system at the factory and explained the possibilities for custom adaptation of the equipment. The factory decided on the Maxflow CS 1000 with integrated briquetting. What convinced them was the compact construction in stainless steel and the filter discs made of stainless steel wire mesh specifically configured for the particular customer, which guarantee long service life, low maintenance costs and corrosion resistance.
The new system also provides filtration to the required fineness without filter aids. Tailored exactly to the needs of the clockwork manufactory, the system has two filter packages, each with two static filter discs, a round tank system with integrated dirt tank and a lifting pump. Furthermore, the dirt tank's tapered runoff prevents deposits from accumulating on the tank floor.
The compact filter is connected to the manufactory's central cooling system, which is fed with 14 to 15° C cold water from a nearby stream. To compensate for the temperature difference, GKD installed a cooling coil with its own separate temperature regulator in between. The filter discs are fitted with process customised multi-dimensional YMAX® type mesh and vertically installed in the filter head. With a footprint of 2 m2, the new filter is also considerably more compact than the previously installed precoat filter.
Automatic backwashing
The water-based cooling lubricant with a 4% concentration streams around the filter discs according to the crossflow principle. Automatic backwashing detaches the filter cake of milling waste and aluminium oxide dust from the discs, presses it into dry briquets in its integrated briquetting unit and ejects the briquets ready for easy disposal. This also ensures considerably lower loss of cooling lubricant through entrainment.
In addition to the compact construction, the Swiss customer was also pleased by the ease of maintenance. Once a week, one filter package is exchanged for the cleaned one. This takes only 15 minutes. The old system needed two to three days to change the filters.
Since its installation it has been running non-stop five days a week in two shifts. Reliable compliance with the specified retention rate of ≤ 5 μm and the consistently high throughput rate completely fulfil the high expectations of the manufactory.


text:
Even in Legoland, men have long dominated science. That's about to change, though. The Danish company just launched Lego Research Institute, a $19.99 line featuring a paleontologist, astronomer and a chemist. Behold:
This trio of one-inch female scientists was created by Ellen Kooijman, a "real-life geoscientist," and selected by vote among LEGO Ideas members. It was so popular, it beat out a set based on Sherlock. This is a big deal for "girl power," as a male commenter from Canada noted.
The implications could be even bigger for the US and other economies. America desperately needs more workers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Part of the problem is that only 26% of STEM workers are women (pdf, p.5), despite the fact that they make up half of the overall workforce.
Clearly, encouraging women to work in STEM fields would be a big help. One huge hurdle, however, is keeping girls interested. Research shows that in kindergarten, boys and girls were equally interested in science (paywall); by the end of high school, though, the gap in interests rose twenty-fold.
What happens to derail that interest? Toys, for one thing. Not only do they spur cognitive and social development (pdf, p.632), they also shape children's sense of gender.
An example of how that happens: In a 2014 study of girls between the ages of four and seven, those who played with a Barbie doll—even Doctor Barbie—said that fewer occupations were open (paywall) to them, compared with boys. The girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head, on the other hand, identified nearly as many future career options available to themselves as boys.
That doesn't mean that playing with male figurines affects girls' career planning. But even in the relatively progressive world of Legoland, girls haven't had much of a choice, as Scientific American notes:
Not only does Lego's new line of female scientists invite girls to consider pursuing STEM subjects; it presents a reality in which they already are STEM workers. That validation may help build girls' confidence in their abilities early on if it solidifies the notion that many women excel in math and science. Research has found that attitudes of boys being better at math heavily discourages girls' interest in math and self-confidence in their abilities—especially among higher-achieving girls.
Shaping boys' attitudes toward professional women helps. Good thing Lego Research Lab isn't explicitly marketed toward girls. Neither is Lego's "Scientist," who was released in Sept. 2013 in a bundle with other minifigures, named "Female Scientist."
Then again, that Lego pack included "Pretzel Girl," "Diner Waitress," and "Grandma" (compared with male characters like "Constable," "Mountain Climber," and "Welder").
Other companies that have tried their hand at girls' STEM-themed figurines veer even more toward the ultra-feminine. Here's Mattel's computer software engineer Barbie from 2010:
In real life, at least, over-feminizing science can do more harm than good. One recent study found that, because they seemed "particularly unattainable," super-feminine STEM role models actually deter middle-school girls (pdf) from studying math and science.
Of course, kids should play with pink-frilled princesses and Barbie Dream Houses if they want to. But they should have options that run a broader gamut of what "females" look like. Even among Legos, "female" minifigures tend to wear things like seashells, bodices, and a lot of pink, as you can see below. Thanks to the trio of Lego Research Lab, girls and boys can now find at least a few "female" Legos dressed to offer the world more than an hourglass shape.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Year of publication
- 2010 (1) (remove)
- Netzwerk (1)
- Rechnernetz (1)
- Spannender Baum (1)
- Spanning Tree (1)
In this thesis a Java program is developed that can be used to visualize networks previously described in configuration files. These networks must consist of layer 2 switches and hosts only. After loading such a configuration file, the program will visualize the network, and the spanning tree algorithm IEEE 802.1D may be started. The program allows the user to modify specific attributes of switches and hosts. The hosts will be able to exchange messages. The switches are realized as threads so that they can run independently and parallel to each other. The absence of central coordination and control prevents the switches from sharing global knowledge. This characteristic renders the implementation closer to the way an actual network functions.


text:
The TCT must maintain a safe work zone that ensures that traffic stays out of the way of the workers. This involves setting up and removing temporary cones, signs, variable message boards, and safety barriers that show traffic where to drive, as well as holding up signs that tells traffic to either stop or to proceed slowly. Traffic-control technicians must be constantly aware of both the construction and traffic activity taking place around them.
Pay Range $19.00 to $24.00 Per Hour DOE
• Regularly exposed to outside weather conditions; moving equipment and machinery parts; moving traffic, and fumes and airborne particles
• Dealing with traveling public effectively
• Noise level of the work environment is usually moderate/loud
• Regularly required to stand/walk; reach with hands and arms; for up to 14 hours a day
• Occasionally lift and/or move more than 50 pounds
• Pass a drug test
• Ability to participate and pass Company Sponsored Flagger Certification
• Excellent attendance required, dependable transportation, good work ethic
• Complete required TCT Training Certification with-in 2 months of hire date.
Pay Range $19.00 to $24.00 Per Hour DOE
We are an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran
This position is currently not accepting applications.
To search for an open position, please go to http://RoadSafeTrafficSystemsInc.appone.com


text:
Manny Ramirez's career may be plummeting -- but this drug could've had his testosterone levels shooting through the roof.
The illegal substance Manny Ramirez tested positive for was reportedly not typically used by athletes to help with their game on the field -- it was a medication often used to regenerate low testosterone levels after a steroid cycle.
A source told Yahoo! Sports the substance, which ESPN reported was a female fertility drug called human chorionic gonadotropin, was not "an agent customarily used for performance enhancing" but is frequently used post-steroid use to boost testosterone.
The drug is similar to Clomid, the substance used by steroid-using sluggers Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi. Ramirez has denied that he took any steroids.
Ramirez got the banned substance through a prescription from a Miami doctor for a medical condition, said the source, who also indicated that the baseball star may seek legal action against the doctor.
"The substance is not a steroid and it is not human-growth hormone," the source told Yahoo.
Artificial testosterone was allegedly also found in Ramirez's system, but sources said the player likely took the testosterone separately from the hCG.
Charles Yesalis, Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Administration and Exercise and Sport Science at Penn State University, told Yahoo that the drug could be use to battle erectile dysfunction, but that it wasn't the preferred prescription.
"Testosterone and similar drugs are effective for erectile dysfunction in that they jazz up your sex drive," Yesalis said. "But far more clinicians accept that affect with Viagra and Cialis. It's hard for me to understand if it was erectile dysfunction why they would use it."
The Dodgers star tested positive for a banned substance and was slapped with a 50-game suspension by Major League Baseball that goes into effect on Thursday.


text:
5G As A Service
Agriculture | Creative Industries | Health & Social Care | Manufacturing & Automation | Sport, Travel & Tourism | Transport & Logistics | Urban Connectivity & Smart Cities
Posted by Richard Barrington
Ask 5G questions you have to the UK5G network.
Debate key 5G topics with the community.
Find opportunities for collaboration and business growth.


