We are allowing ourselves to brightside ourselves. FFS This is no better than the fucking gaslighting by those who would have us sleep through the apocalpyse. [Sweariness warning. I am trying to be more Omar - not the killing people bit, but the not cussing. Today, I'm failing. If that means you can't fucking share... Continue Reading →
Obama, Trump, Omar, Levy. The game…
I am no fan of Trump, obvs. But this emoluments thing, about him crassly (and everything about the Donald is crass) enriching his family and business through the POTUS gig. Everyone is losing their shit about it, but when Obama gets a gig to give a speech for 400k for it people were slightly less bothered. If I... Continue Reading →
“Bel-Ami” – brilliant brilliant book about journalism, life, image, etc
How did I not know about this book? Why was I not told? Eh? This is up there with The Wire as "cultural artefacts that everyone will have to engage with when I am chief fascist dictator". It's by Guy de Maupassant, a French writer (mostly of short stories) who died from syphilis in the... Continue Reading →
Bateson, schismogenesis, etc and The Wire…
So, am reading about Institutional Work. And stumbled on an article that used the best television show that I ever saw ('The Wire') to talk about this and a LOT else. Not sure how I will be able to use it in The Thesis (concept of fields, relentless contestation that changes the actors - and... Continue Reading →
All in the game, you feel me?! Academia and The Wire.
Come hell or high water, this is getting cited in The Thesis. Zundel, M., Holt, R., & Cornelissen, J. (2012). Institutional work in The Wire: An ethological investigation of flexibility in organizational adaptation. Journal of Management Inquiry, doi:10.1177/1056492612440045 Analysis of institutional work is habitually complicated by the need to combine agentic and structural features. Drawing... Continue Reading →
From “The Wire” to “Heresthetics” – the game is rigged….
The game is rigged, you feel me? (At this point the wife will point out that I am not, in actual fact, a black man from B'more... Sorry "Baltimore"). Anyway, back to game rigging- the word for the day is "Heresthetics" William Riker was one of the leading scholars "positive political theory," or the Rational... Continue Reading →
Brilliant satire and observations of the games of academia/science
"The first step is to create a task force to develop a proposal for funding for a workshop as a preparatory step toward a conference. Once you get funding for a workshop, you’re pretty well along for getting funding for a conference, because the workshop can compile a list of problems that the funding agency... Continue Reading →
Juking the academic stats – the ivory tower game explained.
Is it possible to be cynical enough? That’s one of those questions I ask myself occasionally (daily/hourly) and usually when I begin to chide myself for corrosiveness, along comes confirmation/warning that I haven’t even got to cynicism basecamp. The latest timely warning is "Ring a Ring Roses: Quality Journals and Gamesmanship in Management Studies." This... Continue Reading →
We live in “Powdertown” #police #corruption – Cyril Smith coverup etc
The second verse goes like this; Frankie looks like a nice young cop but he's got an old cop's face He believed in truth and justice till they took him off the case Now he's walkin' the beat on the wrong side of town, bustin' drunks and shakin' them down Don't ask him who he's... Continue Reading →
Re-watching “The Wire”
The game's the game. (I would add "truedat" but then my wife would be forced to buy a train ticket, travel for 3 and a half hours to raise the eyebrow of death/slap me/kill me (depending on whether there was functioning wifi in first class).