47 Replies to “Rhizomatic?”

  1. Fred
    “an people wonder why our pubic schools are so screwed up . . .”
    I don’t wonder…do you? What a mouthful of bafflegab that course outline was….the only thing missing was the care and breeding of IEDs.

  2. “…and limitless new frontiers of empire and technological capabilities?”
    not even to mention; Pregnant women in Vancouver may not be getting enough vitamin D: UBC research
    not that we haven’t known that for at least 50 years but good to see our tax dollars are still hard at work.

  3. so… they’re going to complain about rich white folks I guess…
    I suppose we do need a class like this…

  4. This is not news worthy. Useless university courses have existed before the dawn of time.

  5. So they’ll talk about whatever they want, but won’t actually study any science or engineering (that would be hard).

  6. Three hundred years ago Johnathon Swift wrote about “At the Grand Academy of Lagado great resources and manpower are employed on researching completely preposterous and unnecessary schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons”. Not much has changed in three centuries except we now have the “humanities”.
    The graduates will no doubt bitch and complain about not finding a job worthy of their education.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver's_Travels

  7. one thing you can bet is they will never have course about the aboriginal slave trade that underpinned the native economy before the arrival of the Euros.
    Because only whiteys are slavers

  8. “She is of Irish, French and Mohawk heritage…….”
    No Canadian there eh? Not totally surprising.

  9. And to be perfectly honest, when I read the Rhizomatic, my first thought was enzyme.
    A way of thinking was waaaaay down the list.

  10. I just tried to read that gibberish … anyone who talks or writes like that they should be subject to a daily bitch-slapping. And I mean it.
    They are doing nothing but destroying young minds that are only just learning to think. That is criminal. I suppose their story is that unthinking people vote Left and that is the goal isn’t it?

  11. “CCFI 502 (3 credits) Cyborgs, Rhizomes & Margins: A Cross-cultural Conversation in Education”
    That course description has to be the biggest load of balderdash and bafflegab I’ve ever seen in one place.
    Can a person actually FAIL that course?

  12. dmorris – “Can a person actually FAIL that course?”
    If he belongs to the wrong political party. Otherwise:
    “Easiest class i’ve taken so far. Didn’t learn much. She mostly promoted her book.”

  13. Like the great T-shirt from the engineering school says,
    “Friends don’t let friends take Arts”

  14. De-fund useless faculties now.
    Whackademics poison the minds of impressionable youth, turn out useless grads, and generally suck up resources that could have been spent productively instead.
    Do it…for the children!

  15. She’s working on helping the natives’ reclaim their traditional technology. I look forward to see how foregoing the use of the wheel and metal will work out for them.

  16. rhi·zome
       [rahy-zohm] Show IPA
    noun Botany .
    a rootlike subterranean stem, commonly horizontal in position, that usually produces roots below and sends up shoots progressively from the upper surface.
    Come on guys, its a botany course! This is the only definition of rhizome in the on line dictionary.
    If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your BS.

  17. I’ve seen “Star Trek” and the Terminator movies…
    But seriously, building a robot/android/whatever in college is one thing. Discussing neo-colonialism (which I suspect was the purpose of this course all along with the robotic aspect thrown in to make it more applicable- nice try, goofs) is something else.

  18. “They are doing nothing but destroying young minds that are only just learning to think.”
    Abe,
    But of course.
    One of the guys – Guattari – who “developed ” rhizome gibberish also wrote “Communists Like Us” (1985). With Antonio Negri..

  19. One has to wonder whether Professor O’Reilly married into the Douglas tribe as a career move?
    reading Minute man’s definition of rhizome several terms leap out,such as; subterranean, commonly horizontal and shoots progressively. I don’t know, it seems pretty apt after all.

  20. Jesus. Was that English? I read it twice, and still can’t decipher the damned thing.

  21. She seems proud of the Mohawk thing. Somehow I don’t see your average hard working cigarette smuggler or gun runner from Akwasasne being proud of her.

  22. For many people, even the remotest trace of Aboriginal blood is some sort of badge of honour/victim card/monopolising agent/bit of pretentious conversation-starter.