text:
"Shake Ya Tail Feather"(feat. Murphy Lee, P. Diddy)
[Intro: Atlanta Braves tomahawk chop]
[Nelly (P. Diddy)]
We do it for fun
We just do it for fun
Dirty E.N.T
We do it for fun
Bad Boy (Nelly, Diddy, Murphy Lee)
We do it for fun (This is history baby)
Bend them trucks
We do it for fun (haha)
Stack them bucks
We do it for fun (Come on now)
And the band played on (yea)
Just like (I believe you cool to this)
We do it for fun
If you see me ma
We do it for fun
[P. Diddy]
Bad Boys 2, the soundtrack
Let's Go
[Verse 1: Nelly + (P. Diddy)]
come here girl
What your name is?
Where you from?
Turn around who you came with?
Is that your ass or your momma have reindeer?
I can't explain it but damn sure glad you came here
I'm still a sucker for cornrows, you know I never changed that (nah uh)
Your body is banging mamma, but where your brains at? (Come on)
I'm still the same cat when I was young I was running with bad boys
But now I'm older hope they saw I'm running with bad boys (that's right)
Here come another man
Unlike no other man
Candy coated whoa!
Switching every other lane
Ya'll help me
Why don't cha
Please help me
8th girl this week and its only Tuesday
I like the cocky bow legged ones
Like white and Dominicans
Hispanics and Asians
Shake it for Nelly son
Manolos Ma-no-no's I can't tell
Everybody and their hootchies
When you do it do it well
[Braves tomahawk chop done in background of Chorus]
[Nelly] Let me see you take it
[P. D.] Girl go and take it off
[Nelly] We can even do it slow
[P. D.] We can even do it slow
[Nelly] Take it where you want to go
[P. D.] Take it where you want to go
[Nelly] Just take that ass to the floor
[P. D.] Pop something move something
Shake ya tail feather, girl go and take it low
[Nelly] We can even do it slow
[P. D.] We can even do it slow
[Nelly] Take it where you want to go
[P. D.] Take it where you want to go
[Nelly] Just take that ass to the floor
[P. D.] Pop something move something
Shake ya tail feather
[Verse 2: P. Diddy + (Nelly)]
Now real girls get down on the floor (on the floor)
Get that money honey act like you know (like you know)
Mama I like how you dance
The way you fit in them pants (Uh)
Enter the floor (Uh) take it low (Uh) girl do it again (Uh)
You know I love that (I love that)
Now where them girls at? (Where the girls at?)
It's Diddy, Murphy Lee, and Nelly how you love that? (Shit uh ohhhhhh)
Come on, we got another one player
From New York to the Dirty how they loving it player?
Baby you impressive let's get
To know each other
You the best of the best and
You got to love it in the dresses, the sexiest
I had to tell her she's a young Janet Jackson live in living color
Look here momma you're dead wrong for having them pants on
Capri's cut low so when you shake it I see your thong
My pocket's full of dough shake your feathers till the morning
It's Bad Boy and Nelly man somebody better warn them
[Bridge: Nelly]
Oh no I heard them bad boys coming
Can't stop now
Got to continue my running (yea)
Because we go party till them lights come on
And then my song stop, fuck it, because my mic still on
[Verse 3: Murphy Lee + (Nelly)]
Yo, I'm the big booty type
I like them thick with their mind right (Awe)
Banging personality conversate when the time right (Naw)
I'm not hard I've got women to handle that
They be like he the man when I'm really a Thundercat
Come on you know the tics connect like Voltron
Collect so much grass popo thinking we mow lawns
My gohans don't match that
But it matches her head wrap and the seats that I got in the lac
I'm just a juvenile (Wha)
Because I be about G's
Keep your women wizzy man they say they have my babies
I'm young like Turk, like the cash and the money (I'm going to eat my money)
Man, I'm that damn hungry
See I'm starving like Marvin girl
I've got sixteen bars of fire is what I'm starting
Plus my rats come in packs like Sammy and Dean Martin
And I got so many keys you'd think I was valet parking
[Bridge: Nelly]
Oh no I heard them bad boys coming
Can't stop now
Got to continue my running (yea)
Because we go party till them lights come on
And then my song stop, fuck it, because my mic still on (man)
[Outro: Atlanta Braves tomahawk chop]
[Thanks to email@example.com, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com for correcting these lyrics]


text:
NCAA charges NC State with 4 men's hoops violations
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The NCAA has charged North Carolina State with four violations, accusing a former assistant coach of providing payments and benefits connected to the recruitment of one-and-done basketball player Dennis Smith Jr.
The school said Wednesday that its notice of allegations was received Tuesday, and now has 90 days to respond.
The notice includes four serious charges, with two that are potential top-level charges. The NCAA alleges that from 2014-17, former assistant Orlando Early provided Smith and his associates approximately $46,700 in impermissible inducements and benefits — including $40,000 that a government witness testified he delivered to Early intended for Smith's family in 2015.
The NCAA also said former coach Mark Gottfried, now coaching at Cal State Northridge, was "presumed responsible" and "did not demonstrate" that he monitored Early for compliance. It also accuses Gottfried of failing to monitor the program's pass list, leading to a total 164 impermissible complimentary admissions to games.
The notice indicates the NCAA's hearing panel could levy show-cause penalties against both Gottfried and Early.
The Wolfpack went 15-17 during Smith's one season on the team in 2016-17, and the school fired Gottfried late during that season. Smith, a point guard with the New York Knicks, is entering his third season in the NBA.
Scott Tompsett, a Kansas City-based attorney who represents Gottfried along with Raleigh's Elliot Abrams, said in a statement Wednesday night that his client is disappointed that the allegations have been brought against N.C. State and takes them seriously.
"While we disagree with the enforcement staff's position that Coach Gottfried did not adequately monitor certain aspects of his program, we are pleased that the NCAA agrees that he was not involved in any illicit payments," Tompsett said.
Cal State Northridge spokesman Nick Bocanegra issued a statement on behalf of the school saying it is aware of N.C. State's notice and that Gottfried told school officials that he was not involved in, or had knowledge of, any NCAA rules violations — an affirmation that is a condition of his employment.
The notice came roughly a month after a key NCAA official said six schools could face allegations of Level I violations as part of the fallout in the college basketball corruption scandal. Stan Wilcox, vice president for regulatory affairs for the NCAA, said two high-profile programs would be notified in early July, the others at a later date.
While numerous schools, including Arizona, Kansas and Auburn, have been tied to the federal corruption case, N.C. State received a grand jury subpoena in 2018 for records tied to Smith, Gottfried and Early.
The staff of current coach Kevin Keatts, who replaced Gottfried in March 2017, isn't linked to the case. The school received a verbal notice of inquiry from the NCAA last fall signifying the start of an investigation, and N.C. State said in its statement that it remains in communication with the NCAA.
"N.C. State is committed to the highest levels of compliance, honesty and integrity," Chancellor Randy Woodson said in a statement. "As the university carefully reviews the NCAA's allegations and thoroughly evaluates the evidence in order to determine our response, we are prepared to be accountable where we believe it is appropriate and to vigorously defend this great university and its Athletics program where we feel it is necessary."
New athletic director Boo Corrigan said in an open letter to fans that the school is being transparent in acknowledging the receipt of its notice and "we will make every effort" to support Keatts and the current players and staff.
The NCAA also accuses Early of violating principles of ethical conduct by providing 44 complimentary admissions on the men's basketball pass list to Smith's then trainer, Shawn Farmer, on 26 occasions between January 2016 and March 2017 — with that benefit valued at $2,119. He is also alleged to have provided $4,562 in 106 impermissible complimentary tickets on 13 occasions between November 2016 and February 2017.
The less-severe allegations charge men's basketball staffers with providing $862 in impermissible benefits in the form of 14 complimentary admissions in 2016, and accuse the school with failing to monitor the program's use of complimentary admissions.


