Not of General Interest

In the comments on the last post, Gwinne had asked about what I'd done with my time on sabbatical. Reading all the Facebook, blog, a...

In the spirit of those old commercials that said "don't hate me because I'm beautiful," I christen this post "don...

I was so sorry to see, on Twitter and Inside Higher Ed, a report on the death of Scott Eric Kaufmann, who wrote at Acephalous , Lawyers, G...

In Hamilton, the second act is--let's just say very, very sad. Lin-Manuel Miranda calls it a "cryfest," and he wrote it, so he...

Nicoleandmaggie have some links for giving . It's what we can do now to help. If you have not heard Kate McKinnon's powerful rendi...

Well, the chipper feeling of that last post didn't last long. I didn't see this coming, did you? In academia, we knew it couldn...

Go and vote, if you haven't already! It's an inspiring day, isn't it? How could you not be a little choked up at all the peopl...

Figure 1. It got your attention, didn't it? This little number--"Why Professors Are Writing Crap That Nobody Reads"--was a...

At The Chronicle, " How to Live Less Anxiously in Acade me" Carl Cederstrom and Michael Marinetto suggest four ways to live less a...

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Mark Bauerlein has declared that "We've reached a point where we need a jolt," and that the name of...

Figure 1. Not my desk, but I can dream. At The Atlantic , "Hoarding in the Time of Marie Kondo"  talks about the dilemma of th...

It's been a month since I've posted here (really?), and a busy one. My book is out, and I wish I could post a picture, because I ...

Figure 1. You can read this, right? In "Handwriting Just Doesn't Matter," a clickbait-y title that considerably overstate...

A few years ago, in 2010, I wrote a post noting how "I hope you are well" had started appearing as the opening to most of the emai...

Figure 1. Like the version in my great-aunt's house. [If you're tired of my posts about/current interest in issues of class, you...

Take a break . That's what everyone thinks academics do in the summer, to our infinite fury. "Take a break FROM GETTING PAID FOR ...

As most of you have probably figured out from all those shout-outs to Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and the rest, contemporary fiction isn...

Note: Published as a distraction from the unrelentingly grim national news. For thoughtful reflections on those events, see the recent posts...

Hamilton was an exuberant genius who performed at a fiendish pace and must have produced the maximum number of words that a human being ca...

Reason for blog absence: travel and conferences and more travel and more conferences. Paid for by the department or frequent flyer miles a...