Odds & Ends
A while back, I posted about Relay Review, a website developed by Tayler Mayer of TaylerInfomedia. Since then, Tayler's been busy. As you may have noticed elsewhere, his latest creation is Fomdi. Fomdi is a rather strange-looking robot with movie tickets in his hand. The appeal of Fomdi for me is that by typing my zipcode or my city and state in the search box, I can find out which movies near me have open captions or rear-window captioning. While individual websites are still quite valid for this purpose, the beauty of Fomdi is you can quickly call up all movies in a geographical radius for one particular day, rather than opening up several tabs/windows simultaneously. Again, it's a labor of love for Mayer-- he doesn't receive a penny for all this work. Several blogs and websites have Fomdi buttons there, and I'll be putting one up myself.
While Fomdi is Tayler's personal project, TaylerInfomedia was hired to do another project recently-- an independent website chronicling the search for Gallaudet University's new president. This is a topic of high speculation within the Deaf community, since Gallaudet's first deaf president, I. King Jordan, was chosen for the job as a result of Deaf President Now! This new site, Gally President Watch, is supposedly run and operated by Gally alumni. I haven't caught up with the latest comments, but when I checked it out in the first few days, the comments for each potential (or actual) candidate sounded like they'd been written by Gallaudet students. I'm sure by now others from "outside" have chimed in, or at least lurked on the site for more than thirty seconds. I suspect that for the larger Deaf and deaf community, it's a topic of interest and speculation, sure, but that on-campus, it's a virtual vortex of gossip and speculation. My suspicion is that the "alumni" running this website are either not quite alumni or are alumni within a certain radius of DC.
As for the candidates? I've met most of them; personally, I think one or two of them might turn out to be good for Gallaudet and the community at large. If the number of views is any indication, at this time MJ Bienvenu is a shoo-in. Personally, I initially wanted Koko (and no, I'm not kidding). Part of the problem here is that Gallaudet is unique; not only does the person selected need to possess bona fide academic credentials and have some management experience in academia, whoever succeeds Jordan will be working with and on Capitol Hill. Finally, as the leader of *ahem* "the world's only liberal arts university for the deaf," the final choice will have to be acceptable to the Deaf community on some level.
And that's just the *external* qualifications necessary. Even more important, the next president will need to be someone acceptable not only to the students, but also to the faculty and staff, if not the upper echelons of the administration. That definitely weakens or eliminates quite a few potentials.
I'm not sure I'm backing Koko at this point-- for one thing, she's not deaf. Second, we already have a chimp for a leader in DC-- we don't need two. I'll have to think it over-- I have one or two personal preferences, but I also see one or two politically acceptable choices (i.e., the person a majority of the search committee will find feasible for all of the University's needs and constituents). Right now those invited for interviews are converging on Kendall Green, so I think we'll find out fairly quickly where things lie.
According to the grapevine, students are bothered by the possibility the choice will be announced over the summer. Well, we already had one DPN; we don't need another. I'm sure the board/search committee has taken this into consideration, and will pick a relatively "safe" choice. Given that it seems the pool is composed entirely of deaf/Deaf candidates, I don't think we'll have a reprise any time soon. A more eloquent expression of these thoughts is at Queen Alpo's blog: "DPN2? What for? Rebels without a cause."
Elsewhere in the universe, Saturn isn't the only planet these days with ring around the collar-- it seems Uranus has rings of red and blue. They even have moons within the rings. Look for future elementary students everywhere to make sophomoric jokes about the red and blue hemmorrhoids surrounding Uranus. Oh, was that in itself a sophomoric joke? Pardon me.
Back in this part of the galaxy, controversy still surrounds our so-called "mission" in Iraq. Crummy comes in for some hits, this time from a retired general, Lt. General Greg Newbold. I don't know about this administration, but aside from Crummy and a handful of others, most of them have never bothered to participate in a war; they just play at it. Newbold, on the other hand, knows whereof he speaks, and right now he thinks it's time for us to get the hell out. I fully agree-- ideally, I'd be happier in a world where there was no war, there were no armies, and everyone cooperated for the benefit of humanity. But as a historian and realist, I know that's never going to be possible. Thus, I'd rather we reserved our military and our wars for the "best" of reasons: defense. No war in history has been "necessary," but as Newbold remarks, being in an unnecessary war is certainly no way to conduct one's affairs. The fact that people like him are speaking out tells me that not only did the gummint jump the shark when it invaded Iraq, but it's now jumping the shark in public opinion. There's no way we're going to "win"-- the best solution is to end things before more lives are wasted, and hit the road. Then again, this is Smirk, Buckshot, Lice, and Crummy we're talking about... Hopefully commentary like Newbold's will help turn the tide, so the country can stop being a backseat driver and start taking the wheel, cause our current driver doesn't know when to admit a mistake.
