I’m generally not a huge fan of Ross Douthat, but I don’t dismiss him on principle the way I do some other columnists. When he talks about the humanities, though, he makes me want to… Continue reading…
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html The NY Times publishes a voting map of the US for the 2016 presidential election, showing how areas voted down to the polling station level. So, if you’re American you can see how… Continue reading…
My university is getting a new president, after 26 years of the previous one being in that position. The new president was our provost (there was a national search, but it’s pretty clear that he… Continue reading…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/america-heimat-germany-politics.html
The columnist in this piece thinks that the English speaking world needs a new word from German: Heimat. This is a term which captures more than geographical place, but a state of belonging…. Continue reading…
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21973-y
So, I’m looking at this paper (above), and what it looks like to me is that it is another way of thinking about the idea of the horizontal in the construction and expression… Continue reading…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/16/robert-mueller-russians-charged-election This just dropped. So the grand jury found enough evidence to charge these with conspiracy to defraud the United States. That means that there’s enough evidence to go forward with a trial for… Continue reading…
Ten years ago today, my dad died. It doesn’t seem that long ago. I realized that it has been ten years just yesterday, when I was thinking about memory and how it works. Much has… Continue reading…
I imagine, as I work on the current book, some point in the future in which what I think is put on the page immediately, ready for me to edit, move around, and the rest… Continue reading…
I’ve seen several people raise the question of whether this American president is “my” president. Obviously, that is a question Americans are asking – the rest of the world is saying, you broke it, you… Continue reading…
https://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Insider-s-Take-on/242235?cid=wcontentlist_hp_5 My inclination in response to this article is to say, yeah, we’ve been making all these points for 10+ years to deaf ears. Lisa read parts of this to me this morning, interspersed… Continue reading…
I’m going to repost some of the posts I’ve made on Facebook over the last year or so, to this blog, so that they remain accessible. I’ll put up the original posting dates and links… Continue reading…
from Jan. 5, 2018
Going into a bank, any bank, is for me an exercise in carefully repressed rage. The people who work there are generally perfectly nice. But it is all against a… Continue reading…
From Dec. 17, 2017
The attached article (click on the above picture) is interesting, and gets at something I’ve been thinking for quite awhile, at least in part, which is that there is a… Continue reading…
from Dec. 15, 2017
http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-french-invasion
We don’t have many events in philosophy, not “EVENTS” at least, you know, those earth-shaking seismic changes in intellectual culture. The October 1966 Johns Hopkins conference that was the… Continue reading…
from Dec. 6, 2017
28 years ago, I was teaching at Trent University and finishing my Ph.D. In the years before the internet, when you couldn’t just turn on your iPad and get… Continue reading…
From Nov. 14, 2017
Who is this Cathy O’Neil person and how is it possible that she is this clued out? “Where’s academia when it comes to helping us make sense of this?” Um,… Continue reading…
from Nov. 11, 2017
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/12/women#.WgZ48EZa1Wo.facebook
Some specifics in this article about a report on womens’ experience in universities. Some of the comments add to the discussion, for a change, rather than being the usual… Continue reading…
From Nov. 9, 2017
http://induecourse.ca/affirmative-action-for-conservative-academics/
Problems with Haidt, and against affirmative action for conservatives in higher education. The categories of “left” and “right” are often not all that helpful, and especially in university settings…. Continue reading…
From Nov. 8, 2017
I talk to John King on the Drunken Odyssey podcast, one year after the election of our Dear Leader, about staying sane.
From Oct. 16, 2017
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Digital-Humanities-Bust/241424 [behind a paywall, unfortunately]
While some useful points are made here, to quote the author, there’s a rookie mistake. DH has never been about more data, or data being mistaken… Continue reading…
From Oct. 15, 2017
So, here’s a question for the media history people out there. I have a strong sense that after the invention of the printing press, the popular or vernacular press had relatively… Continue reading…
From Oct. 10, 2017
This article gives a decent description of how Thaler’s work pushed back against economic orthodoxy of the time. What’s interesting to me is that it also uncovers a fault… Continue reading…
From Oct. 6, 2017
The terrorist that perpetrated the killings last weekend in Las Vegas seems to me to represent a kind of turning point in the American experience of mass murder. To this point,… Continue reading…
from Sept. 24, 2017
It’s really, really hard to look at yourself and think about the social forces that gave you the good things you have. It’s much easier to naturalize the world as… Continue reading…
from Sept. 18, 2017
http://jxyzabc.blogspot.ca/2017/09/the-genius-fallacy.html
Wise thoughts for students in this post. I spend a lot of time talking to grad students about finding the question that motivates them. They often come with an… Continue reading…
From Sept. 14, 2017
More thoughts that come out of Hurricane Irma.
I’ve long identified myself, theologically, as closer to the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition than anything else. And what most people associate with that tradition is… Continue reading…
from Sept. 14, 2017
Ongoing Hurricane Irma update (I know, everyone has moved on to the next thing, but in Florida and Texas and India and Bangladesh and other places it continues after the news… Continue reading…
from Sept. 10, 2017
https://www.academia.edu/210695/Places_That_Disasters_Leave_Behind
As it happens, I’ve written about hurricanes before. I focused on how places get made, or don’t, in the wake of a disaster. The one in question for this… Continue reading…
From Aug. 21, 2017
https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive#NASA+TV+Public+Channel
So, the eclipse is cool, yah. What strikes me about watching the coverage on the NASA channel and on the networks that are running it, is that they are… Continue reading…
From Aug. 3, 2017
This is a good overview of the Tommy Curry affair at Texas A&M. Similar stories are happening to other non-white academics across the US. The cowardly backlash against people… Continue reading…