“‘Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities’ in which an eighties yuppie is denied books; he does not object, or even notice.” p5
“‘Night of the Living Dead Poets Society’: A mid-career professor in the humanities continuously re-lives the same poor performance in the classroom, as much to his own chagrin as that of his students.” p5
The book has several of these throughout.
“He is a dedicated and thoughtful teacher, which nearly cost him a promotions to full professor last year.” p13
” … but ego and idiocy don’t count against the faculty we hire in the medical school. They may be required attributes.” p119
“Hurricanes? Each one is declared a natural disaster, which forces the government—that’s you and me, folks—to pay for the beach houses that get washed away. I guess they can’t figure out why the insurance companies refuse to sell insurance on those homes, so they just keep encouraging people to put ’em back up.” p133-4
“Administrators appreciate quantitative measures. That’s a nice way of saying ‘our dean can count, but he can’t read.'” p151
The bit about the timesheet is hilarious, p175-6. It reminds me of one of my past administrators telling me that no more than 40% of my students could fail. But no, I’m not asking you to lie about their grades. (Or the fact that they didn’t turn in half their assignments or even write the final exam.)
“If, since there is a divine plan for everything, students shouldn’t try to affect change. They should just sit back and let life happen to them?” p193
“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” p224-5
“The Pope, who … still calls for unbridled population growth, thereby ensuring that millions will suffer while he prospers.” p269
“I am strongly encouraged to be tolerant of the religious views of my students. But if they knew my views [atheist], they wouldn’t be tolerant. … only two ways to get fired from my tenured faculty position, one of which is to demonstrate the slightest intolerance for their views, which are themselves based on intolerance …” p269-70
“and so it goes, people reproducing without any clue what it takes to raise another human being in a civilized manner, driving exponential population growth while quality of life for most inhabitants of the planet spirals downward, ever-faster, toward hell on earth.” p271
Yeah.
“And all those people want their children to have a better life than they had, so they give them more stuff, with the end result that per capita consumption in the United States is increasing even faster … ” p271
Yeah.
“Meanwhile, Republicans and neo-classical economists beseech us to breed faster and buy more. Especially if we’re buying American, whatever that means in this age of globalization. A sustainable civilization? I fear it’s well beyond our grasp.” p271
Yeah.
“We haven’t managed to build a sustainable society on a spaceship the size of the planet, so it’s difficult to imagine we could develop one that would endure for several generations on a self-contained spacecraft.” p273
Let alone on another planet. That doesn’t have, already, oxygen and water and soil.
