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Author Archives: Timothy Burke
An Oath For Experts: First Principle
I’ve been thinking for a while about trying to develop and push out some simple statements of principle that anyone claiming to be an expert or authority should follow, in the mode of the Hippocratic Oath. The reason I think … Continue reading
Posted in Oath for Experts
26 Comments
Shell Game
Louis Menand’s talk at Swarthmore on Friday pushed me towards some additional thoughts on the liberal arts, higher education and the humanities. My first response is to pick up on one of a number of statistics that Menand reviewed in … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
4 Comments
The Usefulness of Uselessness, Redux
Faculty who believe in the liberal arts approach and who think this means that there ought to be some kind of firewall between what students study and what they do in their careers or anything else in their lives after … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
10 Comments
Moore’s Law (Munitions Edition)
Let’s say twenty years ago I’d written a science fiction novel about how a futuristic nation has a massive force of flying robot bombs that are programmed with some target parameters and just fly around 24/7 on patrol looking for … Continue reading
Posted in Africa, Generalist's Work, Politics
21 Comments
The State of the Art III: Facebook (and 500px and Flickr) as a Window Into Social Media
III. The Business Model as Belief and Reality Why is Facebook such a repeatedly bad actor in its relationship to its users, constantly testing and probing for ways to quietly or secretly breach the privacy constraints that most of its … Continue reading
The Slightly-More-Longue Duree
Historians and anthropologists studying sub-Saharan Africa are especially sensitive, for good reason, about linking current events on the continent to deep or precolonial histories. We’re all too intensely aware of the deep, sustained way that European colonialism represented African societies … Continue reading
Posted in Africa
3 Comments
Now
I don’t think there’s much more to say about Aaron Swartz. I didn’t know him personally but like many others I am a beneficiary of the work he did. And I have agreed for much of my life as an … Continue reading
Apres Le Perturbation
There are three ways to look at what’s happening right now to the economic and social viability of the professions and various kinds of cultural work. One is silly, one is depressing and one is ambiguous. Guess which I prefer? … Continue reading
Guns as Witchcraft
Over the holidays, after the shootings in Newtown, I was in a conversation on Facebook in which I reiterated my point from earlier in the year that in the United States, gun ownership and gun practices are culture, and as … Continue reading
Why It’s Not Even Worth Talking About Gaza
I don’t often link primarily to just say, “I’ll have what he’s having, bartender”, but this short essay by David Atkins on Gaza is a good reason to break that habit. As Atkins says, it’s pointless and thankless in several … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
14 Comments