text:
The Presidential Address was delivered at the 2013 MLA Annual Convention in Boston by Michael Bérubé, then president of the association. A transcript of his speech, which was introduced by Executive Director Rosemary G. Feal, appears here. The full address will be published in the May 2013 issue of PMLA.
How We Got Here
Last year around this time, I was on my way to a panel on which I was slated to serve as a respondent, when Hap Veeser waylaid me and said, "Michael! You might be just the person I need to talk to." When I expressed some puzzlement about why, Hap explained, "I'm collecting the three biggest lies told at the MLA, but I only have two. The first is 'I loved your panel.' The second is 'I'm so sorry I missed your panel.' What's the third?" I laughed and said, "Actually, you probably did ask the right person: I know the answer to this." Then I waited a beat and said, "I'll be brief."
No sooner did I utter those words than I went to my panel and proceeded to listen to three consecutive twenty-five-minute presentations. Never mind not leaving time for questions; the panelists didn't even leave any time for the respondent. So I got up and noted that because the session was now over, I would confine my remarks to five minutes—but that to punish everyone for their bad behavior, I would speak even more quickly than I usually do. Well, I will not do that tonight. And I will not be brief, either.
I would like to begin with the traditional invocation: this is a brief prayer that has prefaced every presidential address going back to 1884, and it goes like this. Almighty creator, I ask of you this night but one thing: may I not be mocked on Twitter.
It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as your president this year. I served on my first MLA committee thirteen years ago; I was elected to the Executive Council ten years ago; I have been serving as an officer of the association for the past three years. And it is a most curious thing—the MLA is one of the few organizations I've known whose internal workings appear more impressive the closer you look. My thanks to Rosemary and all the senior staff members, who have been so wonderful to work with; and my thanks to all of you, for being here tonight, postponing dinner for a while and joining me for my first and last presidential address.
My immediate predecessors, Sid Smith and Russell Berman, warned me that this year would pass more quickly than I could imagine. It turns out that they were wrong about that. In some ways, it has been a very long year indeed. Over the course of the year, I made three trips to Washington in my capacity as president. On the first, I attended the summit meeting of the New Faculty Majority, the national coalition for adjunct and contingent faculty. On the last, I spoke to the Council of Graduate Schools on the future of graduate education in the humanities. The two subjects—graduate education and contingent labor—are intimately allied, of course, since so many of the students we teach today will become, through no fault of their own, adjunct and contingent faculty tomorrow. To grapple with this is to immerse oneself in the immiserating aspects of our profession and to realize how much of our profession has been deprofessionalized. But I am hoping that this will have been a watershed year, the year when attention to the working conditions of the majority of our colleagues in higher education moved from the margin to the center of discussion.
In fact, the year has been somewhat encouraging on that front. Upon returning from Washington in January, I reported on the New Faculty Majority summit for Inside Higher Ed and wrote a longer version for the MLA Web site. Josh Boldt, a contingent faculty member at the University of Georgia, read that longer version and noted with surprise and delight that the MLA has minimum wage recommendations for part-time and non-tenure-track faculty—and that our standards are reasonably high: we believe that people who teach in colleges should be paid a living wage, just under $7,000 a course. Boldt decided to take that recommendation and run with it, creating Adjunct Project, a Web site that would allow contingent faculty members to upload the details of their working conditions. Unbeknownst to Boldt, the MLA was working on a more comprehensive version of the same thing, the Academic Workforce Data Center that would correlate individual data with employment data from every single institution of higher education in the United States. Boldt's version went viral and ours did not, but the important thing is that, for the first time, MLA recommendations for faculty working conditions were being aggressively promoted by way of social media; now, Boldt's Adjunct Project has partnered with the Chronicle of Higher Education in a venture that, in Boldt's words, will "revolutionize the adjunct world." After this, I think, it really will be impossible for people to treat contingent faculty as an invisible labor force. What will come of this development I do not know, but I can say that I am ending the year with more optimism for contingent faculty members than I had when I began the year, and that's certainly not something I thought I would be able to say tonight.
The more depressing news from my Washington visits has to do with Humanities Advocacy Day. I represented the MLA, of course, although I fretted that the unofficial subtitle of Humanities Advocacy Day would be "Like It's Going to Matter." As it happened, that's basically how everyone involved in the events of that day thought about their participation. All the congressional staff members we met with said the same thing: they were more or less sympathetic to our cause (although one senator's office, it turned out, either didn't know or didn't care about the difference between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities), and they understood that we were asking not for a drop in the federal-budget bucket but for the fraction of a fraction of a portion of a drop in the bucket. But they knew there would be no enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for increased funding for the humanities, and they knew that nothing would be done until after the election, during six frantic lame-duck weeks of wrangling over the so-called fiscal cliff. The National Humanities Alliance had prepared for us an informational sheet that we could distribute to congressional offices; it basically asked that appropriations for the National Endowment for the Humanities be held steady at the Fiscal Year 2011 level. It made the same request for the Fulbright-Hays Program (for research abroad) and for Title VI funding for international and foreign language education. And that's where I decided to go off message—and I hope it will be all right with you that I stayed off message all day. You see, these programs, these sources of funding for foreign language study, had been cut by 40 percent in 2011, from $125.9 million to $75.7 million. "I know Congress is looking for places to cut spending," I said to all the staffers I met. "But we already took our hit, a disproportionate hit. Anything you can do to restore some of that funding will mean a great deal to graduate students and faculty in foreign languages."
And here's where we get to the really depressing stuff. There are only two things you can say in Washington when it comes to foreign language study. One is that it will enhance our economic competitiveness abroad; the other is that it will be critical to national security. The idea that Americans might also serve as "informal cultural ambassadors and engage in an exchange of knowledge and culture while overseas" is now unthinkable in official Washington even though it is part of the language of Fulbright-Hays. And don't bother trying to argue that language study grows your brain, or that it might enhance many Americans' knowledge of the languages spoken by their own parents and grandparents. The languages that official Washington is interested in are called "strategic" languages, and I believe it was Bob Scholes who, during his presidential year, suggested that we drop the euphemisms altogether and simply refer to "enemy languages." More seriously, we spent some time this year on the Executive Council drafting our own statement on foreign language study, a statement we hope will be of some use in future lobbying efforts. (Since then we have drafted four more statements—on ethnic studies, on program closures, on university presses, and on freedom of travel for foreign scholars—on the grounds that the MLA has distinct positions on each question, positions that will not waver in any foreseeable case. That is, there will never be a time when we say something like, "We're all right with Tariq Ramadan entering the United States, but Adam Habib has to stay in South Africa." Or, "We oppose the closing of the University of Missouri Press, but you can shut down Southern Methodist University Press if you like.") But about my own lobbying efforts, the only hopeful thing I can say comes by way of a young staffer named Kamilla Kovacs, who noted, as she told us of her Hungarian heritage and her fluency in Hungarian, that there was a time, somewhere around 1956, when suddenly Hungarian became a "strategic" language—and that perhaps we could try to remind our elected officials that one never knows which languages might become strategic tomorrow.
Time and again this year, I have asked myself: how did we get ourselves into this? Surely we didn't go into this business with the hopes of becoming powerful lobbyists in Washington. And when it comes to our working conditions, I think of that popular e-card: "I do this for the money, prestige, and power. Said no librarian ever."
So I want to talk for a moment about Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. No, really. It is very strange, but I have been having conversations about A Wrinkle in Time all year long with colleagues and friends. I've even gone back and reread the book. I was motivated partly by all the attention it received this year, the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. I learned only in January of this year, reading an item in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, that L'Engle's heroine, Meg Murry, is something like the patron saint of "bookish girls" everywhere; as Anne Lamott remarked in November of this year, "A Wrinkle in Time saved me because it so captured the grief and sense of isolation I felt as a child." And I realized that when I read it in 1972, I completely missed how anomalous it was that a speculative sci-fi young-adult novel would have as its protagonist an awkward girl who is such a science geek she can recite a good chunk of the periodic table of the elements by memory. I missed that because I identified with Meg Murry; I didn't get the memo that boys weren't supposed to identify with female protagonists, and I shared Meg's sense of social anxiety and science geekdom and general outsiderness just as, a few years earlier, I had shared in Alice's sense of bewilderment and wonder and occasional aggravation at the worlds of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass.
I read each of those books at least a dozen times, along with my first introduction to allegory, The Phantom Tollbooth. I also read a bunch of less rewarding stuff too, like Matt Christopher's series of sports books. But I didn't reread any of those, nor was there any need to do so, because they were all the same story. And this is why that famous passage from Roland Barthes's S/Z speaks to me so powerfully:
Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us "throw away" the story once it has been consumed ("devoured"), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors)[. Rereading] . . . alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere).
Now, I don't suppose that every single person in this room, or in the MLA, was necessarily a voracious reader and rereader as a child. Nor do I imagine that every child who is a voracious reader winds up here—Anne Lamott didn't, nor did Anna Quindlen or Rebecca Stead, two other writers deeply influenced by A Wrinkle in Time as children. And surely many of us were unmoved by young-adult fiction; I know any number of colleagues who are indifferent to Meg and Alice and Milo and Tock but who were jolted into the life of the mind by reading Beyond Good and Evil as teens (or perhaps even S/Z!) or by encountering the lyric brilliance of Emily Dickinson or Hart Crane (who knew that calyx was a word?) or by being mesmerized by Christine de Pisan or the Gawain poet ("Bryddes busken to bylde, and bremlych syngen"—they don't write 'em like that anymore) or by stumbling upon the psychedelicatessen that is the oeuvre of Philip K. Dick. For that matter, I know colleagues whose childhoods were not suffused with books. But I do think that at some point we consciously joined what Wendy Griswold calls "the reading class"—the four percent of people in industrialized nations (and it is only four percent) who read seriously and voluminously because they just love to.
The hook, the lure of joining the reading class, doesn't necessarily have to be YA fiction. It doesn't have to be fiction at all. One of the books I read repeatedly at the age of nine was a book in which I knew the narrative trajectory—and the ending—before I opened it: A Year on Ice, Gerald Eskanazi's account of the New York Rangers' extraordinary 1969–70 season. I will spare you the details about why the season was extraordinary. But just as I reread fictional narratives for specific scenes, or for the sheer texture of the language, I could reread Eskanazi's book again and again just for the masterful way he sets the stage for, and then describes, the Rangers' stunning 9-5 victory over the Detroit Red Wings in the final game of the regular season. My point is that at the most basic level of intellectual pleasure, it didn't matter to me whether it was reading Alice through the Looking-Glass or A Year on Ice or the Associated Press book Footprints on the Moon, each of which I read so often I practically memorized them. The same principle held for me a few years later, when I was a teen and I was hooked by The Sound and the Fury and Invisible Man and the work of Robert Christgau or Ellen Willis in the Village Voice. I would think to myself: the written word. This is the great invention of our time.
This is the great invention of our time. Those, of course, are the words of José Arcadio Buendía, at the end of chapter 1 of One Hundred Years of Solitude, as he discovers the miracle of ice. One Hundred Years of Solitude has a curious place in my intellectual history: it was the last book I read before entering graduate school. I had spent fifteen months, from May 1982 to August 1983, working as a word processor in midtown Manhattan, trying to save enough money to attend graduate school for a year; my hope was that I could win some kind of fellowship to keep me going after that, but as for my first year, in the parlance of college sports, I was a walk-on. So as I typed legal documents and squirreled away a few thousand bucks for this pipe dream, I read a bunch of random things that I thought might serve me well in graduate school. Don Quixote, the Aeneid (in translation), Gravity's Rainbow, The Trial, Beyond Good and Evil, snippets of Ovid's Metamorphoses in a Latin class I audited at Columbia, and finally García Márquez. In doing this eclectic and fairly serious reading I resembled pretty much every other word processor working in midtown Manhattan. And I vividly remember sitting on the Lawn at the University of Virginia in August 1983, mildly terrified to be living someplace other than New York, immersing myself in One Hundred Years of Solitude, when suddenly I was struck by a sobering thought. In just one week, I realized, I am going to have come up with smart things to say about books like this. I can't simply say "this is great stuff" or "wow, I didn't know you could do this with words," which was my first, visceral response to The Sound and the Fury and To the Lighthouse and Ulysses—and has always seemed to me to be one of the projects of modernism: you didn't know we could do this with words. (In recent years, I have had a similar response to Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, not for its language so much as for its extravagant forms of invention). But here I am at the University of Virginia, and I cannot rest content with visceral responses now. Why, I have to get myself a fellowship somehow if I want to stay here! I'm going to have to take my immersion in this great stuff and produce something from it!
It is almost too obvious for words, this reflection on my relation to words, but I mention it because it is a common trope among many people who love reading. I love reading, they say,and that is why I hated graduate school. Or: I love reading, and that is why I don't want to ruin it with literary criticism. Or: I love reading, and that is why I hate the MLA and all it stands for. At one point this year I read Priscilla Gilman's memoir, The Anti-Romantic Child, and was struck by how Gilman described her experience of academic literary study and the tenure track—as a dispiriting process that leached away her love for Wordsworth, a love she reclaimed partly by leaving academe and writing her book. I know Gilman is not alone; I have read many accounts written by people who don't wind up in ballrooms like this, listening to or delivering addresses like this, and I know that many people experience graduate school as an arduous, dehumanizing slog—and that some of them experience the professionalization processes of graduate school as a violation or attenuation of the things that made them love reading in the first place. Indeed, there is a subgenre of MLA Presidential Addresses that testifies to this phenomenon, in which the professionalization of literary study is construed as loss, a loss of the innocence we once had when we were naive readers immersed in our identifications with Meg or Milo or Lily Briscoe or Quentin Compson. Sometimes, we have asked ourselves how we got here, and the answers have been tinged with a sense of regret, a nostalgia for those moments when we could simply sit on the grass somewhere and think, wow, One Hundred Years of Solitude is an awesome thing.
Although I understand this sense of loss and regret, I have to say that I have never shared it. I found graduate school unpleasant, but not because of the ways I was taught to read; the kind of reading I did in graduate school only deepened my sense of the power of the written word and convinced me that alphabetic writing is indeed the great invention of our time. There is a passage in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel that confirms this for me:
Inventing a writing system from scratch must have been incomparably more difficult than borrowing and adapting one. The first scribes had to settle on basic principles that we now take for granted. For example, they had to figure out how to decompose a continuous utterance into speech units, regardless of whether those units were taken as words, syllables, or phonemes. They had to learn to recognize the same sound or speech unit through all our normal variations in speech volume, pitch, speed, emphasis, phrase grouping, and individual idiosyncrasies of pronunciation. They had to decide that a writing system should ignore all of that variation. They then had to devise ways to represent sounds by symbols.
Somehow, the first scribes solved all those problems, without having in front of them any example of the final result to guide their efforts. That task was evidently so difficult that there have been only a few occasions in history when people invented writing entirely on their own.
When I read that passage, I thought of my first encounters with Joyce, with Heidegger, with Derrida; but I thought most of all of this parallel passage from one of the most playful, endlessly involuted works of fiction written in English. The text (one hesitates to call it a novel) is Pale Fire, and the narrator, of course, is Nabokov's idiosyncratic (or insane) Professor Charles Kinbote:
We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students).
Being professionalized in literary study in the 1980s, and ever since, has involved some degree of immersion in theory, even at an institution like Virginia, which at the time was not especially associated with theory or any branch thereof. And certainly, some of the laments about the professionalization of literary study twenty or thirty years ago were complaints about deconstruction or feminism or new historicism or postcolonial or queer theory or some heady combination thereof. I suppose I was especially fortunate that my introductions to theory came by way of Michael Levenson and Richard Rorty, two professors who taught me, in different ways, that literary theory was not a key to all mythologies, not an instructor's edition that held the keys to the Hidden Meanings of literary texts, and not a mechanical interpretation-generating device into which I could plug an endless series of texts to produce "readings." Rather, they insisted that theoretical texts were texts like any other: they had to be read not merely for their claims but for their texture. And no one theorist was to be treated as the vehicle or the author of the Revealed Word. That attitude infuriated some of the students who took Rorty's seminars on Derrida and Freud, the former of whom was believed finally to have freed us all from the logocentrism of Western philosophy since Plato and the latter of whom was held to have given us the key to all mythologies. But it was, I think, the right attitude to have, especially with regard to iconic theorists—the attitude of Rorty's ironist, capable of immersion in any number of language games but finally beholden to no single one.
My own aversion to graduate school didn't have anything to do with criticism or theory. I was thrilled to be able to keep peeling back layers upon layers of textuality, thrilled to be immersed not only in the written word but in the world of ideas. What I found annoying about graduate school was more personal. It had to do more with the level of social anxiety in graduate programs, some of which was driven by the fact that I had 76 people in my entering class (126 were admitted the following year) and our program was very clearly structured around attrition and what was called "permission to proceed," and some of which was driven by the fact that graduate school can be the kind of place where people name their pets Trotsky or Badiou. Not that there is anything new about this: those of you who are fans of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim will remember the Welches, who named their cats Id, Ego, and Superego. Surely this is only one of many reasons that most readers of Lucky Jim identify with Dixon and with his horror at the many varieties of academic pretension—some of which, mirabile dictu, survive today.
