Jacob Christensen

Via Scott McLemee who, bravely, avoided the lure of graduate school, we are lead to Thomas H. Benton (alias William Pannapacker) who takes a dim view of the entire affair:

Graduate school in the humanities is a trap. It is designed that way. It is structurally based on limiting the options of students and socializing them into believing that it is shameful to abandon “the life of the mind.” That’s why most graduate programs resist reducing the numbers of admitted students or providing them with skills and networks that could enable them to do anything but join the ever-growing ranks of impoverished, demoralized, and damaged graduate students and adjuncts for whom most of academe denies any responsibility.

Topic for discussion: Consider similarities and differences between the humanities, social science and science.

PS: You may also want to follow SML’s advice and take a look at comment #75. Is there “a life of the mind” outside of academia. Yes or no?

I probably owe some kind of commentary on the year in Danish politics but for the moment you will have to make do with my reflections about the gadgets that were added to my earthly possessions this year.

As it is, they were not too many: Only a SonyEricsson C905 (that’s a mobile phone, in case you wonder), an iPod Touch and a SAGEM decoder/HDD recorder.

To be perfectly honest, I blame Nikolaj Sonne – and the fact that I bought the phone before the presentation of the iPhone 3GS or the Android handsets – for the phone. It’s quite okay for my uses, so I don’t really have any regrets here if the thing is viewed in isolation. Syncing it with a Mac works very well indeed. I don’t understand the pre-installed browser so I fetched Opera Mini. Not perfect, but okay. The operating system hasn’t screwed up. Yet.

The TV decoder/recorder does what I want it to. End of story. Well, mainly.

And then there is the iPod Touch. You see, as it was I bought it because I was interested in watching movies and TV shows when I was travelling and a big screen iPod seemed a practical device. It hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt if it ever will. Bad buy. In fact, a total failure. Not that there has been anything wrong with the iPod – except that my inner cheapskate didn’t listen to reason: I should have gone for the 64GB model.

That said, the iPod was a brilliant buy. You see, it lacks the phone functions but has just about everything else an iPhone will give you – and the iPod is a bit cheaper. So once you have access to a wifi network, you have full access to the internet. You know: Facebook, Twitter, browser, e-mail, the works. It even serves as a remote control for my AppleTV (Fanboi? Moi? No way…). I do wonder, though, how long the battery will last – my 2007 iPod Classic is still alive and well (which is slightly frustrating as I would like a 160GB model) but the Touch goes through more loading cycles. Other than that, it is one of the cleverest devices, I have ever seen or owned.

So: The winner and the loser of the 2009 contest is – the iPod Touch.

Bonus: The second best thing gadget-wise was installing Ubuntu Linux on the eeePC I bought last December. Ubuntu is much more potent and flexible than the stripped down system Linux eeePCs came with. And no: You do not have to be a software engineer to perform the operation.

Fokus claims that the laundry room is uniquely Swedish. I beg to disagree: I can’t say if the Swedes invented the shared laundry room or were the first to but the idea into general practice, but laundry rooms have been a feature of many Danish condominiums and housing estates for a long time.

Still, the point stands: A shared laundry room is an interesting way of pooling resources – even if buying a washing machine these days is within the reach of most people, machines in individual apartments are often underused. The laundry room is also a cause for conflict – not everyone can do their laundry at the same time, the machines and the room have to be kept clean, clothes cannot lie around forever, etc – so an elaborate system of norms and communication is demanded to make the room work and the machines run. Unfortunately, Danish does not have a word for “arga lappen” (there is a pun here which can only be understood in Swedish) but we do know then down here as well.

That said, I do miss the opportunity to book a time for doing the laundry where I live now. As it is, I have to go down to the laundry room and check if the machine is vacant, go back and fetch the laundry – and hope that nobody else manage to get to the machine before I do. I take it, that you feel the frustration and anxiety. Oh, and the tumble dryer is out of order.

The Office. Late Friday Afternoon, originally uploaded by jacobchristensen.

Charming, no?

Lights. Camera. Action.

I’m not sure if I won or lost all possible street-cred here. Never mind: PSW is the real culprit. Or maybe the buck stops with Roland Poirier. Anyway: Swedes can in fact be funny, though I still think the Germans are in front when it comes to razor-sharp satirical wit.

In case you would like a dose of contemporary Swedish poetry in the grand tradition, PSW is ready to take your challenge.

The things you see in the corridors of SDU.

No iPhone but an iPod Touch. Clever little device, but maybe I should have gone for the Big Kahuna (64 GB)?

I have a massive deadline in the too-near future, so blogging is very light this week and most likely also next week. Steam will be let out over at Twitter. And yes, it is 1.50 am.

This would not – and I emphatically repeat: not – have happened in Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s days.

University studies seem to be the cause of every ill from chlamydia over alcoholism to depression.