Eliminate the Babylonians…for credit!
Via Cliopatria, Inside Higher Ed looks at increased use of Civilization III in college history courses. Um, yes, I’ve been playing Civ 4 in almost all of my spare moments of late solely for pedagogical...
View Article10,000 Chains of Harvard.
“‘I do think Harvard Square, unless something drastic is done, is dying.’” With the imminent closing of yet another landmark, the Brattle Theater (The Tasty, the original Coop, and the Bow & Arrow...
View ArticleSummers’ lease hath had all too long a date.
With another no-confidence vote on the way, Larry Summers announces his resignation as president of Harvard, effective at the end of the school year. Between running Cornel out of town and arguing...
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Used to be my homies.
“While he remains sympathetic to the democracy-spreading mission, Fukuyama castigates the unilateral and militaristic turns that gave us such concepts as ‘preventive war,’ ‘benevolent hegemony,’ and...
View ArticleBullies / Bully!
In case you missed it, last week Comedy Central’s fake news went academic: By way of The Naked Tree and various other sources, The Daily Show‘s inimitable Rob Corddry delved into racismism (racism...
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Muddled in their Intent.
I never caught the source material while it was on Broadway, so I can’t compare it to the play. But, while I found Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys to be a thoughtful and...
View Article10,000 Page Hits of Harvard.
After a few audio-only teasers, David Fincher releases a wonderfully melancholy trailer for The Social Network, with Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Joseph Mazzello, Armie Hammer,...
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10,000 Megs of Harvard
As the post-Inception zeitgeist film of the fall, David Fincher’s moody, ambitious, and entertaining The Social Network, a.k.a. the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, has already...
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The Tell-Tale Five.
“The National Archives gave the document prominent display, putting it on tour along with other important Lincoln documents. But for several years, archivist Thomas Plante had been troubled by the...
View ArticlePiled Higher and Deeper.
“At latest count, we have 1.5 million university professors in this country, 1 million of whom are adjuncts. One million professors in America are hired on short-term contracts, most often for one...
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Uphill all the Way.
“‘The whole era,’ concluded Bourne in disgust, ‘has been spiritually wasted.’” Let’s hope, down the road a-ways from 2012, the last few years won’t feel the same. Anyway, that line’s from the first...
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Aperture Science.
“With a portal at each university, students can stand in front of a vertical 50-inch high-definition monitor and communicate with the help of a webcam, microphone, speakers and a computer running a...
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Poor Life Decisions, Graphed.
“Politicians and businessmen are fond of talking about America’s scientist shortage — the dearth of engineering and lab talent that will inevitably leave us sputtering in the global economy. But...
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Five Men of Harvard…
…gained victory today. (Sung to the tune of this.) Per tradition, I was out in Seattle over the past weekend for my college group of friends’ annual March Madness festivities. And, for the first time...
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Discontinuity and Rupture.
‘Many music critics still believe in magical black people: “Oh, they’re making crazy, avant-garde music in Chicago, and it’s called juke”,’ he says. ‘But at the same time, the privilege of being a...
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PhDon’t. | JD’s a Bust too.
“[W]hat if I told you that by ‘five hours’ I mean ’80 hours,’ and by ‘summers off’ I mean ‘two months of unpaid research sequestration and curriculum planning’? What if you’ll never have time to read...
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Adjuncting Gets Even Worse.
“Allison G. Armentrout, an adjunct instructor at Stark State College, doesn’t get paid by the hour. She earns $4,600 to teach two English composition courses…On a recent week, she spent three hours...
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America By Coach.
“You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball...
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Welcome to the Machine.
“We end up with a question of just how long the slow decay of existing systems (many of them admittedly dysfunctional) will go on without anyone, technocrat or otherwise, having to deal with the fact...
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Academia: A Sucker’s Gambit.
“The de-professionalization of the faculty is another long-running tragedy that gets a little sadder every year, as teaching college students steadily becomes an occupation for people with no tenure,...
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