*whew* On that note, that about wraps up these various bits and pieces. See you next time...
[and in the spirit of the departed, dearly missed Ann Landers: Confidential to my Jewish readers-- a good Passover to you!]
While Fomdi is Tayler's personal project, TaylerInfomedia was hired to do another project recently-- an independent website chronicling the search for Gallaudet University's new president. This is a topic of high speculation within the Deaf community, since Gallaudet's first deaf president, I. King Jordan, was chosen for the job as a result of Deaf President Now! This new site, Gally President Watch, is supposedly run and operated by Gally alumni. I haven't caught up with the latest comments, but when I checked it out in the first few days, the comments for each potential (or actual) candidate sounded like they'd been written by Gallaudet students. I'm sure by now others from "outside" have chimed in, or at least lurked on the site for more than thirty seconds. I suspect that for the larger Deaf and deaf community, it's a topic of interest and speculation, sure, but that on-campus, it's a virtual vortex of gossip and speculation. My suspicion is that the "alumni" running this website are either not quite alumni or are alumni within a certain radius of DC.
As for the candidates? I've met most of them; personally, I think one or two of them might turn out to be good for Gallaudet and the community at large. If the number of views is any indication, at this time MJ Bienvenu is a shoo-in. Personally, I initially wanted Koko (and no, I'm not kidding). Part of the problem here is that Gallaudet is unique; not only does the person selected need to possess bona fide academic credentials and have some management experience in academia, whoever succeeds Jordan will be working with and on Capitol Hill. Finally, as the leader of *ahem* "the world's only liberal arts university for the deaf," the final choice will have to be acceptable to the Deaf community on some level.
And that's just the *external* qualifications necessary. Even more important, the next president will need to be someone acceptable not only to the students, but also to the faculty and staff, if not the upper echelons of the administration. That definitely weakens or eliminates quite a few potentials.
I'm not sure I'm backing Koko at this point-- for one thing, she's not deaf. Second, we already have a chimp for a leader in DC-- we don't need two. I'll have to think it over-- I have one or two personal preferences, but I also see one or two politically acceptable choices (i.e., the person a majority of the search committee will find feasible for all of the University's needs and constituents). Right now those invited for interviews are converging on Kendall Green, so I think we'll find out fairly quickly where things lie.
According to the grapevine, students are bothered by the possibility the choice will be announced over the summer. Well, we already had one DPN; we don't need another. I'm sure the board/search committee has taken this into consideration, and will pick a relatively "safe" choice. Given that it seems the pool is composed entirely of deaf/Deaf candidates, I don't think we'll have a reprise any time soon. A more eloquent expression of these thoughts is at Queen Alpo's blog: "DPN2? What for? Rebels without a cause."
Elsewhere in the universe, Saturn isn't the only planet these days with ring around the collar-- it seems Uranus has rings of red and blue. They even have moons within the rings. Look for future elementary students everywhere to make sophomoric jokes about the red and blue hemmorrhoids surrounding Uranus. Oh, was that in itself a sophomoric joke? Pardon me.
Back in this part of the galaxy, controversy still surrounds our so-called "mission" in Iraq. Crummy comes in for some hits, this time from a retired general, Lt. General Greg Newbold. I don't know about this administration, but aside from Crummy and a handful of others, most of them have never bothered to participate in a war; they just play at it. Newbold, on the other hand, knows whereof he speaks, and right now he thinks it's time for us to get the hell out. I fully agree-- ideally, I'd be happier in a world where there was no war, there were no armies, and everyone cooperated for the benefit of humanity. But as a historian and realist, I know that's never going to be possible. Thus, I'd rather we reserved our military and our wars for the "best" of reasons: defense. No war in history has been "necessary," but as Newbold remarks, being in an unnecessary war is certainly no way to conduct one's affairs. The fact that people like him are speaking out tells me that not only did the gummint jump the shark when it invaded Iraq, but it's now jumping the shark in public opinion. There's no way we're going to "win"-- the best solution is to end things before more lives are wasted, and hit the road. Then again, this is Smirk, Buckshot, Lice, and Crummy we're talking about... Hopefully commentary like Newbold's will help turn the tide, so the country can stop being a backseat driver and start taking the wheel, cause our current driver doesn't know when to admit a mistake.
*whew* On that note, that about wraps up these various bits and pieces. See you next time...
[and in the spirit of the departed, dearly missed Ann Landers: Confidential to my Jewish readers-- a good Passover to you!]
posted by Mr. Sandman | 10:39 PM
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