It was May 2007. I was living with a bohemian set on Chicago’s north side, a crowd ranging from Foucault-fixated college kids to middle-aged Bukowski-bred alcoholics. We drank and talked politics on the balcony in the evenings, pausing only to sneer at hipsters strumming back-porch Beatles sing-a-longs. By night, I took part in barbed criticism…
“I think it’s a really strange proposal in 2014,” said Stephen M. Saideman, a professor at Carleton University in Canada and one of many political science scholars who assailed the policy on social media. “I would have expected it in 2006.” Faculty members, several outside the field of international studies, said the proposal is simultaneously…
Overblown Headline of New Yorker Article on Memes Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You In 350 B.C., Aristotle was already wondering what could make content—in his case, a speech—persuasive and memorable, so that its ideas would pass from person to person. The answer, he argued, was three principles: ethos, pathos, and logos. Content should have…
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast, Can hardly look at God all day, While lifting leafy arms to pray. Where are her eyes, mouth, arms, and head? Perhaps she lifts her legs instead. Read Kilmer’s original, and David L. Hoover’s wonderful spoof at Representative Poetry Online.
When [Chwe] says that Austen was a game theorist, he means for us to take him at his word. Never mind the fact that game theory did not emerge until the middle of the twentieth century. Austen, he claims, was a “social theorist” who “carefully establishes game theory’s core concepts” and “systematically explored” them in…
Tell yourself, I am rejecting these thoughts about school because they’re not productive. I’m choosing to replace them with the thought that when Monday morning comes, I can trust myself to know what to do, so I don’t need to think about it right now. Then distract yourself by doing something more enjoyable, and dismiss…
I’ve maintained this blog since the spring semester of 1999, though at the time I considered it an “annotated list of links.” Updating it meant editing the HTML by hand. Like Crichton’s dinosaurs, blogs have evolved into everyday things that we may not recognize as the powerful, conspicuous giants they once were. Blogs have evolved…
You text your girlfriend: “I know we made a reservation for your bday tonight but wouldn’t it be more romantic if we ate in instead?” If she replies, we could do that Then you can ring up Papa John’s and order something special. But if she replies, we could do that. Then you should probably…
Ultimately, I got sick and tired of both groups trying to tell me how to live my life. The deaf culture advocates tell me I should fling away my [cochlear implant (CI)] and make my home within the community. The CI advocates tell me that I should give up using [American Sign Langauge] and become…
Nothing to do with Christmas… just thinking about the upcoming group projects due in my online J-Term course. I should also probably re-read some Dale Carnegie, which I do every few years. Teams need conflict to function effectively. Conflict allows the team to come to terms with difficult situations, to synthesize diverse perspectives, and to…
Okay, students… who loves group projects! Let’s hear it for group projects! (Crickets… crickets…) Okay employers… who puts “Ability to work in a team” at the top of a Forbes Magazine list of 10 skills employers say they seek in new hires? Employers: (cheering wildly) We do! We do! Here are the 10 skills employers say they seek,…
“I’m bored,” is something my daughter knows NOT to say around me. If she does, I will look into her big brown eyes with my most sincere fake paternal concern, and say, “Honey, you are a talented, intelligent, wonderful kid with so many opportunities. You have no reason to think people find you boring.” She…
Stoked from a morning show-choir performance and an afternoon rehearsal, Carolyn is lumbering around the kitchen floor, belting “I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS!!!” Peter, his nose in a book, expresses a stoic disapproval. “Peter, you never ask for anything,” says my wife, raising her voice over Carolyn’s singing. “If you could have anything, regardless…
If we are really wanting to help these kids that might be coming from poor situations, we need to rethink the practices that we already have in our schools to provide for them. For example, many schools have “computer labs” where we take kids once or twice a week, to do something with technology or allow them…
Good article on Catching Fire. (I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I like this analysis.) The personal is political because there is no personal. There is no private realm to retreat into. Haymitch tells Katniss and Peeta that they will never get off the train – meaning that the reality TV parts they are…
I love me a good Amazon mock review. Here are several. From scientific miracles to literary criticism, by way of bodily functions and failures of common sense. Many moons ago, I wrote about the art of the humorous Amazon review as a modern masterpiece of parodic genius, embodying Arthur Koestler’s seminal “bisociation” theory of how…
“Goddammit, I don’t know what to do!” Obama said, banging his hands in frustration against a wall of binary as the entire healthcare.gov mainframe suddenly froze, forcing all previously flowing lines of code to come to a complete standstill. “I can’t fix this! Get me out of this place!” “Please! Just get me out of…
Descriptive grammarians rejoice. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in…
Suddenly, something that had been unthinkable–that the Internet might put a free, Ivy League–caliber education within reach of the world’s poor–seems tantalizingly close. “Imagine,” an investor in the Professor’s company says, “you can hand a kid in Africa a tablet and give him Harvard on a piece of glass!” The wonky term for the Professor’s…