Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Via Ed Champion comes a hilarious story from Tod Goldberg, the upshot of which is that Tod gets called out by a parent for using the phrase “serial killer” while a child (of indeterminate age) is within earshot. He wonders … Continue reading →

One more post on the workload of an assistant professor: Picking your service commitments. Viewed narrowly, service is less important to one’s career than teaching and research. I’ve heard of extraordinary teachers being tenured despite scant research portfolios, and everyone … Continue reading →

“Seeing lousy movies / but only for the a.c.” –The Hold Steady, “Hostile, Mass.”   What happens when you visit your parents during the hottest week in southeastern Virginia in a decade? Underdog on Monday, The Bourne Ultimatum on Tuesday, … Continue reading →