Monthly Archives: June 2009

Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC

Raph Koster, “A New Kind of World”, keynote Focused on Metaplace. Had to ban his own brother from UO. Brother is now cyberactivist. But virtual worlds don’t have that relevance, really. Nothing has happened in them that matters by comparison … Continue reading

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 2 Comments

This Cupcake Will Not Stand

Don’t you kind of wonder how this woman thought she’d come out looking from this New York Times article? On one hand, she seems perfectly aware that most of the other parents at the schools her kids have been at … Continue reading

Posted in Domestic Life | 11 Comments

History As It Was

I’m finally getting around to last week’s NY Times piece by Patricia Cohen about the decline of the “traditional” specializations in history departments. Rather like the last Cohen piece that drew my attention, it feels a bit detached from time … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 2 Comments

The Usefulness of Scholarship

If you define erudition as encyclopedic knowledge about a body of discrete facts, then welcome to the age of distributed erudition. It’s still a very good thing to have those facts in your head rather than to pop up on … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

Colonial Africa: A List of Questions

I think I’ve hit on a catchy structure for a modest reshuffling of my Honors seminar in Colonial Africa. Much of my reading list will remain the same, but this restructuring is designed to make the way I look at … Continue reading

Posted in Africa | 9 Comments

Jump. Jump Now! (Or Later.) (Or Climb Down Slowly.)

Elite colleges and universities chased each other to a budgetary precipice. Did peer institutions build a new building of some kind? You need one! Did they dramatically expand services to the student body? Do it too! Redesign the dining hall … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 13 Comments

Gordon Brown and Omar Bongo

About the only thing I can say about Omar Bongo being dead is, “I hope it hurt a bit”. You can’t even say, “Thank goodness that’s over”, because his death won’t change much if anything about the way that the … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Politics | 5 Comments

DIY Discoveries

I’ve spent a good portion of the last week catching up on household tasks of various kinds. Whether it’s something I’m increasingly comfortable with, like gardening, or something where I’m still finding my way like working with power tools on … Continue reading

Posted in Domestic Life | 16 Comments