Not of General Interest

From David Brooks's column on Hemingway's house in Cuba , with commentary in italics (I know it's David Brooks, but give it a ch...

What happens every spring? No, not baseball. No, not daffodils, although they happen, too. Spring, and especially the end of the semester,...

Figure 1. Walter White in Breaking Bad ?  At The Chronicle, " Do You Know How Lucky You Are?" asks that very question. (It...

I was blown away by xykademiqz's fabulous post "A Good Little Girl," which I had somehow missed the first time around. Go rea...

Dear Ms. Undine, Why do people like to play April Fool's Day pranks? Especially computer pranks, like Google's failed mic drop ...

When you go to a huge conference that you've never been to before, where your field is only a small part of the conference and there ar...

Some writing inspiration ahead. First of all, Maria Konnikova's "How to Beat Writer's Block" at The New Yorker sums the...

Dear Ms. Undine, Every day on the interwebs, I see new words that no one defines but that everyone seems to understand all of a sudden. ...

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play, So we sat in the house All that cold, cold wet day. (You know the rest) I've been...

This is going to be short, and it ought to be tagged "I skim read it so you don't have to"or maybe "Tempest in a Teacup ...

Because we all need a little writing inspiration now (you know you do), and you surely want to see what a literary scholar's writing h...

We should designate February the "Dream Big" month. We do this at the beginning of the school year, but maybe now would be a goo...

As one part of my job, I have to deal with Fiendish Counterintuitive Software.  (I figure that every campus has some kind of FCS, so I'm...

 Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties because it's COLD out there today! So remembering the "writing...

Historiann nails it, as usual, by calling out the gendered mommy politics of "Hillary, can you excite us? ".  I am sick to death ...

At the New York Times, Adam Grant suggests not being a "pre-crastinator" but a procrastinator. He used to write everything weeks ...

Here's some writing inspiration from prolific and popular authors, from what I've been reading during my lunch breaks. Lunch readi...

Happy New Year! The resolutions and memes are still going strong: Fie's ongoing series Flavia Fescue and JaneB have done the New ...

Both GetaLifePhD (" How to become more creative, focused, relaxed, and productive") and Fie have recently posted New Year's...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Turning into a cooking and cleaning machine for a couple of weeks is my favorite part of Christmas, e...