Author Archives: jbj

Wired Science has an obligatory post on how “the intensive selective pressures of industrial farming” have changed–sometimes to near-unrecognizable extents–traditional Thanksgiving foods. It’s perfectly interesting and in keeping with the season and all, so no qualms on that score. But … Continue reading →

This semester I have struggled even more than usual to be timely about e-mail and certain other relatively simple online things.  In part, this is an effect of going to WikiSym in September and starting the semester behind; also, virtually … Continue reading →

Like many schools, we have a required first-year experience class. (Here’s the website for our program.) It can be satisfied in several different ways, but the most common (I think) is to take a 3-credit 100-level class plus a one-credit … Continue reading →

Matthew Teague has an interesting article in Sports Illustrated this week on the decline of hunting in the United States.  Fewer hunters have meant more wildlife attacks on people, more disease, more property damage (including the cost of removing deer … Continue reading →

Last week Alex Jarvis and I found out that we’d gotten funding for a local faculty-student research grant.  Entitled “Tagging Dickens,” it entails putting tikitags (RFID-enabled stickers) inside Dickens novels to see if it helps spur students to use supplemental … Continue reading →

The Hartford Courant reports on a nightmarish lawsuit over a student’s expulsion for plagiarism.  Though it happened at CCSU, I don’t know any of the participants in this case.  At any rate, it hardly seems worth it to get into … Continue reading →

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, there’s a pretty good chance that the local paper, the New Britain Herald, will close.  On the faculty e-mail list, one or two faculty members have speculated about having the campus paper … Continue reading →

Via Andrew Sullivan, here’s Jonah Lehrer reporting that, according to brain scans, it’s harder to pay with cash than with credit cards: one of the reasons credit cards are such a popular form of debt is that they take advantage … Continue reading →

A few not-quite random things: Apparently the local paper’s closing.  It wasn’t a very good paper recently, but still — that’s a blow. Here’s a short video (via A.) featuring the boy’s elementary school & it’s use of continuous data-driven … Continue reading →

I haven’t taught composition in a couple of years, less from aversion than from natural patterns (if you get reassigned time, you usually buy out comp; likewise, if you teach in an interdisciplinary program, it usually replaces comp).  In the … Continue reading →