Category Archives: Uncategorized

Flying back from this month’s conference, I spotted this fun illusion during our initial descent into Bradley airport. It looks like we’re flying into a bullseye:

What Jason Fried of 37signals (Ruby on Rails, Backpack, Ta Da, Highrise, Basecamp, etc., etc.) says about enterprise software is also true of the bigger course management software packages, such as Blackboard/Vista: The people who buy enterprise software aren’t the … Continue reading →

Three gems from my most recent stack of exams.  All of these are somewhat clearly produced by the desire to write quickly–that is, I’ve not chosen answers from bad exams, just ones that appear to have gone slightly awry. Blake’s … Continue reading →

Via Andrew Sullivan, here’s evidence that ants read Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842 [1833]): WORKER ants accurately gauge their life expectancy, regardless of their actual age, and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away. Here’re the relevant lines … Continue reading →

Dunkin Donuts has too many choices.  I don’t think I’d like to be able to order pizza at a donut shop (though my students tell me it’s pretty good for fast food pizza*).  I like Dunkin Donuts, and we drink … Continue reading →

Before dinner this evening, I was chatting with someone at the conference–not my designated conference buddy–who was still grappling with cuts in her paper.  Eventually, she came round to the view that, after all, no one in the room would … Continue reading →

One of the funniest things about the conference I’m currently attending–which, I should add, is jam-packed with academic goodness–is that there are a pretty limited number of flights to the conference city, and so the last couple of days have … Continue reading →

The October issue of Bookslut is up, including installment 2 of Psycho Slut.  This month, I briefly discuss Volume 1 of the Standard Edition: “Pre-Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts,” before getting down to the real business of the column: An … Continue reading →

WikiMindMap creates mindmaps of the links in Wikipedia pages.  Here, for instance, is how it represents the entry for Charles Dickens. (Thanks, Tom!) ZIPskinny pulls census data on a zipcode-by-zipcode basis.  Here’re the results for my ZIP code; while the … Continue reading →

This week at Bookslut, I’ve posted an interview with Joe Wenderoth, author of Letters to Wendy’s and, last month, No Real Light.  We talk about YouTube and poetic performance, about political poetry, the fate of poets in the American University, … Continue reading →