So ballsy!

One of our clever young linguistics majors, Colin Williams, asked me about the word "ballsy" the other day. He wondered if it wasn't in violation of the "inflection outside of derivation" mantra. It sure looks like a plural "-s" inside a derivational (N -> A) "-y" (cf. "hand/handy"). My tired old brain has been working overtime thinking about this. Somehow I want to say, no, no, no, there's a derivational suffix "-sy". But is there? I've come up with a (short) list of others like it: folksy, artsy, bluesy, gutsy, newsy, outdoorsy, sudsy... (I decided that "footsy" doesn't count because it's a noun.) It sure looks like the plural "s" on all of those. Especially "blues," "news," and "suds" - which don't occur without their "s" (in the same meaning). "Folksy" is a little weird, because the people referred to would usually be the folk rather than the folks. But for the rest: the arts, the blues, guts, the news, the outdoors, and suds - well, they do usually have their plural "-s" on them. Whaddya think?

(Pix from here)

Here's something worth reading if you haven't handed out your evaluations in class yet. Before opening that envelope, before finding a student with a need to please and is willing to carry the envelope back to the department, before handing out those brand new #2 pencils the department will never see again, read this piece by the Onion, titled "Professor Deeply Hurt By Student's Evaluation."

You tell me, is this is comedy or reality?

“Students and the enormous revenue they bring in to our institution are a more valued commodity to us than faculty,” Dean James Hewitt said. “Although Rothberg is a distinguished, tenured professor with countless academic credentials and knowledge of 21 modern and ancient languages, there is absolutely no excuse for his boring Chad with his lectures. Chad must be entertained at all costs.”

The balance between keeping faculty and attracting students from a monetary perspective is not as easy as it sounds here,

"Keeping tuition low in the face of diminishing support from the state erodes and limits access when quality and access are vital to the state and the prospects of our graduates. UW–Madison has no desire to charge private tuition rates; we want only to get closer to our public peers. ... We will educate and graduate more Wisconsin students in four years, providing them with what they need to flourish and reducing their costs."

Discuss.

Of deals, devils and details: Budget reality check

Note: The guest post below comes from someone concerned about the move for 'public authority' for UW-Madison.

The politics of public authority for UW-Madison seem to be unraveling. People who’re talking to key Republican lawmakers and their staffers are hearing things like “non-starter”, “no way” and “ain’t gonna happen”. The Chancellor has ginned up a lot of support on campus and in Madison, but statewide politics will likely kill this proposal.

But this deal is a monster and a lot of monsters don’t die easy. Let me give you a silver bullet for your pistol in case you meet the monster in a dark alley: This deal with Walker has been sold around vague flexibilities. The details we know, in fact, are mostly serious downsides, and many people aren’t even aware of them. Consider the budget implications of these two tidbits, one you may and one you may not know:

(1) In previous budget cuts, we’ve taken 40% of the total cut to UW-System, but this cut is 50-50 between us and System. That’s an extra $30 million base cut annually. No projected gains from flexibilities shows how that amount could be made up. The projections shown at the Faculty Senate and elsewhere basically conceal this fact: They project our budget as if it were starting from where we are now, not from $30 million less. How long would it take to recoup that amount in the base budget?

(2) We would no longer have a state pay plan. That means that our block grant would in the future not include any money for pay increases. Any. Ever. As salaries increase, we’d have to cover that from our own new monies. A 1% raise for the whole campus costs about $5 million right now, with benefits. So, a modest 3% raise would mean generating an extra $15 million per year in perpetuity. Chart that out over 10 years on a spreadsheet!

Bottom line, the current proposal guarantees us cuts, far deeper than if we stay with System.

Worse, there is not any of feigned promise of insurance of any kind against future cuts. The Virginia model contained the kinds of guarantees that Wisconsin’s proposal lacks. And the legislature still came back and cut them further.

There’s a real way forward here, one the legislature and the System may be willing to pursue: Much of the flexibility that people argue for — and much of which would be uncontroversially useful to our campus — can be achieved without public authority. And without the extremely damaging consequences outlined above. We need a concrete set of flexibilities that we can agree on, which will work for us within System and which the legislature can accept.

Public Authority, R.I.P.?

Despite our recent silence, Team Verb is alive and well and mostly not even living underground here in Fitzwalkerstan. But we've been busy little badgers.* The current fight has been over the New Badger Partnership, originally a call for 'flexibility' for UW-Madison and now a proposal to make us a 'public authority', i.e. take a huge step toward privatization. This has deeply divided campus. It looks like the issue may be resolving itself in the legislature, with passage of public authority status now becoming unlikely.

According to WisPolitics, Robin Vos, Joint Finance Assembly Co-chair, said this on Sunday’s "UpFront with Mike Gousha":

He also said while he agrees with the guv’s vision of giving UW-Madison more flexibility, proposing the spin off was too much for lawmakers to digest in one budget cycle.

“I am positive that we are going to give some additional flexibility, but probably not all the way to allowing Madison to spin off and set its own tuition and all those things without more oversight,” he said on the show, which is produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com.

And we'll be back to language very soon. Promise.

UPDATE, 12:00: A reader passed along this link about the honey badger (probably PG-13 or something in terms of language, but) hilarious. See the comments about why the honey badger rather than an actual badger is pictured here. And oh yeah, do NOT mess with a honey badger.

*A favorite slogan here is that Walker is "a weasel not a badger", along with lots of references to what badgers do when attacked or cornered. As you can read here, the little critters are said to be able to fight off bears and wolves.

Quick Wisconsin update

This is a critical week for Wisconsin and its flagship university. Here are some highlights:

Monday, 3:30, Bascom Hall 272: Faculty Senate meeting. Another Committee of the Whole discussion of the proposed public authority. Also on the agenda is the issue of the University turning over faculty emails to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. (People in the know are telling me that there was/is a strong case to be made against handing over anything.)

Monday, 5:00: From Memphis to Madison: Honor History, Make History. Rally for Statewide Day of Action in conjunction with GOTV efforts. Features performances by Michelle Shocked, other musical acts, and speeches by the Reverend Jesse Jackson and other leaders of the movement.

Tuesday: Election day. The right now controls the State Supreme by 4-3. If Kloppenburg beats Prosser, that flips it.

Tuesday, 1:00: Fight back USA teach-in, Hillel. LIVE WEBCAST: Cornel West & Frances Fox Piven (hosting) ... Jeffrey Sachs, economist, Columbia University Heather McGhee, Demos Richard Trumka, president, AFL-CIO plus activist reports on Wisconsin, teacher unions, and anti-forclosure movement.



Yesterday was the Zombie walk again Walker. Pic from here.