So yes, academe can be an annoying place, and it tends to breed its own distinctive characterological quirks. But I am not sure it is all that different from other professions in that respect. Perhaps we have a higher ratio of pedants and stuffed shirts of the sort mocked in campus novels. Then again, I am surrounded by really smart people, many of whom are also very witty and great fun—good colleagues and good companions. But overall our line of work is similar in many respects to other forms of white-collar work: we have our meetings, our bureaucracy, our office intrigues. The major difference is that we also have our classrooms.
I want to dwell on that aspect of our work for a moment. I knew when I was about twenty that I wanted to be a writer of some kind. It was the one thing I felt completely comfortable doing, other than ice skating. The only question was what I would do for a day job, since I didn't think I could earn my keep by writing any more than I could do so by ice skating. I considered various forms of textmongering—publishing, journalism, law, advertising—and I thought, what kind of day job will I want when I am forty or fifty? That was the question that led me decisively away from advertising and persuaded me to apply to graduate school. I didn't think very much about teaching; I didn't have a sense that I would be any good at it, and, in fact, when I started out, in 1985, I was totally unsure of myself. In good time—say, two or three years—I became too sure of myself, and I then eventually settled down to where I am now, more or less sure of myself. But of course many go into this business not only because they love reading and writing and thinking about reading and writing, but because they love teaching students about reading and writing. They love those moments of illumination when an undergraduate first begins to understand the "Time Passes" section of To the Lighthouse or learns how to construct a pivot paragraph that paraphrases an argument with which one proceeds to disagree. They love, as I do, the forms of knowledge and inquiry one encounters in the humanities. And though I don't believe that those forms of knowledge and inquiry lead directly to specific ways of being in the world, I have to say that there is no question in my mind that I was better equipped to deal with the birth of a child with Down syndrome because of my training in the humanities. Because of that training, because of my acquaintance with different forms of critical thinking and different ideas about what critical thinking consists of, I am less inclined to think of disability as deficit, more willing to accept a wide variety of ways of being human, more sympathetic to the argument that many disabilities are disabling chiefly because our environments and policies make them so, and more attuned to the possibility that my beliefs and expectations (about Down syndrome and about the world in general) may need to be periodically reexamined and revised. When you put it that way, you have to wonder: what's not to love about this business?
But at this point you might be wondering—is this really what this guy came to say tonight? That he likes his job? Or worse, that he loves reading and writing? Haven't I just done precisely what we tell people not to do in applications to graduate programs? No one on the admissions committee wants to hear how important books were to you as a child; we want to hear why you applied to our program and what you intend to do with your studies. But then, I'm not applying to graduate school. I'll tell you what I am doing: I am trying to answer a question I have heard time and again this year. Why should anyone bother with advanced study in the humanities? I think especially of one long and energetic exchange I had with some colleagues at a major public university. About six or eight of us went out to dinner after I had given a lecture, and one of my hosts said that the problem with my various defenses of the humanities is that sooner or later (and usually sooner) I manage to construe the humanities as something useful, in a more or less Rotarian kind of way. I thereby give short shrift to pleasure, and we need to be honest with people about the kind of pleasure involved in our work. "Intellectual stimulation," I replied, "is a form of pleasure—at least for me." Aha! Right there, I did it again: I wasn't talking about pleasure, I was talking about a form of pleasure that is good for you, and good for your brain, and probably good for civil society at large. Not pleasure as such. To this I had two replies: one, we have been having this argument ever since Schiller decided that the purposive purposelessness of the aesthetic served some basic human need he called the play-drive, thereby rendering the uselessness of art useful insofar as it fulfills some deep human need (and one recent branch of criticism has tried to pursue this possibility in the terms of neuroscience). Two, although I remain open to the possibility that we have something like a play-drive that accounts for our species' desire to make things up and entertain or edify one another in so doing, I am not going to lead with pleasure when I talk about justifications for the study of the humanities.
In my capacity as Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State, I have made this very clear: I will not talk about my institute as a pleasure center. We will have no cheery booster-brochure rhetoric about celebrating the humanities or appreciating the arts. I am going to insist, to the campus community, to alumni, to anyone who may be listening, that serious study in the humanities—the practices of advanced literacy, the fine arts of interpretation—is a game of high and difficult technique, as C. L. R. James once said of cricket. That doesn't mean we can't love it, as James surely loved cricket; but it means we are going to insist that it requires serious training and practice, practice, practice. We are dealing with the art and the science of figuring out, as Peter Brooks once put it, not merely what texts mean but how texts mean. It is a pleasure, no question, but it is a pleasure that also demands intellectual creativity and intellectual rigor. Perhaps to our students we can stress the pleasurable aspects of our discipline; but if our discipline is only a matter of pleasure, then you have not provided what most people would see as a reason to do advanced research in it. Justifying the humanities is one thing; justifying careers of study in the humanities is quite another. Well, then, my interlocutor said, you're basically playing right into the game of the corporate university, which has no place for pleasure and rewards only those who can show some return on investment, however high-minded that return may be.
I think he may be right about this, and so I pass the critique on to you, ventriloquizing it as best I can. But I still think the alternative is worse, especially in corporate universities: although I am pleased to speak of pleasure whenever I have the opportunity (now, for instance), I know that in many corners of the world, and in many precincts of our own institutions, the arts and humanities are already regarded as frivolous—or, worse, as corrosively subversive. Of course they give pleasure; so does a lovely dessert. But when it is time to cut budgets, dessert clearly has to be the first to go. And so the disciplines that should be central to a liberal arts education are cast instead as peripheral extras, boutique disciplines that can safely be considered the tiny preserve of an elite with the leisure and cultivation to engage in the advanced pursuit of pleasure.
Moreover, as Marc Bousquet has recently written in an essay demurely titled "We Are All Roman Porn Stars Now," we pay a heavy price, as a profession, for loving the work we do; we help justify a labor system that produces jobs at what Bousquet calls "the extreme of economic irrationality (for example, $15,000 for teaching six courses a year)." Of course, the idea that love is an ideological cover for the acceptance of intolerable living conditions will be familiar to readers of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. It constitutes Nanny's admonition to Janie, "Dis love! Dat's just whut's got us uh pullin' and haulin' and sweatin' and doin' from can't see in de mornin' till can't see at night." And it has often been remarked, as it was in Russell Berman's presidential address last year, that the profession of college teaching itself devalues teaching and that our professional reward structure is built on that devaluation. I have heard colleagues say they love teaching so much they would do it for free; the sorry fact is that many of our colleagues are almost doing just that. They may not be doing it for free, but they most certainly are not earning a living wage.
In September, the political scientist Corey Robin noted that many ostensibly liberal commentators were opposing the Chicago public schoolteachers' strike and that some were displaying a contempt for the teachers' union that was indistinguishable from that of the most fervent right-to-work conservative. "One could of course take these people at their word," wrote Robin, "they care about the kids, they worry that strikes hurt the kids, and so on—but since we never hear a peep out of them about the fact that students have to swelter through 98-degree weather in jam-packed classes without air conditioning, I'm not so inclined." Instead, Robin drew on his experience growing up in the affluent New York suburb of Chappaqua, where, he said, people tended to regard teachers as "failures," "incompetents and buffoons."
"Those who can't do, teach" goes the old saw. But where that traditionally bespoke a suspicion of fancy ideas that didn't produce anything concrete, in my fancy suburb, it meant something else. Teachers had opted out of the capitalist game; they weren't in this world for money. There could be only one reason for that: they were losers. They were dimwitted, unambitious, complacent, unimaginative, and risk-averse. They were middle class.
I think there is something to that. I grew up in an environment that venerated teachers, that considered teaching a vocation—a vocation that did some good for people and would never destroy an ecosystem or bring the world to the brink of financial collapse. So I have been mystified at the level of vitriol directed at schoolteachers over the past five years. Some of it, surely, comes from the Know-Nothing camp that still hasn't accommodated itself to the idea that the planet is about 4.5 billion years old and that human beings evolved from other life-forms. But some of it also comes from elites who believe that doing something you love, something that involves more psychic than material rewards, is for suckers.
Robin goes on to say that college professors are largely exempt from that kind of contempt: "I'm continuously astonished at the pass that gets me among the people I grew up with. Had I chosen to be a high-school teacher, I'd be just another loser." But surely that has something to do with the fact that Robin is (a) a man and (b) a full-time, tenured faculty member. And it has something to do with the fact that so many people outside academe, all the way up to the vice president of the United States, believe that all college professors are highly paid professionals. The truth, of course, is that contingent college faculty members earn lower wages, have less professional autonomy, and endure significantly greater job insecurity than unionized teachers in the K–12 system.
I know it has taken us, as a profession, far too long to come to terms with the fact of our deprofessionalization. And I know that it is not something that was caused by, or can be significantly remediated by, scholarly organizations. It is only fairly recently in the 128-year history of the MLA that we have tried to become a major source of information and advocacy with regard to faculty working conditions in higher education. It is only in the last ten years that we have developed wage recommendations for beginning assistant professors and per-course wage recommendations for contingent faculty members; there was a time, and I remember it well, when we didn't see that as part of our role. But it is now, thanks to a motion drafted by the Graduate Student Caucus and passed by the Delegate Assembly. And that speaks to a larger question of how graduate student activism in the 1990s helped transform this association. Twenty years ago it was unheard of for graduate students to serve on major MLA committees, let alone the Executive Council, which has fiduciary responsibility for the organization; today it is routine, and there are two students on the council. We are now seeking to have more community college faculty representation on our committees; the most recent slate of nominees for the Executive Council contained the names of five community college faculty members, one of whom, Alicia de la Torre Falzon, was just elected. More seriously, this transformation of the leadership of the MLA over the past two decades has not been tokenism, and it has not been window dressing. The democratization and diversification of the leadership has brought new perspectives to bear on our association from precincts of the profession that had largely gone underrepresented; it has involved a substantial reinterpretation of our mission; and it has been fueled by the energy and dedication of a truly extraordinary executive director.
But one of the things that happens to us, as we make our way here, is regrettable. As we develop our research and teaching interests and as we engage in the kind of scholarly specialization that is both inevitable and necessary, we sometimes identify more with our disciplines—or with our specific subdisciplinary slice of the discipline—than we do with our colleagues in higher education at large. We have been, as a group, very reluctant to think of ourselves as a labor force, even though we most surely are mental laborers, white-collar workers, and we have been not at all hesitant to think of ourselves as modernists or medievalists, theorists or Hispanists. Early this year I witnessed a particularly debilitating example of how this works. In response to the publicity generated by Josh Boldt's Adjunct Project, a rhetoric and composition specialist replied that it was odd for the MLA to be promoting wage recommendations for contingent faculty members, because we have never been all that interested in the teaching of writing. It seemed to me at the time a complete non sequitur, because our wage recommendations don't stipulate what anyone might be teaching in any realm of language or literature. We simply think that everyone in the business should be paid a minimum of $6,920 for a standard 3-credit-hour semester course. Our critics have derided this as hopelessly unrealistic, and this critic was no exception; he said we might as well wish for ponies while we were at it. When I replied that I didn't see what any of this had to do with the teaching of writing, I was reminded that introductory writing courses fall on the extreme end of the low-wage spectrum, and that the MLA has historically ignored those courses, which is one reason why the National Council of Teachers of English was founded. I granted the point, of course, but could not refrain from noting that the NCTE was founded in 1911, and that perhaps, in the interest of better working conditions for all our colleagues, it would be best to bury that century-old hatchet.
But of course the point remains that although the object of this association is to promote study, criticism, and research in the more and less commonly taught modern languages and their literatures and to further the common interests of teachers of these subjects, as our constitution says, we have generally been understood to be more interested in literature than in language. Many of our colleagues in rhetoric and writing don't see the MLA as their organization, and neither do many creative writers. There is no natural reason for this; we should be reading our mission broadly and inclusively. If you are interested in the study of languages and literatures, you are one of us—or you can be, if you want to. Indeed, there are some poets and novelists among us right now. You can even have two memberships, in AWP and MLA, just as I belong to both the MLA and the NCTE, not to mention the American Association of University Professors. I am not going to lament subdisciplinary specialization, any more than I would lament my immersion in the world of criticism and theory; it is perfectly understandable, indeed salutary, that over the years I would gradually have less to say to medievalists and more to say to people in disability studies. But if we overidentify with those specializations to the point at which we do not see what we have in common as people who teach and work in colleges, then we make it more difficult to see ourselves as people who teach and work in colleges. We make it more difficult to think of ourselves as a labor force, and we make it easier for the working conditions of that labor force to be eroded.
I want to close by asking something of each of you. Whether or not you agree with the way I think about this, I would like you to leave here convinced not only of the value of the work we do but of the need to get our institutions to value the work of each and every one of our colleagues off the tenure track. What can you do to help? Anything you can. If you have a position of some power in your institution, or if you simply know somebody who does, look carefully at the working conditions of your colleagues among the contingent faculty. Our Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession produced a set of questions and guidelines last year for precisely this purpose: the MLA cannot enforce working conditions in individual institutions, but we can ask our members to become familiar with, and promote, our recommendations for those working conditions. And once again with feeling, it doesn't matter whether we are talking about colleagues teaching introductory writing or creative nonfiction or the American literature survey or second-year French. It matters only that they are teaching and that they are our colleagues. We don't need to ask if they are members of the MLA or the ASA or the NCTE or the AWP or the Rhetoric Society of America. We need to ask only if they have decent, professional working conditions—access to departmental communications and staff, designated offices, library privileges, mailboxes. These are such basic things, such minimal things for people teaching college courses, and yet so many people teaching college courses do not have them. We need to ask if they can serve on department- and university-wide committees, especially those that deal with contingent faculty. Where their wages are inadequate, we need to ask how they can be increased. And where they are hired on a year-by-year or course-by-course basis, even when they have ten, fifteen, twenty years of service to the same department, we need to ask how they can be moved to multiyear contracts or to instructor tenure.
Some of our colleagues off the tenure track will regard these ameliorative measures as inadequate. That's because they are. The deprofessionalization of the professoriat cannot be reversed overnight; it has been a forty-year process that has accelerated in the last fifteen years. But to return to where I started, I hope that this will have been the year when that process became a truth universally acknowledged—and universally resisted. And if you have tenure, and your colleagues among the contingent faculty want to undertake more dramatic measures, including inter- or intra-institutional unionization, I hope you will support them, precisely because you enjoy the job security they lack and need. The working conditions of college faculty are ultimately the learning conditions for college students. If you got here because you love what you do—or even if you are just mildly happy to have a decent job—you owe it to your colleagues, to your profession, to your students, and even to yourself to try to see to it that each and every one of us can conduct our professional work with a measure of professional dignity.
Amis, Kingsley. Lucky Jim. New York: Doubleday, 1954. Print.
Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill, 1974. Print.
Berman, Russell. "Presidential Address 2012: Teaching as Vocation." PMLA 127.3 (2012): 451–59. Print.
Boldt, Joshua. "The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Adjunct Project 2.0." Copy and Paste. N.p., 4 Dec. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.copy–paste.com/chronicleofhighereducation-and-the-adjunctproject-2-0/>.
Bousquet, Marc. "We Are All Roman Porn Stars Now." Academe 98.6 (2012): 23–27. Print.
Brooks, Peter. "Aesthetics and Ideology—What Happened to Poetics?" Aesthetics and Ideology. Ed. George Levine. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1994. 153–67. Print.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton, 1997. Print.
Eskanazi, Gerald. A Year on Ice. New York: Coward, 1970. Print.
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper, 1970. Print.
Gilman, Priscilla. The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy. New York: Harper, 2011. Print.
Griswold, Wendy. Regionalism and the Reading Class. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Print.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Lippincott, 1937. Print.
James, C. L. R. Beyond a Boundary. London: Paul, 1963. Print.
Krause, Steven. "In Response to Michael Bérubé on Crooked Timber." Stevendkrause.com. N.p., 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. <http://stevendkrause.com/2012/02/17/in-response-to-michael-berube-on-crooked-timber/>.
Lamott, Anne. "By the Book." New York Times Book Review 25 Nov. 2012: BR8. The New York Times. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/anne-lamott-by-the-book.html>.
MLA Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession. Professional Employment Practices for Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members: Recommendations and Evaluative Questions. New York: MLA, 2011. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage, 1962. Print.
Paul, Pamela. "A Wrinkle in Time and Its Sci-Fi Heroine." New York Times Book Review 29 Jan. 2012: BR31. The New York Times. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/books/review/a-wrinkle-in-time-and-its-sci-fi-heroine.html>.
Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. and introd. A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson. New York: Dutton, 1976. Print.
Robin, Corey. "Why Do People Hate Teachers Unions? Because They Hate Teachers." Corey Robin. N.p., 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. <http://coreyrobin.com/2012/09/12/why-people-do-hate-teachers-unions-because-they-hate-teachers/>.
22 USC. Sec. 2451. 1961. Legal Information Institute. Legal Information Inst., Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2013. <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2451>.


