Monthly Archives: August 2007

Blast that Larry Craig!

It’s a long story, but I have an office off by myself, away from the rest of the department.  The chair of the closest department is a friendly person, and we regularly joke about the relative importance of our departments, … Continue reading

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A back-to-school poem

Academia To pimp the fine young cadence of the dying gasp’s demented urge to sentence and to dumb back the ecstasies that press up from, well, NOTHING– this is our tiny calling, our bungled ancientness. –Joe Wenderoth, No Real Light … Continue reading

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The Tuesday Morning Quarterback can’t read

Second-guessing ESPN columnists is more Erik’s thing, but I couldn’t resist this.  In his NFC preview, Gregg “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” Easterbrook blasts John Fox for blaspheming: “We’re owed a little bit of luck by the football gods, if there is … Continue reading

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More on service

At the end of last semester, I was elected chair of a particular committee.  (I had been vice-chair.)  The committee has a two-year term, so I was also up for election to the committee.  Because this put the committee in … Continue reading

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Online timesinks

The Wall Street Journal has an article up today (via 43folders) about managing your e-mail, which, if it isn’t anything groundbreaking, nonetheless usefully rounds up all the usual productivity experts for handy quotations.   In particular, Merlin Mann reminds us, yet … Continue reading

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Topics that drive blog traffic

Apparently, complaining about VitalChek, saying anything about RateMyProfessor.com, or linking to gay porn adaptations of Dickens novels = traffic gold. (Each of those posts has meant about 10 visitors/day in Google traffic.) If I could just script a gay porn … Continue reading

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Square bracket abuse

Square brackets can be useful things: clarifying the referent in a particular quotation, filling in a broader context. But look at this one, from this week’s Sports Illustrated, where Howard Wasserman is quoted about the possibility of Barry Bonds suing … Continue reading

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Problem solved

Dr. Crazy has yet another great post, this time on balancing the need to recruit students for classes vs. the dreaded over-enrollment problem.  I won’t comment in full about this here, as I actually got in some lukewarm water this … Continue reading

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The Pottery Barn is all about Apple products (or Apple loves product placement)

This is the latest Pottery Barn catalog, which arrived yesterday (I apologize for the low-res image that I’ve blown up here, but it’s the best I could find in less than 90 seconds.): That would be an iPhone, an iPod, … Continue reading

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Good thing I don’t teach or write about those things . . . hey, wait!

From the latest alarmist report on reading: The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five … Continue reading

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