Joyce Appleby, That Noise is Loud!

Yesterday was the last day of classes and as such I have three largely unrelated things to mention:

1) I offer you the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management prevention and control handbook. In case you encounter loud shuffling and chewing noises in the ceiling right above your head in the middle of the night, I want to save you from doing endless internet searches at 1 in the morning to learn about termite head-banging (which I must admit, made it kind of worth it -- that link refers to the termite noise as "street performers") and voles and feral dogs and magpies. At least the alligators portion of the handbook was unnecessary. I think my attic may house a few mice. I will sleep better if it's mice and not rats, due to some reading-the-last-50-pages-of-1984 adolescent trauma. It may also be squirrels. My ideal is bats. They're just cooler.

2) Based on various annoyances with a book read for a faculty seminar/discussion yesterday -- James Scott's Seeing Like A State -- and with the Atlantic article and its historians referenced below, I've decided to try using historians' names as curse words for a while, a la Jack on Will and Grace. I need to get out my irritation in some meaningful, yet also meaningless, and completely nerdy way. James Scott, that's a great idea! It's all in the inflection. Gordon Wood, that list was stupid! Kenneth Pomeranz, Scott's book is an apologia for neoliberalism that uncritically romanticizes the local! Yeah, I win the nerd hat for the day.

3) I registered for a metalsmithing class at the craft center winter quarter! Yippee -- metalsmithing!