"I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down."

A column at the NYT, written by Chris Marquis, a professor at University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

When the case method is used in medicine and law, it serves a different set of goals.... In both fields, students are confronted by the messiness of reality, and the goal is to foster disciplined skepticism: ask what’s missing, challenge assumptions and test how an analysis could be wrong.

Business school cases operate on another logic.... The point is to practice acting like the person in charge....

"Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where masked infiltrators broke into the local government headquarters..."

"...  and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. Fires also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon.... Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu placed the blame for the chaos squarely on a far-left party, France Unbowed.... Protest organizers had hoped that the demonstrations on Saturday would lead to a convergence between the student demonstrations that have roiled France since September demanding better school conditions, and a broader social movement that addressed a wider array of concerns, including the rising cost of living. What emerged on Saturday seemed like a split-screen event, with marches occurring peacefully in one part of a city and groups of black-clad agitators sparring with police and causing damage in other areas. Then, as things unraveled, opportunist rioters joined in, exploiting the chaos, government officials said...."

From "France Reels After Largest Riots in Years/Centrist and leftist leaders blamed each other after anti-government protests devolved into chaos" (NYT).

"The age of AI will disrupt the workplace in all sorts of ways. But the work will continue..."

"... as other kinds of work have continued through technological disruptions. People still run the 100-meter dash, even though a car or a cheetah could do it faster. We still cook elaborate dinners, even though the frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes. We still have dinner parties, even though we could stream wittier banter from Netflix — because we are humans, and we want to seek excellence, not just consume it. AI may make it harder for us to get paid for our work. But if so, it will also make it easier for us to focus on the reasons that work is worth doing."

So says Megan McArdle, in "Every novel might have to pass an AI test soon/Artificial intelligence threatens writers’ livelihoods. It may also remind them why they write" (WaPo)(gift link).

The frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes? I don't believe that for one minute. Strike the "highly" and maybe you've got the beginning of a good enough analogy.

Also: "a car or a cheetah could do it faster" — there's no antecedent for "it." Do what faster? Anyway, it's not that people run the 100-meter dash, it's that other people care about and watch them running. Speed is interesting to us because of whatever it is that is going fast. We also care about and watch cars and cheetahs going fast, but it's not the speed per se that matters. It's the thing that's managing to go that fast. I've been impressed by a fast-moving tortoise.

As for reading, there are different kinds of readers. I don't think I'm the kind of reader who reads the novels that AI is going to get away with writing — conventional, fast-moving narratives with heroes and villains. Does it bother me if readers of hackwork are not getting human hacks? Maybe it does!

Sunrise.

"Edward Hopper's wife Jo Nivison... expected little in the way of material comforts.... [T]he couple lived frugally in Greenwich Village, in a top-floor walk-up..."

"... on Washington Square whose only bathroom was in an outside hall. They had no children, just a cat named Arthur. Nivison devoted herself to her husband’s career. She served as his secretary, business manager and ever-willing model, posing in guises that ranged from a slender ingénue to a burlesque stripper and a melancholy movie usherette in a blue uniform.... She described her husband as a grump and a bully unwilling to acknowledge her artistic talents. In a diary entry from 1941, she confided that she would be delighted to have him 'choked or smothered or roasted until he had been forced to make some slight gesture of concern for my concerns.' At a time when the Metropolitan Museum’s joint exhibition of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock is focusing attention on the plight of artists’ wives, it makes sense to think about Nivison.... Unlike Krasner, Nivison... did not have much left for her own artwork.... But it would be nice if someone published her diaries and pointed out that she was a brilliant and witty writer."

Writes Deborah Solomon, in "When Edward Hopper Painted Lonely People, He Was Channeling America A new biography argues that the artist famous for haunting canvases of solitary figures in late-night diners was deeply influenced by his times" (NYT).

I agree! Let's read the diaries of Jo Nivison.  The wife of a famous artist put in writing the idea that he should be choked or smothered or roasted. Seems promising. You can read them on line here, and see her artwork — which Solomon bemoans as "tepid" — here. I click randomly and got this:

"The Puritans had scarlet letters, and now the content creators have scarlet posts: video apologies..."

