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Author Archives: Timothy Burke
Chagnon (Again)
I was toying a bit with going to the American Anthropological Association meetings again this year given that they’re right here in Philadelphia, but I’m up to my ears in overdue work of various sorts, and I’ve had a busy … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
3 Comments
Anatomy of a Search
If there’s anything that I think needs to be learned through experience or through directly witnessing the experience of others, it’s online information-seeking. I don’t think you can give a useful general description of how to search that a student … Continue reading
I For One Welcome My New Infrared Faucet Overlord
Interesting post and discussion at 11d on Sandra Tsing Loh’s latest essay in the Atlantic Monthly, which I read on the train this week. I thought the essay was terrible for a variety of reasons, many of them stylistic. There’s … Continue reading
If You Must
Via Margaret Soltan, an interesting thread on PowerPoint in the classroom. I still think that PointPoint is a scapegoat of sorts, that bad pedagogy that uses PowerPoint was bad before PointPoint or even personal computers were involved in higher education. … Continue reading
Double Down
Every once in a while, you see a public figure say something and think to yourself, “I am almost certain that a historian fifty or a hundred years from now is going to be using that quote to capture the … Continue reading
Posted in Good Quote, Bad Quote, Politics
3 Comments
The (Skilled) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Our Associate Provost is organizing a workshop to talk about how (or perhaps whether) we teach presentation and speaking skills in our courses. I’m planning to attend: I think it’s a really important issue. I worry a lot about many … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
5 Comments
Marshall, Will and Holly Sell Some Routine Tobacco Products
I’ve been talking a lot lately about the mismatch between levels or scales of social action and social knowledge. Mostly I think that’s a question that involves the design and organization of institutions, governments, and social networks. Sometimes, though, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Popular Culture
4 Comments
End User Complaint
The historian Randall Packard gave an interesting talk at Swarthmore last week about the history of malaria eradication. Like many historians, he ends up with a skeptical view of contemporary projects and plans. As he sees it, current attempts to … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
7 Comments
Reality Got Problem Set #3 Wrong, Not Me
The story this week about two physicists who have suggested that the Large Hadron Collider is being sabotaged from the future so that it won’t produce a Higgs boson (or is it that it will have produced a Higgs boson … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellany
5 Comments
Digital Search II: A User Perspective on Database Design
If I’m anxious about Google becoming a database vendor, it’s partly because the user experience with existing databases has been so dismal to date. On the other hand, Google’s understanding of and commitment to usability is head and shoulders above … Continue reading