The wings worked out.
The popular harissa, preserved lemon and honey option needed a bit more heat, I think and maybe a bit of fresh lemon juice on top of the preserved lemon for acid and brightness. A bit of za’atar on them at the end was a good addition.
I went ahead and did a soy-miso batch as well. I was going to put a bit of ginger juice in it only the bottled brand I bought actually snapped off in the middle of its glass neck when I opened it. Either I’m stronger than I thought or something missed the QA procedure, but at least it didn’t lead to me adding a lot of sliced-thumb blood to the mixture. I also added a bit of sake, some yuzu, a dash of sesame oil, some mirin, a teaspoon of light brown sugar, and some Red Boat—basically it became teriyaki.
Consensus favorite? The soy-miso ersatz-teriyaki. (That is, if you take the dog’s vote to be for the soy-miso wings.)
In other news:
I was working up a big head of steam about the op-ed by two Stanford faculty that posits that required civics classes in high school and college are what created national unity and commitment to democracy in the American past and that recent political disunity is a result of those classes disappearing or becoming mere electives. Paul Musgrave covers pretty much everything that’s wrong with this incredibly weak argument so that’s taken care of. In general, demonstrating that a particular class or even the entire curriculum of a discipline had a particular effect on students who took it and expressed a common vision of the discipline is incredibly challenging as a research problem—read Rachel Buurma and Laura Heffernan’s terrific book The Teaching Archive to get a sense of how much work it takes just to document the content of past courses. Arguing for the effects of those courses on scholarship or even more on the consciousness and practices of the students that took them is another challenge level up from that.
Another closure, this time of Alderson Broaddus University, demonstrates that I have the correct predictive theory of college and university closure. No, it’s not some generic bullshit idea about “disruption” or even an analysis of generational demographics. If I were better at writing up precise formula, I could probably even throw in some mathematical symbols, but basically to find out the probability of a closure, combine: a) number of times an institution has changed its name and for every name change past two, add five for each new one, b) number of times an institution has relocated and for every relocation past two, add five for each one, c) number of times an institution has changed the basic core degree it awards (junior college/4-year; liberal arts v. divinity/nursing/teaching etc.) more than two, add five for each subsequent, d) number of times an institution has merged with another institution, add 3 for each merger e) number of new degree programs or major new varsity sports teams added since 2000, f) add another ten to the total if it built a major new gym or arts building since 2000; multiply by 3 if that was only after enrollments started to substantially decline. If X > 40, you’re in trouble; if X > 50, you’re a dead university walking. (ABU was 12 + 7 + 7 + 6 + lots + 10.)
I love Jonathan Malesic’s “School Is Not Your Job”. I’m not sure what I would add to it beyond endorsing it, but maybe I’ll write about it this week. One thing that I think Malesic’s essay incidentally makes me think of is why extolling “leadership” and “excellence” through institutional programs is potentially an issue—even for achieving leadership and excellence.
Which leads me to a final thought. Through John Ganz this weekend, I learned of an essay by William Hazlitt that I’d never read, “On Living to One-Self”. It is the perfect reading for Labor Day. Hazlitt argues against the pursuit of fame and success, of living for something other than one’s own contemplative pleasures. Or in the case of Substack, chasing the relentlessly flogged self-murder involved in “branding” rather than merely being oneself in and with a public. Maybe what I’ll write about this week on Thursday is the difficulties involved in finding out if liberal education helps people to live a better life rather than make the most money.
Does it really matter whether or not you can reliably demonstrate the effects of this or that course or curriculum on the students? Presumably you think it’s important to teach THIS, and not THAT, even when you cannot reliably demonstrate the effects of your teaching on your students?
This is a debate about values. Should we be attempting to inculcate this set of values, or perhaps this other one? Sneering at the (obviously theoretically naïve) proponents of the other set of values is perfectly understandable, though maybe not so smart.