  23. I love how social justice is just another njame for taking money from someone who earned it and giving it to someone who didnt.
    They had ethics classes like this in medicine and promoted the whole from those who have to those in need. Barely a mention about the right of those to buy their own health care, insurance and contributers.
    When I remarked that in the US the survival rates of cancer, heart disease etc. is better – markedly – there might be a tradeoff. (CONCORD study etc) The horror on their faces… someone questioning…

  24. The graduates will no doubt bitch and complain about not finding a job worthy of their education.
    and how terrible student loans are, I know of one sits around all summer, eating pizza and KFC 3x a week and go’s to the bar every Thursday and Friday night, where do they get the money?

  25. Colin – my Alma Mater too. Lived right by Alma, btw… nearest liquor store was 4th and Alma.
    Judging by the attached “literature”, students (or professors) must be willing to take enough drugs so that when you listen to bird caws and coyote whines you think that they are speech. Yup, she fits right in with Arts at UBC.

  26. Want to get rid of trash like this? The answer is easy: stop subsidizing it.
    If market forces are unleashed with dramatic post-secondary cutbacks, then universities will be forced to dump no-brain shlock like this and focus on courses that earn tuition fees.
    Result: goodbye Gender Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, and this tripe, as well.
    Q.E.D.
    mhb23re
    at gmail d0t calm

  27. rhi·zome
    a rootlike subterranean stem, commonly horizontal in position, that usually produces roots below and sends up shoots progressively from the upper surface.
    SUCK- errrrrrrsss!!!

  28. Stl’atl’imx
    and indians DIDN’T have written word before whitey arrived,
    some one sure dropped the ball when translating “native” language to whitey’s tongue

  29. For many people, even the remotest trace of Aboriginal blood is some sort of badge of honour/victim card/monopolising agent/bit of pretentious conversation-starter.
    Posted by: Osumashi Kinyobe at August 17, 2011 7:32 PM
    Heh. Sometimes its so remote as to be non-existant…
    Wannabe….it’s an old Indian word…

  30. And Patty has a PhD. Gawd help us all.
    The only solution to shit like this is to start new universities where people can actually learn something.I’d contribute 100K in an eyeblink but, to really get the job done, some of our billionaires would have to come to the party.
    With viable options, especially in the (‘scuse me) Faculties of Arts, the existing rubbish would soon die on the vine. (Die on the rhizome?)

  31. Teaching in a “rhizomatic” way means treating the students like mushrooms. And we all know the punch line to that one.
    None of these educational abominations would have happened if Immanuel Kant hadn’t divorced reason from reality. It looks like a lot of his descendants have ended up with neither.
    When the profs go on about “neo-colonialism” and “global capitalism”, it’s safe to assume they’re lying when their lips are moving.

  32. “For many people, even the remotest trace of Aboriginal blood is some sort of badge of honour/victim card/monopolising agent/bit of pretentious conversation-starter.”
    yup, but there’s exceptions, often for people who really are and lived it. My wife is treaty status, growing up partly on a rez, and is of half & half Danish/Cree genetically. Being blonde looks much more Nordic than aboriginal though.
    Was alienated from community and some family in the past for being “too white” in appearance and behavior growing up. Even I suspect later for being with myself.
    Her attitude is “they rejected me, so who needs them now”. Doesn’t hide her heritage or is ashamed, just doesn’t volunteer the info or respond to all the requests at work for “aboriginals” to fill certain positions. Refuses to be a token indian.

  33. One of the detriments to our educational system is that since the 60s any deranged axe grinding hack or free loading feel good culture warrior can set up sinecured shop at our universities under the guise of a “professor” of a study course with their own personal neurosis as the core premise.
    The real culprit here is the arts degree programs (BA/MA) have created a class of professional academic with no practical discipline. Because of the broadly defined nature of MA studies we get professors in “sciences” that have no legitimate science involved and other inprecise “studies” credit courses which consist of nothing more than the prof’s feelings and opinion masquerading as empirical peer reviewed research/study.
    Frankly these abstract “studies” courses in our universities has made the intellectual quality of the graduates inferior to that of a community college.

  34. Showed the course description to my wife and sons, we all had a good laugh,but,one question is unresolved; for WHAT career will this course be a benefit? For what profession?
    Doctor? Engineer? Lawyer? Burger flipper?
    Or is it just a waste of the student’s time and money?

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