text: Large enterprises, especially financial services firms, are adopting Big Data at a more rapid pace than expected, according to a recently released study by Big Data consulting firm NewVantage Partners. But how are organizations using Big Data to make better business decisions? Success, it turns out, is as much an art form as it is a technology solution. Last summer, NewVantage Partners held discussions with C-level executives (chief data officers, chief information officers, chief technology officers, chief analytics officers, chief information architects) as well as line-of-business heads and senior function heads at more than 50 large companies, most of them with more than 30,000 employees. Executives from financial services firms represented about 50 percent of the respondents, but NewVantage Partners also interviewed executives from insurance, government and other businesses. "Most of the companies spend over $1 billion a year in technology," says Paul Barth, founder and managing partner of NewVantage Partners. "They aren't usually quick to respond, but when they do they have a lot more resources to put behind their initiative."Use Big Data to Make Better DecisionsAnd these large enterprises see value in Big Data and are bringing their resources to bear. Barth says 85 percent of respondents reported they already have Big Data initiatives under way."Over 75 percent were investing over $1 million a year already," Barth says. "Twenty-five percent were investing over $10 million a year. There's a real commitment to using this technology for one program or a series of programs. They made it absolutely clear they could not do the programs they were doing without Big Data."Real Value of Big Data Is Accelerating Time-to-AnswerRespondents gave a number of reasons for their investments in Big Data, from reducing risk to creating higher-quality products and services. But two reasons were clear leaders: achieving better, fact-based decision-making and improving the customer experience. Of course, these are leading reasons for investments in traditional business intelligence (BI) analytics, too. Barth said that when NewVantage dug deeper, the real "quantum leap" for companies when it comes to Big Data is accelerating the speed at which they can get to a decision, or time-to-answer (TTA)."If your time-to-answer is 30 minutes in one case and 30 seconds in another, it really changes your business processes," Barth says. "It makes you much more effective as a business analyst."By using new Big Data technologies, organizations can answer questions in seconds rather than days and in days rather than months, Barth says. This acceleration, in turn, allows businesses to answer questions that have resisted analysis, develop test and learn processes that quickly adapt to the market and automate complex workflows.However, reaping the benefits of accelerated TTA requires following a careful process based upon a clearly defined and governed relationship between Big Data and traditional analytics solutions.Big Data, Analytics and Organizational Alignment"Historically, there has been much talk about the difference between traditional analytics and Big Data, and organizational responsibility for each within an enterprise," the report says. "The survey, however, shows the two are becoming closely intertwined and must work together to deliver the promised results of Big Data. Further, breaking down organizational boundaries and creating close integration between IT organizations and the business units is a critical step for any organization hoping to build a winning strategy for Big Data.""Data management and analytics have often resided in different parts of the organization," the report adds. "IT departments usually controlled the data and analytics was conducted in either a special group or within a business unit. This is contrary to the entire principle of Big Data and the survey confirms that organizations understand close integration is necessary. Sixty-five percent say, "Big Data is an integral part of Data Management," and 68 percent further felt that "Big Data is part of the Advanced Analytics toolbox."Making this leap\u2014integrating traditional analytics and Big Data while tearing down boundaries between IT and business units\u2014is a critical early step in creating organizational initiatives that leverage Big Data to affect the business, NewVantage concludes."Integrating real-time, full analytic capabilities into the business and operating units will enable the type of quick reactions to key business questions and challenges that can build competitive advantage and improve performance," the report says."Think about your data and data quality as having different stages that we call bronze, silver and gold," Barth adds. "Data in your data warehouse is gold. When you go to that gold source, you know you're getting data that has been really worked through. But what if data is also available in a raw form and you can get it to me in a week or a month, if you can dump all the data in one place and organize it just a little bit? The data is useful before it's perfect."Unlike traditional relational databases, Big Data platforms allow analysts to organize, clean and integrate data selectively, ignoring records and fields that are not the current focus of analysis. This is a significant departure from data warehouses, where a great deal of effort is spent on data engineering to make sure it's production-worthy before it's released to users. NewVantage notes that by deferring full data engineering, Big Data platforms accelerate TTA during discovery-oriented analysis and eliminate the engineering effort on data that doesn't deliver value.\nThe idea then, Barth says, is that Big Data platforms become one piece\u2014albeit an important one\u2014of a data ecosystem that is designed to constantly look for new insights into customers, markets, products and risks, while at the same time building upon what is already known. In other words, pursue the "new" while operating on the "known," a healthy, continuous improvement model. Creating a Big Data EcosystemThink of it this way: Whether it comes from Big Data or traditional analytics, the important thing is to provide valuable answers. The value of an answer, Barth says, is based on its accuracy and the speed with which it can be delivered. To get an accurate, speedy answer, it's important to ask the right questions. And that's where Big Data comes in: It's about pursuing the "new.""The art part of Big Data is associated with discovery and explanation," Barth says. "You're looking for something you can't quite articulate. There's a phase of analytics that's exploration and discovery, in which you're generating hypotheses. Then comes modeling and application. In my view, traditional BI tends to be really far down the road after you understand the underlying analytics and correlations that relate to an issue you're seeing. The phase in which you don't understand it, the discovery phase, is where Big Data is useful."There are seven distinct steps to answering a complex business question, NewVantage says:\nClarify the question and the type of answer needed; build the business case\nIdentify the data required and analysis approach\nSource the data\nCleanse, normalize and integrate the data\nAnalyze the data\nValidate the results\nPresent or apply the answer; measure the resultsTraditionally, companies have spent 80 percent or more of their time on the third and fourth steps, NewVantage says. But Big Data solutions offer up new ways of approaching these steps.First and foremost, because of the relatively low cost and high capacity of Big Data platforms, organizations can load all of the data from their source systems rather than choosing particular data for the question at hand."While this may seem wasteful, it eliminates two important delays: writing programs to select just the data needed, and going back to the source systems multiple times as new insights generate new questions that need new data," NewVantage says. "Building traditional data marts and data warehouses is extraordinarily complex and costly. The broad range of open source offerings coupled with flexible, scalable grid systems create an environment that not only drives down costs, but also offers the potential of decreasing query times exponentially."For instance, Barth points to a large financial services firm that wanted to perform multi-channel pathing analysis of its customers to understand which elements led to a sale and which led to attrition. To do so, the firm needed to integrate six months of session data with other channel data. The first attempt, using traditional relational databases, took tens of thousands of lines of SQL code and the firm soon realized that it could only afford to access six days worth of data rather than six months. The firm abandoned the attempt after calculating that the effort would take weeks."In a Big Data environment, they were able to write and execute it in under 100 lines of code," Barth says. "They executed it in less than 24 hours, processing hundreds of terabytes of session data. The analysis was on data they already had; they had it inside the bank. They just wanted to know what their own customers were doing on their own channels. This really unlocked that visibility into the way their bank was running."But the key, Barth says, is to take it one more step. Once you understand what you're seeing, you can develop a model that explains it and metrics to measure your execution in improving your business against that model. That's where traditional BI comes in."The "new" and the "known" are not islands; they must be symbiotic systems connected to and feeding each other," NewVantage says. ""New" analyses require rapid access to all the "known" data representing the reality of today's business. Conversely, there must be a disciplined approach to promoting new insights, data and models to evolve the "known." Without this linkage, the systems diverge into incoherence that does not reconcile or scale.""Emerging technologies and methodologies\u2014including Hadoop, Cloudera, database appliances, accelerators and self-learning and genetic algorithms\u2014can dramatically reduce TTA," NewVantage adds. "The key to streamlining the time from a corporate question to game-changing business insight is to right-size the approach to analysis: rapid iterations during discovery and rigorous engineering into production. Strong governance and oversight of known data capabilities must coexist with agile data analysis that paves the way for new data discoveries. Enterprises with the capability to create an ebb and flow between dynamic discovery and scalable execution position themselves for sustainable success and dominance over their competitors."Thor Olavsrud covers IT Security, Big Data, Open Source, Microsoft Tools and Servers for CIO.com. Follow Thor on Twitter @ThorOlavsrud. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Thor at email@example.com