"... usually negotiated by lawyers for brands and public figures that have come under criticism from influencers pushing commentary not always rooted in facts. For the women who whittle their free time on New York lifestyle Instagram accounts, Gellis’s austere video was startling as it appeared amid a scroll of the standard imagery that generates likes, comments and commerce.... Chatter about the video spread across Instagram and around New York last weekend, revisiting F-Factor, a pre-Ozempic-era high fiber diet, as well as Gellis’s relentless campaign, which created a pandemic-days internet spectacle-cum-unscripted reality show....."

From "An Influencer’s Punishment Is a Pinned Instagram Post/A dispute over online misinformation about the F-Factor diet led to an unusual agreement: an apology video that must be pinned to the top of social feeds for three and a half years" (NYT).

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"By a certain light, this is the first time that the British director’s vision will be seen properly."

"The restoration contains censored moments once thought lost, like frenzied, naked nuns writhing sexually on a giant crucifix or a Mother Superior (Vanessa Redgrave) making love to a phallic bone fragment.... The uproar makes sense in context. 'When people saw the film, because Ken’s imagery is so visceral, they were shocked by it,'  said the critic Mark Kermode, who befriended Russell in the 1990s and was instrumental in finding the lost footage and reintegrating it into the director’s cut.... Yet Russell, who died in 2011 at 84, was adapting a respected 1952 nonfiction book, 'The Devils of Loudun' by Aldous Huxley, and a stage version by John Whiting that followed in 1961. The plot centers on a Roman Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier (Reed), who unabashedly pursues sexual relationships with women, but also presides over the walled city of Loudun as a sort of secular stronghold where Catholics and Protestants live together peaceably."

From "In 1971, This Film Was a Scandal. In 2026, It’s a Respected Period Piece. 'Ken Russell’s The Devils' was deemed shocking for scenes with orgiastic nuns and a debauched priest. But its serious aims are clear in a new restoration" (NYT).

I can't remember how I was ever able to see this film, but I did see it, I believe in the 70s, and for many years I'd always include it on my very short list of favorite films — along with "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and "My Dinner With Andre." Clearly, I had a taste for a certain sort of male character! I have no idea how this film would strike me today. But I think it would resonate with present-day themes: a strong political man ruined over his sexual acting out and women who lose their rationality when overexcited by sex and politics.

As Kermode puts it: "It is really a brilliantly serious, heartfelt story about brainwashing, about the politicization of religion, about the use of hysteria."

Speaking of naked writhing and early 70s films the critics panned, I got through "Zabriskie Point" the other day. Not good. Seems to say if only you can be young, beautiful, and naked — and kick up a big cloud of white dust while having intercourse in a barren landscape — you can save the world. I was worried about the dust — borax?!— and the damage to the landscape — Death Valley  and I couldn't even believe those 2 crazy lovers could enjoy their gritty play. We're supposed to think they do because the camera pulls back and shows the landscape full of naked couples simulating sex. Who are they? Where did they come from? Answer: This is art. They're an idea.

"So what was on the menu for the lost dog? It wasn’t especially appetizing."

"'She probably was eating the forest feces from all the other animals in the forest.... That’s how they survive. And they can survive for months and years like that.'"

From "Luna, a Dog Who Was Lost in Yellowstone for a Month, Is Found Safe/A 10-year-old Jack Russell Terrier/Chihuahua mix, Luna lost half her weight but was otherwise healthy after several weeks in Yellowstone National Park" (NYT).

Like a kid in a candy store: a dog in the forest.

It wasn't easy trapping the tiny dog: "She’s a very typical Jack Russell terrier. She’s got opinions, and she’s got energy, and she’s tenacious, and she is not going to give up easily. And that is why she’s alive."

"It’s surreal. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically."

Said David Sabatini, after the verdict, quoted in "M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit/David Sabatini, once a prominent scientist at M.I.T., sued a former colleague who accused him of inappropriate behavior. A jury found in his favor" (NYT).

[Santini] ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging. He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced. But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman....

"The woman later told her rescuers that she had jumped off the ship because she 'wanted to disembark'...."

I'm reading "20 Hours After Falling Overboard, Cruise Passenger Is Rescued Near Greece" (NYT).

