Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Creative Destruction, Destruction of Creativity

Right about now, a lot of North American colleges and universities, rich and poor, public and private, are realizing that the economic foundations of their enterprise have shifted rather dramatically. Historians love to argue and argue about whether there are … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa | 30 Comments

Bruce Wayne Is the Black Glove

Busy week and I’ve been kind of feeling a bit bleak about blogging lately, so excuse the quiet. I think I’m going to completely geek out in my next couple of entries, so if you’re waiting for some African or … Continue reading

Posted in Popular Culture | 5 Comments

Finding Primary Sources

I wrote up a few notes for my first-year students working on research papers about search strategies to help find primary sources (documents, letters, memoirs, and so on). These notes follow on the students having chosen and refined a topic … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 3 Comments

Skimming the Program

I was at the American Anthropological Association meeting this weekend. I decided not to liveblog anything because a) I didn’t go to that many panels and b) the ones I did go to I went to diffidently, including being one … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 9 Comments

Irreparable Complexity, Game and World

I’m interested in the kind of complexity that arises through emergent processes, in which relatively simple rules governing the action of autonomous agents within a given environment can give rise to permanent structures or changes within the environment which then … Continue reading

Posted in Games and Gaming, Miscellany, Politics | 8 Comments

Scandal

You want to complain about what’s wrong with academia, take a look at this story. Adjuncts at the University of Tennessee system can carry a 5-5 teaching load in a course year and make only $15,000 with no benefits. You … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 13 Comments

So You Want to Know About…the Luo

Another thing that came up in a recent email exchange was a request for “starter scholarship” on a particular African nation. For most contemporary African countries, I really feel that there is not a single great “done-in-one” book that is … Continue reading

Posted in Africa | 9 Comments

On Its Stomach

The news from eastern Congo is, as it has long been, not good. I understand why outside mediators and observers want to keep trying to patch up old cease-fires or broker new ones between the ever-shifting array of combatants in … Continue reading

Posted in Africa | 52 Comments

Good Reportage

Newsweek is putting out some great political reporting on the election now that folks are linking to. Much of what they have to say about Obama and his campaign is actually more interesting than the revelations about Palin that are … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

Appalachia and Other Reflections

Interesting discussion of the blue/red map of the 2008 election at Edge of the American West. I think the commentary is very much on the money that the areas which went more strongly to McCain this time than to Bush … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Politics | 25 Comments