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I recommend Microsoft's web-based installer as the best way to purchase and install Windows 8 Pro. But with the special promotional pricing for this upgrade coming to a close, readers are wondering whether they can buy now (and save) but install later. The answer is a resounding yes.
In fact, you can buy now and install at any time through October 26, 2015.
This is great news. But it's especially great news for the time being: As I write this, the January 31, 2013 deadline for the promotional pricing expiration is less than a week away. So you can buy the Windows 8 Pro Upgrade through Windows.com for just $39.99 (in the US) now, but install the upgrade at any time in the future, through October 26, 2015. If you have one or more PCs you think you will be upgrading in the future, don't wait: The price for this upgrade goes up to $199.99 starting February 1, 2013.
(Here's a meta-tip: You can buy up to five upgrades per email account.)
Here's how to do it.
On the PC on which you will later upgrade to Windows 8, visit Windows.com and go through the process of purchasing the electronic upgrade. This will trigger the Windows 8 web installer, which I've written about in Windows 8 Feature Focus: Web-Based Setup. Following the steps in that article, you will have to step through an Upgrade Advisor-based compatibility check, and then determine what you want to keep (which doesn't matter since you won't be completing this process now). Then, you'll be prompted to pay for Windows 8 Pro. It will cost $39.99 in the US if you do this before February 1, 2013.
Once the purchase is complete, the web-based installer begins downloading the Windows 8 Setup image. This process will take a while, but if this is the only time you're doing this, I recommend letting it complete. That's because when the download does complete, you're given the option to install now, install by creating media, or install later from your desktop. (Setup places a shortcut on the desktop to facilitate the latter option.)
You might consider creating setup media here, if only to have an offline installer for Windows 8 Pro as a backup. I did so while testing this process, using USB media. (An ISO file, which can be used to create a bootable Setup DVD, is the other choice.) Then, just click Finish. (If you skipped this setup media creation step, you can just quit Setup.)
Microsoft will email you a receipt for the purchase which also includes the Windows 8 Pro product key. But this email is doubly important because it includes a link so you can run the web-based installer again; but this version of the installer lets you enter a product key, unlike the one you access normally from Windows.com.
So in the future, when you're ready to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro, you can use that links to trigger the installer.
And you have until October 26, 2015 to make it happen.


