Not of General Interest

  How's everyone doing? The Economist cover says it all, really. Teaching. This semester is all done & in the books, except for grad...

 It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there are distractions in the country & in academe right now (waves hands in the direction o...

Undine: "Welcome to 2025! New year, new me! This is going to be the year when I get so much writing ---" Covid enters the chat, wi...

  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and (nearly) Happy New Year! I mostly wanted to post in order to give you this peaceful picture to ring i...

  https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/comparative-literature-zrinka-stahuljak-artificial-intelligence?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCkWJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHev...

  And now for something completely different: I'm shifting gears by resurrecting Dear Ms. Undine for a post. As an avid if shamefaced co...

 If you can't stand any more election stuff, skip this one.   This song (music by one of my favorite Old Hollywood bombastic composers, ...

 Internal monologue of the last 15 minutes: "You have papers to grade . . . don't look at that MLA AI report that you couldn't ...

 AI, and the students' use of it to generate papers, consumed far too much of my brain earlier this semester. I'm teaching online, s...

 I’m working on an author now who made choices in her life—and whose characters make choices—that make you want to yell “don’t do it!” This ...

 Happy September! Here's the not-much-news so far: Classes have started, as usual prompting a mad scramble to get everything done.  Also...

Our eyes are precious things, and they are also smart ones. I know they only transmit images--it's the brain that interprets--so maybe i...

 Because I'm habitually late to the party with social trends, I'm only now catching up to the tradwife phenomenon. According to the ...

On the HBO show Silicon Valley, there's a pivotal moment when VC funder Monica confesses to the protagonist, Richard, that, to her endur...

Still plugging away and making good progress on the long-term project that must get done this summer.  Still not going to fabulous places a...

Update and content warning for sexual abuse: Taking down the previous "writing inspiration" post because of the following.  Update...

 Grades are in, and as I said over at Dame Eleanor's, I deliberately did not submit to the conferences I usually attend, however shiny t...

Based on the two or three students who consistently use it according to the evidence of (1) my own eyes and (2) GPTZero, AI produces papers ...

When you know intellectually that the snow will stop some time, but in your heart, it's Groundhog Day forever: "It's going to b...

Those of you who are Frasier fans may recognize in my title one of the all-time great episodes, "Look Before You Leap." I will not...