A cargo vessel found the woman conscious and holding onto a life preserver just before 3 a.m. on Saturday.... Royal Caribbean did not respond to... why rescue officials were not alerted until three hours after the incident. According to the company’s website, the Odyssey of the Seas is over 1,100 feet long and can hold nearly 4,200 guests.

1,100 feet long... 4,200 guests... I, too, would feel the urge to disembark. But floating — albeit with life preserver — for 20 hours, that's a lot of time to contemplate the solitude you thought you wanted in place of that cruise-ship crowd. I saw a movie once where a man and a woman were floating in a life preserver. What do you do? Wonder if help will arrive before you die of thirst... or sharks attack? Or do you slip out of the life preserver and become a life non-preserver?

Sunrise on a very windy day.

"Thank God we had him. Otherwise, it would have been much worse. It's a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Hero bystander who took down Oregon school shooter comes forward" (CBS News).

"For a minute I thought this was going to be another Anne Carson post."

Wrote Smilin' Jack in the comments to the post that begins "His English mastiff was dying, so he hired her to read its mind. But when she met the man with the messy hair, he kept apologizing for his casual outfit."

And isn't this a lovely tribute to the literature Nobelist who's found her way into a few of my posts? 

There are some writers who rearrange your vision so that other things look as though they are influenced by her mind. That may be what Carson did to Jack and it may be what Carson did to me. Maybe I am picking out different things to blog or finding excerpts in some new way, framing the post differently, and maybe Jack is reading these things differently. 

Don't you want writers to shake up your world? Don't you want to live in the enchanted world where dogs send you messages that psychics step up to translate? 

Carson says some things about dogs. Like this, from page 142 of the Kindle edition of "Wrong Norma" (commission earned): 

The blue heron flies at dawn.

Video by Meade.

Post title inspired by vaguely familiar Hollywood spyspeak... or perhaps by that Jack Benny movie that only I remember.

"Like many of the earliest competitive eaters, Mr. Janus stumbled into the sport. He was working as a day trader in Manhattan..."

"... hating the stress of his job. One day he went looking for a way to relieve the pressure and found it in a St. Patrick’s Day eating contest — corned beef and cabbage.... 'He brought this unique level of thoughtfulness and earnestness to competitive eating,' Jason Fagone, the author of 'Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream' (2006), said in an interview. 'He took this thing that a lot of people just throw off as a joke, and he took it seriously.'... After he took up competitive eating, he began working nights at a pizza parlor, and eventually quit day trading to make pies full time. He never earned enough money in the sport to live off it exclusively — at the time, no one did — but he also insisted that money didn’t interest him. 'It’s never been about the cash; it’s always about the adventure.... One of these contests recharges me more than a week at the beach ever would.'"

From "Tim Janus, One of the World’s Greatest Competitive Eaters, Has Died/He brought rigor and strategy to the sport, rising to No. 2 in the world and eating 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes in the process" (NYT).

He died at age 49 — and not of overeating. Of lung cancer.

(If that makes you think about the Pope, here's a BBC article about the Pope's lung cancer. He seems to be doing well after the removal of the lower lobe of his right lung. There are photos of him celebrating mass at the hospital, after the surgery.)

I'm giving this post my "sports" tag, but is this a sport? I want to say that it is. Grok agreed with me, here.

"His English mastiff was dying, so he hired her to read its mind. But when she met the man with the messy hair..."

"... he kept apologizing for his casual outfit. 'He told me, "Sorry for being dressed like this; I’m always in a suit on television,"' recalled [Celia] Melamed. 'I don’t have a television, so I had no idea what he was talking about.' The man was Javier Milei, at the time a TV pundit in Argentina known for railing against the government. The mastiff was Conan, soon to be Argentina’s most famous dog.... Ms. Melamed then became [Milei's] dedicated pet psychic. He kept hiring her for the next two years, she said, including to talk to Conan in the afterlife and to the five clones made with Conan’s DNA...."

From "The President’s Dog Psychic/In Argentina, many people try to read the mind of the president. Celia Melamed read the mind of his dogs" (NYT).

At the link to there's a photo of a book Milei wrote and autographed for Melamed. It says: "For Celia, TOTAL GENIUS OF THE UNIVERSE, the being of light who helped me find the way."