Pages
- Photos at Flickr
- About Me
- Emergence Notes
- Last Collection Speech, Swarthmore, 2002
- Permanent Entries
- Power Can Lose
- Research Libraries Group/OCLC Programs Talk, June 2007
- Scholarly Articles
- Syllabi
- History 1L The History of Play and Leisure, Spring 2008
- History 1Y History of the Future Spring 2011
- History 61 The Production of History, Spring 2007
- History 62 The History of Reading, Spring 2007
- History 62, The History of Reading, Spring 2012
- History 80 The Whole Enchilada
- History 83 What Ifs and Might-Have-Beens, Spring 2011
- History 87 Development and Modern Africa, Spring 2007
- History 88 The Social History of Consumption, Spring 2008
- History 89 Environmental History of Africa
- History 8B History of Southern Africa, Spring 2011
- History 8B. Mfecane, Mines and Mandela: Southern Africa from 1600 to 2006, Fall 2006
- History 8C From Leopold to Kabila: The Bad Twentieth Century in Central Africa, Spring 2008
- History of the Future, Spring 2006
- The NOTES ARCHIVE
Archives
- June 2021
- January 2021
- November 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- January 2019
- October 2018
- May 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- November 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- May 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
Categories
- Academia
- Africa
- Blogging
- Books
- Cleaning Out the Augean Stables
- Consumerism, Advertising, Commodities
- Defining "Liberal Arts"
- Digital Humanities
- Domestic Life
- Food
- Games and Gaming
- Generalist's Work
- Good Quote, Bad Quote
- Grasping the Nettle
- I'm Annoyed
- Information Technology and Information Literacy
- Intellectual Property
- Miscellany
- Oath for Experts
- Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System
- Pictures from an Institution
- Politics
- Popular Culture
- Production of History
- Sheer Raw Geekery
- Swarthmore
- The Mixed-Up Bookshelves
- Uncategorized
Meta
Author Archives: Timothy Burke
Big Pharma, Big Wonkery
In the current issue, Discover has an interesting article on pharmaceutical testing. On one level, it’s consistent with many other critiques of the pharmaceutical industry and of academic and medical researchers who do its bidding. However, the article also raises … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
11 Comments
The People Are The Enemy
There’s not a lot to say about Zimbabwe that I have not already said. Things are bad, they don’t look to get better, they have the potential to get even worse, hard as that is to imagine. It’s not about … Continue reading
Posted in Africa
34 Comments
When Wertham Comes A-Calling
I’m working through David Hajdu’s excellent The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. While it’s a story that I already knew well, Hadju has collected a lot of interesting reminiscences from comic-book creators of the … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Popular Culture
18 Comments
Mirror Mirror
I think if you did a search-and-replace on this David Brooks column, substituting the columnist’s own name every time he mentions Obama, it would be a pretty apt description of Brooks’ calculatedly dishonest approach to commentary.
Posted in Politics
6 Comments
M is for Mandarin
Via 11D, here’s an article by William Deresiewicz that I like considerably more than his recent standard-issue world-we-have-lost complaint about contemporary English Departments. Deresiewicz is concerned about the particular character of meritocratic elitism in contemporary higher education, and about the … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
17 Comments
It’s a Mystery
Kind of on a nostalgic impulse, I decided to pick up the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which came out on June 6th. I haven’t played so-called tabletop games, including D&D, for a long time, but this release caught … Continue reading
Posted in Games and Gaming, Popular Culture
8 Comments
Neither Victims Nor Torturers
Alberto Mora was one of the speakers at Swarthmore’s commencement this spring. He gave a short, terse and I thought powerful speech about the decisions he had made as General Counsel for the U.S. Navy and about the consequences of … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
6 Comments
Pitstop
Let’s look past Hilary Clinton to think a bit about how this primary season unfolded. I think there’s something important about the votes that went her way. First, yes, there were people who preferred Clinton for sound enough reasons: either … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
2 Comments
The Garden of Earthly Delights
June’s arrived, which usually means that I’ve accomplished about as much as I can hope to with my garden for the year, except maintenance and any non-planting work I want to do. When we moved in to our current home, … Continue reading
Posted in Domestic Life, Miscellany
14 Comments