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Product Introduction
400TPH Limestone Processing Project in Chimkent, KazakhstanProduct description:
According to customer's requirements of multiple high standard and intellectualized system for the equipment, we recommend KE1100-1 primary mobile crushing plant and KC160-2 secondary crushing&screening plant, which can arrive the site soon and has the automatical operation system. They are all easily-operated, highly-efficient and low-cost equipment.
Detailed introduction
Location: Chimkent, Kazakhstan
Equipment: KE1100-1, KC160-2 Mobile Crushing Plants
Commissioning Date: 2015.5
Material: Limestone
Capacity: 400t/h
Output size: 0-5mm, 5-90mm
Application: Concrete Aggregate and Cement Material


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Grab your mug of coffee or tea and take a walk with me to see how things are growing around the Potting Shed. You can find me out here early mornings and in the evenings. You're welcome to help me water, deadhead, prune and weed while you're here too. ;)
The window boxes have filled in and grown since they were planted in April, with a combination of petunias, angelonia, pentas, coleus and sweet potato vine, all summer annuals that can take the heat. The coleus tends to crowd out the other flowers with their foliage, but it looks good well into the fall when the annuals are spent and blooms have faded.
My hubby built Board and Batten Shutters for some window dressing and to frame the window boxes this spring.
The mandevilla vine has grown since it was planted in April and I attached some garden twine for it to climb up and grow around the windows like it did last summer.
Red Charm Honeysuckle was added this spring to grow up the right side of the windows along the shutters. It will attract hummers, bees and butterflies.
There seems to be a lot of pretty in pink blooms this month. . .
Butterfly Bush (Buddleia) is blooming with pink plumes and butterflies. . .
The daylilies are in bloom. . .
And Veronica (Speedwell) is blooming. Deadheading is on my list to do this week to extend the bloom time.
Containers keep me busy watering. Fortunately, Mother Nature is doing her part to help this spring!
I used the thriller, filler, spiller method on this container. Thriller: blue sage (salvia), fillers: verbena and lobeila, and spiller: Pink Frost' sweet potato vine.
Morning Glory has grown in one week's time, twining around the bottles on the bottle tree. Morning Glory blooms last a day, opening in the morning as the name suggests, with the flowers fading by the afternoon. It grows rapidly in here in the South, thriving in full sun and poor soil and tends to be invasive. It will bloom until the first frost, which is usually November here in North Carolina. To help prevent re-seeding, remove spent blooms as they fade.
By the middle of summer, the wild vines and volunteers are rambling and climbing everywhere in the garden. Since it's hard to get rid of, I'm enjoying the pretty blue blooms and trying to control this particular patch, using the bottle tree as a trellis.
I switched out some of the bottles, adding more blue ones on the bottle tree. I had several comments asking where to find the blue bottles. Check the Italian or German wine section at the wine or grocery store for blue bottles. You can also buy blue bottles on Amazon, in cases of 12 if you don't want to drink your way to filling up your tree. . . *hiccup* ;)
The painted bottle on the tree that some of you asked about is recycled from a Novel Bakers post, The Circle of Kindness.
I loved the pretty painted/screened flowers on it. It was a Prosecco, Cavicchioli 1928. My Harris Teeter grocery store stocks it and they carry several varieties of their Italian sparkling wine with pretty floral bottles.
Limelight Hydrangeas are just starting to bloom. We added a new one this spring, replacing an Endless Summer variety, relocating to an area that got some afternoon shade. Limelight Hydrangea can stand up to the summer heat (unlike me ;).
White flowers help me feel cool, at least psychologically!
My Potting Shed was featured in She Sheds: A Room of Your Own, by Erika Kotite, published by Cool Springs Press/Quarto Publishing Group. "She" was honored to be included among the examples of She Sheds in this book! There is still time to enter the giveaway and I have three copies to share in celebration.
To enter to win a copy of She Sheds, leave a comment, HERE.
The winners will be chosen June 23rd.


