Know What You Know
Words to Live By
By Margaret Andrews. Steve Jobs famously mentioned a poster he saw as a young boy and how the message stayed with him throughout his life, helping him to know when it was time to make a change. The poster Jobs remembered said something to the effect of “If you live each day as if it were your last, one day you’ll most certainly be right.” Read more...
"Marriage Markets" and the Value Of a College Degree
By Joshua Kim. Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family
by June Carbone and Naomi Cahn
Published in May of 2014.
This is the sort of book that reminds me why I became a sociologist (now lapsed). Carbone and Cahn, a couple of law professors, draw on a wide body of sociological literature to explain how trends in economic inequality and changing family formation patterns reinforce each other. Read more...
Breaking "The Glass Cage"
By Joshua Kim. The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. By Nicholas Carr.
Published in September of 2014.
The problem with the The Glass Cage is not that Nicholas Carr is a technology skeptic. We need more skepticism when it comes to the use of digital tools. Read more...
Shelter from the Economic Storm
By John Warner. Despite having published five novels, two of which - The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying – would become enduring classics, it wasn’t until William Faulkner sold a handful of short stories to national magazines that he could afford a home.
The house, in Oxford, MS cost him $6000 in 1930.[1] He dubbed it Rowan Oak and lived there with his wife Estelle and her two children from her first marriage. Following Estelle’s death in 1972, it was deeded to the University of Mississippi, which maintains it as a museum. Read more...
Audience
By Matt Reed. Yesterday’s article about a college president making some staggeringly sexist comments about campus rape had some lessons beyond the obvious. (For the record, the obvious would include “don’t be a sexist jerk.”) Read more...
Time Travel with a Ten Year Old
By Matt Reed. The Girl has a bit of the philosopher in her. Sometimes it catches me off-guard.
The Girl and I, driving home from some errands last night:
TG: I wonder why we find animals cute. I mean, back in caveman times, furry things could attack us!
Me: That’s true. Read more...
'Doing It My Way'
By Arica Lubin. Are you interested in forging a career path that may be off the so-called beaten path? Do you wonder what success looks like on this path and what principles have guided these career trailblazers? Read on. Read more...
What's the Academic's Role?
By Jason D. Seacat. Is it appropriate for academics to cross the boundary between conducting research and engaging in advocacy on the basis of their empirical findings? For the first time in my career, I have really begun grappling with this question. This summer marked the greatest amount of attention paid to any research project I have conducted. The Journal of Health Psychology published my project, titled “A Daily Diary Assessment of Female Weight Stigmatization.” Read more...