Author Archives: jbj

What’s your Walk Score?

Via Digital Digs, here’s Walk Score, an interesting Google Maps mash-up that “calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.” Our house scored a 28, or Not Walkable. Which is funny, because we in … Continue reading

Posted in connecticut | 6 Comments

Weird things that are sort of Victorian

These three things are all related to Victorian literature and culture, and are very, very strange. “Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver.” When it’s installed at a gallery, museum patrons or internet users can make a dead frog jerk … Continue reading

Posted in Dickens, silliness, Victorian literature | 2 Comments

On grades and anxiety

I’m grateful to Chuck and Alex for their encouraging comments about my plan to make my grade distributions public, and it still seems like a good idea to me. However–and maybe this is just me–it is slightly anxiety-provoking.  Last night, … Continue reading

Posted in teaching | 1 Comment

Should your grading patterns be public? In how much detail?

Back when I was a Brittain fellow at Georgia Tech, I was struck by the fact that students had full access to a faculty member’s grading history.  As I recall, you could look at the overall distribution of grades, but … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Odd things people say about psychoanalysis as if they were self-evident

First in an occasional series. In this week’s New Yorker, David Denby has a feature-length article on the “slacker-striver romance,” or movies that feature a male slacker and an ambitious woman who’s out of his league. While leaving the film … Continue reading

Posted in psychoanalysis | 1 Comment

Review/Interview: Angus McLaren’s Impotence

Over at PopMatters’s Re:Print, I’ve begun what I hope will be a series of reviews and interviews highlighting work from university presses that might interest general readers. The first such post, about Angus McLaren’s splendid new book, Impotence: A Cultural … Continue reading

Posted in books, elsewhere, review | 1 Comment

Et tu, copyeditors

I know typo-blogging is a bit unfair, but this one’s pretty funny.  From today’s New Britain Herald: The story, of course, is deeply unfunny.  While I’m prepared in theory to agree that throwing money at problems isn’t always a good … Continue reading

Posted in connecticut, family, new britain | Comments Off on Et tu, copyeditors

Things that probably make conservatives go “huh.”

Thursday’s e-mail brought the AAUP‘s monthly e-newsletter promoting the contents of Academe.  Here’s a screen shot of one of the news items: I don’t want to defend either ACTA or Anne Neal, but I do think it’s weird to conflate … Continue reading

Posted in higher education | Comments Off on Things that probably make conservatives go “huh.”

RBOC: Friday edition

Yesterday’s post at Blog of a Bookslut was later than usual, but did make it up. I’m excited about a mini-interview with Angus McLaren (author of Impotence: A Cultural History) that I’ll be posting Monday to Re:Print. Also, yesterday I … Continue reading

Posted in elsewhere, iphone, new britain | Comments Off on RBOC: Friday edition

Review: Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening

This morning PopMatters posted my review of Aurelia C. Scott’s Otherwise Normal People: This book delivers almost exactly what the title offers: A sympathetic, perhaps even sentimental, look at the slightly crazy people who organize their lives around rose competitions. … Continue reading

Posted in books, elsewhere, review | Comments Off on Review: Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening