By Geoffrey Pullum. Monday afternoon. The classroom projector announces: “In 2 minutes the projector will go into standby mode.” After 60 seconds, it changes to: “In 1 minutes the projector will go into standby mode.”
Was it really too hard to make that “1 minute”. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. I was at a department barbecue in California last summer, where conversation had turned to some recent school shooting, and how gun-control legislation can never be enacted because we cannot get round the Second Amendment. More...
By . The students flinch. The sound of the projector shutting down is a crisp little beep. The power light flashes once, and the entire class looks to me with huge pupils. More...
By Margaret Olin. In the second meeting of my first graduate seminar at the art school in Chicago where I taught for more than two decades, the students became so enraged with one another over the interpretation of a story by Franz Kafka that bits of wadded-up paper began to fly about the room while I watched blissfully. More...
By Kathleen Dean Moore. It pains this old logic professor to read university officials’ arguments against divesting their institutions of investments in fossil fuels, not because their refusal to divest is wrong-headed, although I believe it is, but because their logic is so awful. More...
By Robert Zaretsky. "NO PHD."
So announced a license plate I glimpsed the other day — nestled, it so happened, in the rear end of a sinister, black Lamborghini. More...
By Keith Kahn-Harris. Well over a year since the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign withdrew its job offer to Steven Salaita, citing intemperate tweets and statements he made about the 2014 Gaza war, the decision continues to reverberate. More...
By . George Scialabba is no wild man. A soft-spoken, introverted soul, he doesn’t drink or smoke; no alcohol, tobacco, or recreational drugs. Healthy, moderate eating (no red meat, and "a kind of cerebral Mediterranean diet") keeps Scialabba, at age 67, lean to a degree that is downright un-American. More...
By Kelly Field. Science fiction lately has been dominated by postapocalyptic, dystopian futures: environmental desolation, runaway nanotechnology, AI overlords, genetic discrimination, and the death of privacy. More...
By . Education stakeholders often discuss the potential transformative power of data. To support the technical infrastructure necessary to infuse education with data, policymakers created State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDSs). Originally these systems were intended to generate reports to comply with federal requirements. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
