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NO TIME TO BLOG
J.F. Beck reviews recent Australian blogdom developments. People seem to be complaining a great deal.
Poor darling Mark
18 hours face to face teaching in a week - sounds extremely strenuous and time consuming to me
Wouldn’t leave any time at all for anything really let alone blogging
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 03 10 at 09:50 AM • permalinkI hope you’re properly occupied with eating and drinking, Tim.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2007 03 10 at 10:03 AM • permalinkMark is a Keynesian-ish left-of-centre blogger who was politely farewelling a libertarian right-of-centre blogger. And 18 contact hours is not insubstantial. You’d need to double that (at least) to understand the work involved. Mark doesn’t teach women’s studies either - I understand one of his specialities is solid commercial stuff. Arguing 18 contact or “face” hours is insubstantial would be like arguing a journalist who interviews three people in a week or a silk who spends three hours in court must be fiddling around with their rose gardens or pumping iron for the other 45 hours of the hypothetical working week.
CL, I probably would have left Mark alone except for the follow-up comment where he says:
The difficulty, as Kim and SL both allude to, is that a minority of self-obsessed vulgarians on an ego trip make it less enjoyable for the rest of us, and taking the time to moderate and sift the garbage is also a significant investment of energy which is often under-appreciated. It’s rare that bloggers get any comments on moderation other than whinges (and complaints are often couched in terms which assume that moderators are constantly doing nothing else or should be doing nothing else than reading threads) and there are few thanks for the effort that goes into maintaining those blogs which do provide a space for interesting and civil discussion.
If he’s strapped for time and so detests these tasks, why does he bother?
Further, it was a strange farewell for a blogger he says he admires—he effectively turned attention away from SL and onto himself. The guy’s got a huge ego.
Thanks, C.L. I very much appreciate your comment.
J F Beck, what I was talking about there was the sort of frustration SL felt, which is shared by others. My comment was intended to indicate understanding of her reasons for leaving the blogosphere. Despite the fact that she and I have significantly different views, I have a lot of respect for her and I’m very sorry to see her go. But I can understand that negativity and personal attacks might make her feel less inclined to continue.
Posted by mark_bahnisch on 2007 03 10 at 11:08 AM • permalinkMark Bahnisch, I really don’t know that SL is suited to the give and take of blogging—she is inclined to defend herself by alleging adversaries are liars. The attendant turmoil hasn’t made blogging any easier for her.
If you are pulling a double teaching load, how are you able to provide the quality of service your students deserve? I mean, if a normal teaching load is trying, how can you possibly double that load and still do your job justice? Think of the kiddies.
J F Beck, I don’t intend to discuss my professional practice here in any detail, but as you may or may not know, I am not a tenured academic and work on contract. If I didn’t do the job well, I wouldn’t get the work, and I wouldn’t have won teaching awards. I have no security of tenure, and I’m employed every semester (and not employed by the University ovre breaks). When I’m talking about a “full time load” what I’m referring to is the load that a tenured academic has. In any case, since you are no doubt genuinely concerned, you’ll be happy to hear that I intend to give up blogging this semester lest the time taken up by it impinge on work responsibilities.
Posted by mark_bahnisch on 2007 03 10 at 12:26 PM • permalinkApologies for the typo. That should have read “over breaks”.
Posted by mark_bahnisch on 2007 03 10 at 12:31 PM • permalinkCan I also point out that academics have to cope with about six-months of face-to-face teaching every year? We mere mortals cannot imagine the stress.
Of course, they also have to spend long hours in the coffee shops on campus, complaining about the latest threat to democracy while talking cheerily about Chavez’s bold reforms.
I’m the last person to bag teachers and/or their workloads, believe me.
However, in this case, the issue is the ‘smell of burning martyr’ and smugness that eminates from Lavatory Rodeo. Take this as an example:
A little bit of investigation demonstrates suggests that commenter probably came from the delightful J F Beck’s blog:
Who has achieved one of his continuing goals in life by getting a link from timmy.
Is that true? Tut, tut, play nicely children. Then this:
That’s very kind of C.L. indeed, and I’m sure will be much appreciated. A very nice antidote to the sour taste in the mouth those sorts of derogatory posts and comments leave. Good on C.L.
That raises the other issue, which sorta confirms your feelings about some aspects of this game, SL, even nice posts which try to celebrate your contribution get disfigured by some people’s pettiness and inability to refrain from point-scoring and low blows. It’s very heartening to see C.L.’s comment for that reason (among others).
That doesn’t even include calling Tim a ‘deadshit’ or sniggering that anyone who would dare question the 18 hour yoke of oppression MB is somehow part of an ‘illiterate horde’, or this, ‘JF Beck is a nasty little nattering nabob of negativity, a mediocrity of the negative fifth degree’.(snigger, that got him).
My point? All subjects are always about ‘them’ they work too hard, people don’t appreciate them, wah. At least here we can have a laugh.
I just thought I’d share the comment I left at J F Beck’s site:
Re the extra workload “for friendship”—I’d say the obligation he feels is for the extra pay. Surely he’s not doing this for free. (And if he is… what a chump. Or else his “friends” have something on him. Or he plans to hold this over their heads. It’s the sort of thing an academic, one of God’s most devious creations, would do.)
As for the horrible burdens of being a female teacher in a man’s man’s man’s man’s world—give me a break. Teaching of the lower grades was always a female-dominated profession, and they have long since taken over the colleges and universities too. Most of the remaining men are pussy-whipped passive-aggressive titty-babies like this Bahnisch character. The ones who aren’t can be found in the various “male-dominated” (because studying their disciplines needs more than the ability to whine about how the bad mens aren’t making it easy for you) schools like Engineering and Physical Sciences.
Oh Lord, stop me from being cruel but not yet!
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 03 10 at 10:23 PM • permalinkWell, that’s a myth. The biggest girly-men I encountered at uni were invariably engineering students. And we apparently have thousands of outstanding he-men of the physical sciences to thank for the womanish hysteria of global warmening - which may, in fact, be an overly-involved attempt by various members of the pen-protector mafia to get laid. With an actual female.
Point is, Mark simply farewelled a rightist blogger and added some asides about his own thoughts on the matter. I also think he had a right to comment on “vulgarians” after being advised earlier in the evening to hang himself in a girl’s toilet for his perfectly polite remarks.
Line crossed into the realms of irrationality here, folks, sorry. That’s the left’s home-ground as far as I’m concerned.
Mark Bahnisch on the surface sounds left-of-centre (moderate left) and try vary hard to portray that image. But in practice relies on his Passionate [his description] co-bloggers to the dirty work. His cheap shots and over simplifications of his adversaries are many but lives in a self convinced dilution of piety. On top this he has that same entrepreneurial philosophy as the creators of Bumfights.
Posted by armageddon on 2007 03 11 at 01:04 AM • permalink
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If I had a face like Mark’s,I’d find 18 hours of face to face work difficult to bear as well.