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ONE Pineapple Luminary Kit - Pines
For pre-made kits, if you want additional glazes, it will cost $2 per color. Please note that our glazes are non-toxic and water-based. If it gets anywhere on your clothes or home, it will wash right out.
The pottery needs 3 coats of paint to come out solid and bright!


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Budget Battles
Senate Leaders Pitch New Plan to Avoid a Shutdown
Trump Tells Republicans to 'Shut It Down'
What's Next in the Shutdown Showdown
Right-Wing Rebels Hand McCarthy a Stunning Defeat
McCarthy Pitches a Compromise Spending Plan
McCarthy Suffers a Pair of Stinging Defeats
McCarthy Faces Grim Math on New Plan to Avert Shutdown
How to Teach Your Kids About Money When Back-to-School Shopping
In addition to picking up notebooks and calculators this year, you can give your kids something even more valuable: a lesson in personal finance. The back-to-school shopping period provides an ideal...
Here's How Much the Class of 2016 Owes on Their Student Loans
Students who graduated from college in 2016 with educational loans borrowed slightly less to pay for school than those who finished in 2015, new data shows.
The Most Expensive College Town in America
Living off-campus has long been seen as a way to save money on college expenses, but it's getting a lot harder to find a deal. Here's the most expensive college town for off-campus rents.
Do Public Universities Really Favor the Upper Middle Class?
A college education has always been described as an investment in the future – for students, and more broadly, for American society. Parents and students alike have already begun questioning the...
The Hardest College to Get Into in the USBy Janna Herron
The most difficult college to get into in the country, the California Institute of Technology, accepts less than one student for every 11 applicants. Caltech doesn't actually have the lowest...
The 10 College Majors Employers Want Most This YearBy Janna Herron
The proportion of employers planning to hire recent college graduates hit a decade-high this year. Here are the 10 majors most in demand.
The Best Colleges for Older Students
By 2020, nearly one in five students in higher educations will be over the age of 35.
What College Students Worry About Most
The biggest driver of stress around college admissions is no longer about whether students will get into their top school.
College Endowments Take a Big Hit
College endowments had a tough year in 2016, losing money even as the overall stock market racked up double-digit gains.
The Big Payoff for Cinderella Schools in the March Madness Tournament
Lesser known schools can see a big jump in applications and merchandise sales after an appearance in the NCAA basketball tournament.
The Most Expensive College in America
College tuition goes nowhere but up. Here's the most expensive college of them all.
Ranking the Schools that Turn Poor Kids into Wealthy OnesBy Rob Garver
Schools that admit a lot of students from low-income families and help a significant percentage of them find their way into to the top tier of earners aren't leafy private schools, but mostly urban...
Here's How Long It Takes for Your College Degree to Pay Off
While there has been much hand-wringing among policymakers about the rising cost of college and growing levels of student debt, most analysts agree that those who earn a college degree are better off...
Amazon's Echo: Witness for the Prosecution?
It's easy to believe that Alexa, the voice of Amazon's Echo, is real. She can shop for you, as well as answer questions about which team is favored to win the Rose Bowl, what the weather is like in...
Want to Learn a Trade? Why a Public College May Be Your Best Bet
Students interested in certificate programs that prepare them for a careers are much better off enrolling at public colleges than at private, for-profit schools, according to new data from the...


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Lukas Smith has a new post to his site that asks the question "what's needed to REST in Symfony 2?" In it he talks about some of the current issues surrounding REST support in Symfony (bundles) and a "call to arms" to create something better.
I think we already have quite a nice toolchain for REST in Symfony2 with Bundles like FOSRestBundle, JMSSerializerBundle, NelmioApiDocBundle, FSCHateoasBundle and HautelookTemplatedUriBundle. What is great about these Bundles is that they are all nicely integrated with each other. But there are still some limitations which should be addressed.
Some of the still outstanding issues he points out include issues with content-type and routing, dynamic content in the NelmioApi bundle, Behat context testing, JSONP support and more. He suggests gathering together a product backlog of these items and possibly making a kickstarter to fund its development.


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Obama is instructing the VA to ensure that any veteran with suicidal thoughts is seen by a mental health professional within 24 hours — a standard already set for the VA, but which the department often fails to meet.
To help the understaffed VA meet that ambitious requirement — there are areas of the country where the dearth of psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers means veterans wait months for appointments — the order directs the VA to partner with the Department of Health and Human Services to tap into community services to help meet demand. The two agencies will create 15 pilot sites in underserved areas by contracting with local facilities. They've also been ordered to develop a plan for rural areas, which are lacking in all health services. The plan is to include a way for areas to share mental health providers.
The VA said in June it had put together a 21-person, in-house recruiting team to work on these issues.
The executive order also reiterates a VA plan to hire more mental health care providers. However, there is a nationwide shortage and the VA has struggled over the years to lure professionals to work for them.
The VA has until June 2013 to figure out how to fix that issue with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers and training programs. The goal, announced by the VA in June, is to hire 1,900 mental health staffers.
The VA is also being told to increase the veteran crisis hotline capacity by 50 percent by the end of year and to develop a national 12-month suicide prevention campaign that would help connect veterans to mental health services.
"VA will work closely with our federal partners to implement the executive order immediately, and continue to expand access to the high-quality mental health care services our veterans have earned and deserve," Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki said in a statement.
The president ordered the Pentagon to review and rank its mental health and substance abuse prevention programs by quality and effectiveness. "By the end of Fiscal Year 2014, existing program resources shall be realigned to ensure that highly ranked programs are implemented across all of the military services and less effective programs are replaced," the order states.
That forces the Pentagon to take ownership of the programs military-wide instead of allowing each service to decide on its own what programs to use. Reviewing the vast and disparate programs will be a big task and could lead to kickback from the services, which are protective of their programs.
In addition, the president is convening a Military and Veterans Mental Health Interagency Task Force to present him with recommendations in 180 days on how to improve treatment services.
Obama's announcement comes on the heels of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's remarks at the American Legion this week that called out the VA's struggle to provide mental health care services as "reproachable failures."
By Megan McCloskey, Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes
September 1, 2012
Pg. 2