Category Archives: Cleaning Out the Augean Stables

I Would Have Had My Great Books, Too, If It Weren’t For Those Meddling Hippies

Mark Edmundson complains, again, that the dirty hippies screwed up the world and killed literature in the process. Rather than a dreary point-by-point response to everything objectionable in the essay, I want to focus on one issue in it that … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Books, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Popular Culture | 22 Comments

iFlit? kk: uBore.

One thing you can say for the first wave of blogs: ubiquitious self-publishing was an unintended cure for the tendency of editors or publishers in old-media publications to seize the microphone for their own indulgence. A hundred thousand commenters up … Continue reading

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

Literacy Quizzes (Again)

There is probably no point whatsoever to a critique of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s civics literacy quiz (via 11d), but hope springs eternal, I guess. First off, my generic criticisms of these kinds of historic or social-science literacy quizzes. Usually, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Politics, Production of History | 5 Comments