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Category Archives: Academia
The Why of Culture War
One of the arguments I understand Rick Perlstein to be making in Nixonland is that American political life has been increasingly shaped by a public culture war since the 1960s because that was the distinctive political response crafted by Nixon … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Blogging, Politics
6 Comments
Drink Drank Drunk
Earlier this week, I happened to catch a segment of Marty Moss-Coane’s Radio Times focusing on the drinking age and the issue of student drinking at universities. The guests were John McCardell, the former Middlebury president who is calling for … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
5 Comments
Hey It’s Franklin
I mentioned in my last post that studied moderation isn’t much comfort to me lately. That’s partly because, however it might otherwise appear from this blog, I’m not trying to calculate the distance between the two most extreme positions I … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Politics
9 Comments
One-A-Day: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
I’m going to start trying again to write comments on the reading I’ve been doing over the last six months. It hasn’t been quite one-a-day, but there’s a lot of books and articles in my backlog to talk about. Pathfinders … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves
4 Comments
Software Bleg
So. I’m thinking of seriously rebooting my rather shambolic note-taking, research and organizing practices, and I want to think consciously for a bit about what kinds of software or IT solutions out there fit my habits as well as some … Continue reading
Some Cattle to Go With the Hat
The rising cost of petroleum is doing more work on behalf of environmental sustainability than many campaigns designed to promote virtuously green or sustainable lifestyles. When sustainability means substantially lowered costs, or consists of a simple alignment between two kinds … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
5 Comments
The Manufacture of Culture
You know, we worry too much about the Punch-and-Judy show of political blogging, not to mention the quiet, relatively cobwebbed corner of the Internet occupied by self-declared academic blogs. If you want a look at what blogs are really for, … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Consumerism, Advertising, Commodities, Food
10 Comments
Mad Science
I heard a compelling segment on This American Life over the weekend. It was a profile of a self-taught electrician and engineer named Bob Berenz who had become convinced that Einstein was wrong, specifically in his formulation of “E = … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Production of History
20 Comments
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
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