One thing I’ve been doing on these walks has been to introduce myself to some of the other regulars and get their names. “By the way, my name’s Bruce.” They have to be regulars (i.e.,… Continue reading…
I’m thinking a lot about death these days. I guess being a philosopher it comes with the territory. Not my own death, particularly, although these days I suspect that that question has crossed anyone’s mind… Continue reading…
Well, I have many thoughts about this article, most of which I won’t record here. Just a couple.
First, there’s an uptick in Western history, dating back at least a couple of thousand years,… Continue reading…
Armed protesters in Michigan storm the legislature. All in the name of freedom, no doubt. What a misunderstanding of what freedom is.
This is something we talk about in my classes. I sometimes give… Continue reading…
Well, I’m on track to break 250 miles of walking in April (don’t worry, it is all done staying well away from anyone else – one of the perks of where I live). That’s what… Continue reading…
I tell my students that the spaces they move through are texts, or at least are textualizable, that is, they can be made into texts (maybe they can be made into other things too,… Continue reading…
Hey, wait a minute…
Ah, good old utilitarianism is back, not that it ever left. Hate it hate it hate it. Why? Not because we aren’t forced into the situation sometimes of asking how to maximize utility, because… Continue reading…
I’ve been doing various sorts of online course delivery since the mid-1990s. That’s when Netscape was the only browser. That’s when you had to send your page changes to an IT admin, and wait a… Continue reading…
Well, the Board of Governors thinks everything was hunky-dory with our UCF president search, and so the person who we first heard existed one week ago, was hired 5 days ago, is now officially… Continue reading…
So, $1M to be president of UCF. All of 2 days of vetting, during a pandemic. “The value of Cartwright’s agreement … ranks among probably the top 10% [in the country], if not even… Continue reading…
From Xavier de Maistre (not to be confused with his brother Joseph, the philosopher and political theorist), “A Journey Round My Room” (1794), chapter IV, “Latitude and Topography”. For these times.
IV. Latitude and… Continue reading…
Transparency. Careful consideration. Thorough vetting. Broad consultation with all interested parties.
Screw those things. They’re all for lesser schools.
We’re going to announce a candidate on a Wednesday, have one public… Continue reading…
Well, finally the third candidate for the UCF president has been announced. Alexander Cartwright, current chancellor of the University of Missouri at Columbia.
So, for those of you keeping track, this was announced on… Continue reading…
One thing I worry about, during a time like this coronavirus crisis, is what else will happen while no one’s looking. As Rahm Emmanuel said (ugh, can’t believe I’m quoting him): “You never let a… Continue reading…
Well, it’s a good thing that Vistasp Karbhari pulled out of the presidential search for UCF. He’s now also resigned from his current post as president of the University of Texas at Arlington.
Natural experiments during the Covid-19 crisis (you know, the kind where you can’t create an experimental group, mostly because you’d never get IRB approval and it’s totally immoral, but now such a group has been… Continue reading…
In honor of James Lipton’s passing, please fill out your own Bernard Pivot questionnaire (which he used to do at the end of every interview on Inside the Actor’s Studio), and post it on your… Continue reading…
This deserves to be spread around. I’m kind of obsessed with what I call “scholarly cognition”, which is the knowledge that is part of the embodied experience within the academy that doesn’t get included… Continue reading…
I’ve been walking for the past half year, pretty much every day. If I’m being honest, starting a walking habit correlates with getting an Apple watch. I had a Fitbit before, but… Continue reading…
Most common administrative title at UCF: “Interim”. We are about to have another one – Interim Head of Libraries – to add to the Interim President, Interim Provost, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and various other… Continue reading…
Sure, I’m on board with there being more narrative people around, as this WaPo article suggests. The economists in this story seem to want to have them around for rhetorical reasons, though,… Continue reading…
This is an interview with Jennifer Nash about her excellent book on intersectionality. I’m interested in the ways that concepts are created for specific purposes and then drift, or get appropriated, or get… Continue reading…
I have been officially certified as “Ethical” by my institution, at least for another year. Thanks be to our lord and savior Immanuel Kant. I am also certified in the technologies of squealing and… Continue reading…
Lecturing is bad if you do it poorly. Lecturing is bad if you do it well. That’s the continuing message I see here.
But there’s something else that gets talked about much less… Continue reading…
Shall we pick apart this email (see below) sent by our university president, at 4 pm just before the university closes for a hurricane? Ok, lets do that.
1. This isn’t ethics training, it’s… Continue reading…
We’re all about the metrics at UCF. And also vague headlines in the linked piece (“among” the best?). So, being a nerd, I downloaded the dataset that Washington Monthly used for their… Continue reading…
I’ve thought that unions are overall a good thing since I was able to earn a paycheck. When I first became department chair, I recall going on a retreat with other new chairs from across… Continue reading…
There’s been a series in the New York Times about slavery and its legacy that featured an article about how the plantation grounds the forms of capitalism we find today in the US. Phillip… Continue reading…