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January 2012

Also, good meetup & discussion of different PhD demographics & their needs/approaches with @lizith and @SarahR_H this morning.

Teaching a workshop on backing up your academic work today. Want someone to ask me about Unison, but think most will be happy w/ @crashplan

"The horror is that ... we live in a world in which we can no longer imagine a better one" Adorno in @VersoBooks' "Towards a New Manifesto"

Finished my Jane Eyre re-read-through for teaching this week. Love teaching this text; post-colonialism, feminism, romantic to realist.

E Weitzman in “No Fun: Aporias of Pleasure in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory” consistently miscites C. Lui as "Liu". That would really annoy me.

Now grappling with the tricky issue of pleasure in Adorno's aesthetics. "In the false world all ηδονη [pleasure] is false".

Sick of income inequality. Cap max salary, including bonus, at £60k. If that deters the rich, there are many unemployed who'll take it.

The plus side of today is that I finished a book + associated journal review, read some Pynchon articles & wrote some thesis. Illness, pah.

Interesting conversations on transgender pronouns and singular "they" going on between @GuardianJessica and others at the moment.

It would immensely improve my research and mirth were the next Pynchon book to mention high/low culture index with the form "Duck, Donald".

Going to attempt a brief appearance early on at the @GdnHigherEd HE tweetup tonight. Still feeling somewhat poorly, so won't be extensive.

I've read Pynchon's V. countless times, but the de-obfuscation in David Cowart's new book still seems revelatory. Good stuff. Recommended.

Recovering from illness by planning tomorrow's Lit class on prescriptivist vs descriptivist grammar. AKA. DFW's Consider the Lobster piece.

Just to be clear, by "rough night", I don't mean a heavy drinking session, I mean being ill. #justrealisedhowthatsounded

Urgh. Have decided after an extremely rough night that am too ill for First Fictions day #3. Spend months planning then can't even go :(

Thing about Ian Rankin I learned last night: he was going to do his Ph.D on Pynchon, but changed to Muriel Spark for funding!

I suppose, though, that violates some sacrosanct principle by stating that some things just shouldn't be profitable, but should just be.

Willetts: look. Autonomy & tax breaks: fine. What we need for "quality" is obvious, though. Lots more state funding. More lecturers.

Presumably this Apple Ed crap will require me to run Windows or Mac OS. Don't suppose any open standards, either. #amiright

. @lizgloyn I had to read it a few times but, sadly, I don't think it is. Could be wrong, but any sarcasm is not signalled very clearly...

. @HallyMk1 true. Also, as the largest company in the world it seems clear to me that they also have the largest responsibility.

... and before I get flamed for that retweet: yes, I'm sure Android manufacturers are just as bad. That does not make it OK, in either case.

Apparently, Scots, you'd be taking a "massive economic risk" by breaking away. Is that a greater risk than having Osborne as chancellor?

#myResearch explores the interaction between the novels of Thomas Pynchon and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Foucault & Adorno. #phdchat

Didn't especially enjoy de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater, although interesting to teach. Treating myself to DFW on the train today

Working title for that piece was "int universityThatTeachesCodingToAll = university + 1;", which I thought was pretty catchy...

Had one of those bitty days where I've got a lot done, but feels dissatisfying because of fragmentation. Know the type?

I spy flying pigs. The Daily Mail has written something caring & right on welfare and disability. Good on @suey2y for all her work.

Rage is building around my desk at the British Library. Somebody has his or her headphones on too loudly and we can hear it!

Man at station in classic commodity fetish argument. "A teabag costs 5p. Hot water 10p." Poor woman in stall: "you'll pay me 15p to live?"

Pynchon get s a mention in comparison to Melville in "Le Corps appareillé: Figures littéraires de l''immachination'", Pensées du corps 2011

That Adorno θέσει post was supposed to be scheduled for later in the week. Anyway, for those who rted and are interested, more forthcoming.

. @dzhimbo In fact, polling shows that the best way to make the party electable is to rename it "The Conservative Party"

Ed Miliband insists "he has a "very clear plan" for the future." < yep, plans to homogenize party and adopt austerity narrative.

"The Mayor is opposed to using independent healthcare professionals to provide advice on an‘individual’s condition’."

Front page of Metro claims a woman has been "tamed" because she is pregnant. Nope, not settling down, "tamed". #2012 #feminism #pandagate

Question for undergrads. Do you want to be taught by people who know the research, thinking and scholarship, or by the people who did it?

Today I begin work on the final 10k chunk of my PhD. Fair bit of annotation on Adorno's Aesthetic Theory before it's done, but not long now!

Feel a re-install of OS coming on (new SSD!), but now experimenting with remastersys for the first time, hoping for an easier transfer.

Comment of the day: "I understant itìs a beta version but the applications should work fine." No. No, you don't understand.

"Clayton Burns PhD", whose incomprehensible, rambling blog comments I deleted, threatens to report me to my PhD supervisors & @GdnHigherEd