Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Eeyore and the Unintended Consequence

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I don’t expect much to come of John Holbo’s careful breakdown of the non-philosophy underlying Megan McArdle’s blanket antagonism to all health care proposals, but there’s one point buried in there that’s worth pulling out for its general usefulness. Namely, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments

The Limits to Shill

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I continue to feel pretty diffident about the controversy among anthropologists about the Human Terrain Team and other uses of qualitative social science by the U.S. military over the past decade or so. The issue for me is not whether … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

Ghosts in the Machine

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Every once in a while, I’ll catch a colleague from the natural sciences playfully tweaking a humanist for the volume of prose they lavish on a routine task like writing an email or a committee report. (Or, yeah, a blog … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 2 Comments

How to Read a Curriculum

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

We already know that higher education applicants and their families have some difficulty decoding the information available about colleges and universities to find the institutions that they want to apply to. That’s the major reason that higher tuition prices in … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 15 Comments

The Right Firewood

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Back from an extended camping trip where I was blissfully out of range of digital technology for most of the time. (Though I weep now looking at my email inbox.) A good time was had by all. One interesting experience … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Domestic Life | 1 Comment

Putting Syllabi Online

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I kept meaning to get around to this last week, but I was snowed under with two other things that needed to get done before the academic year starts up again. Adam Kotsko asks an eminently sensible question: why don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 14 Comments

Arresting Power

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Some years ago, I got mugged late at night at an urban train station. I was pretty stupid: I had a friend drop me off to a nearly deserted train station on the most deserted side. Two guys started towards … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments

Red Herrings Overboard

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Many of the criticisms directed at information technology in the classroom get hung up on a misattribution issue. Eric Rauchway makes this point very effectively: the problem with bad PowerPoint presentations is often not the software, but the presenter. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 7 Comments

A Tale of Two Game Movies

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I’m pretty surprised that Sam Raimi has agreed to make a film based on World of Warcraft. I still enjoy World of Warcraft as well as find it intellectually interesting but the idea that its mashed-up, derivative, internally contradictory, heavily … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Popular Culture | 7 Comments

Mine!

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I didn’t catch the complaint of some philosophers against a small NEH course-development program called “Enduring Questions” the first time around, but picked up on it via Savage Minds. The NEH program offers a small amount of financial support for … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 9 Comments