Category Archives: Blogging

Never Gonna Give You Up

It’s been a while. Enough to look like this is over. It remains important to me to think: today, I might blog. And to think: I have a place to do it in. So why don’t I more often? That … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | 10 Comments

A New Year

This is not the first time I’ve gone quiet on this blog simply because I was busy. Fall 2017 was in many ways the busiest semester I’ve ever had at Swarthmore: I taught two courses, I chaired my department, I … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Politics, Swarthmore | 12 Comments

Back At It

Sorry, I’ve been very focused lately on long-form writing, and I recognize that the more I think about blogging, the less likely I am to keep that focus. But I feel ready to blog some now, and so if you … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | Comments Off on Back At It

Welcome to the Skinnerdome

I think a tremendous amount of writing so far this election season about the Presidential race shows primarily that the effect of social media on public discourse is increasingly dire. Here’s the thing: I would characterize the majority of what … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics | 3 Comments

Opt Out

There is a particular kind of left position, a habitus that is sociologically and emotionally local to intellectuals, that amounts in its way to a particular kind of anti-politics machine. It’s a perspective that ends up with its nose pressed … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 4 Comments

All Grasshoppers, No Ants

It would be convenient to think that Gawker Media‘s flaming car-wreck failure at the end of last week was the kind of mistake of individual judgment that can be fixed by a few resignations, a few pledges to do better, … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

“The Child Repents and Is Forgiven”

I occasionally out myself here at this blog, on Facebook or at Swarthmore as having a fairly encyclopedic knowledge about mainstream superhero comics, like a few other academics, but I’ve been much less inclined to make even a limited foray … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Politics | 1 Comment

A Note on Abstraction and Referents

I may eventually finish two more pieces that I had in mind for my “Grasping the Nettle” series, but I also understand very well the response that a few folks had that the whole series seems so disconnected from specifics … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment

An Ethic of Care

There’s an odd thing about privilege-checking as it has evolved into a shaming slogan, a sort of taunt. Shame only works if the target has an internal sense that the moral argument of the shamers is valid, or if the … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Grasping the Nettle, Politics | 13 Comments

Nobody Expects the Facebook Inquisition

Another day, another story of busybodies calling the police to punish another citizen for doing something that the busybody doesn’t approve of. Or in this case, not doing something, namely, not keeping their children inside and under 24/7 monitoring. 21st … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Grasping the Nettle, Politics | 3 Comments