Saturday, December 28, 2013
Colin Wilson: A Storied Life
Do you ― or does your father ― remember when John F. Kennedy died? How about C.S. Lewis? (Hint: it was the same day.) As science fiction author Ken MacLeod observes in Aeon, Colin Wilson also had "the misfortune" of dying on the same day as more famous man ― Nelson Mandela. Still for a self-taught working-class author, Wilson made some waves, beginning with his first book at age 24, The Outsider, hailed ― if only for the moment ― as Britain's answer to Sartre and Camus.
Friday, December 27, 2013
What Happens in Literature
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Sunday, December 22, 2013
Simple Rules for Getting Published
"The best papers are those in which complex ideas are expressed in a way that those who are less than immersed in the field can understand," Philip Bourne, editor-in-chief of PloS Computational Biology, advises in "Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published." While Bourne's guidance is intended for scientific writers, its practical relevance extends to the craft as a whole as in rule number one: "Read many papers and learn from both the good and the bad work of others." As I advise my academic writing students: Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Revise, revise, revise. All this and more can be found in Prof. Bourne's informative article.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Academic Writing Sine Qua Non: Something That Works
A scholarly editor is looking for what any editor is — something that will work, Prof. William Germano, a former editor in chief at Columbia University Press, observes in a recent interview. Noting times when pre-submission editing can prove beneficial, the Cooper Union dean cites ESL academic writers who need a "professional boost." Echoing my advice to writers I've been privileged to serve, Dean Germano counsels that it helps focus one's writing to imagine writing for erudite readers in other disciplines.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Are Sinking SATs an Education Omen?
Monday, November 04, 2013
Stirring Saxon Words

Monday, September 30, 2013
It's Academic
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Friday, September 06, 2013
The Mass Grave of Reflection
Whether it is through the ascending drumbeats for war or the steady drone of mindless advertisements, the empty slogans that assail our senses are constant reminders that we live in a time when critical thinking was never more needed or practised less often. As Carl Jung observes in The Undiscovered Self, “The mass crushes out the insight and reflection still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to a doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.” The day America´s Constitution dies, her once noble experiment as a democratic republic dies with it. Sic transit gloria Americae.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Practically Abandoned by One’s Friends
Whence, where, and why the English major? Adam Gopnik asks in the New Yorker, noting its impending demise like the Latin prerequisite before it ― “a dying choice
bound to a dead subject.” Despite his sympathies, Gopnik finds the apologias of
the discipline's defenders unpersuasive, mocking “The Economic Case for Saving the Humanities” proffered by Brown University’s Christina Paxson as “the kind of Letter to a Crazy Republican Congressman that
university presidents get to write.” Like most pragmatic parries, it
surrenders the tradition’s essence in the vain hope its accidents might carry
the day or, at least, prolong the inevitable. Hardly surprising, given the bottom line for Paxson’s fellow economists: “Is it worth
it?” ― not the best way to defend the intrinsic worth of the humanities, even
in an age that abhors such “useless knowledge.”
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Buzzwords Drone On
Monday, August 19, 2013
Dead to the World Around Them
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Monday, August 05, 2013
Building Blocks of English: Affixes
Affixes are building blocks of language. The four types are prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and infixes. We are familiar with prefixes, which placed at the beginning of words qualify their meaning (inappropriate) and suffixes, which convert the stem into another part of speech (celebrate to celebration). Combining forms, which can be either prefixes or suffixes, add another layer of meaning to words (biochemistry; pesticide). The least common affixes are infixes, which are placed within a word (in this case, to form the plural cupsful).
Friday, August 02, 2013
A Literary Triple Play

Thursday, May 23, 2013
Laughing at our Losses
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Laughter is often the last freedom of the vanquished, but considering the stakes at hand, it is no time for defeatism for defenders of a more human and humane culture. As a college basketball coach might urge his players, read and react!
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Rolling the Dice on Artificial Intelligence

Thursday, May 16, 2013
Lethal Loneliness
"The problem is not that I am single and likely to stay single," confided Charlotte Bronte, "it is that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely." Psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann is best known ― or rather unknown ―as the "Dr. Fried" of an erstwhile patient's autobiographical I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Her thoughts on The Science of Loneliness merit our consideration in an age in which we increasingly occupy ourselves with trivial pursuits to escape our essential loneliness.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Celebrating a Half Century of Excellence

"If anything, it was an intellectual community. It was people we knew and admired: a community of writers we knew but who hadn't come together in that way before, except for some of the critics who wrote for the Partisan Review. It was determined by friendships, by a shared belief in uncompromising quality in writing, and by a sense that much conventional criticism was superficial and lazy, accepting the mediocre." Robert Silvers, founding editor of the New York Review of Books, discusses its history as we celebrate its 50th anniversary. See Mark Danner's interview in New York for additional insights.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Farmers Market to Mens Department?
Does the increasing use of "farmers market" lead to "mens department"? Perhaps,as grammar columnist and author June Casagrande suggests in a recent podcast, although I'm inclined to chalk it up to declining attention to, or even awareness of, proper English practice. The more salient question, of course, is this: Does the prevalence of "farmers market" justify your department store's use of "mens department," "womens shoes," and "childrens toys"? Absolutely not, as she clearly explains. It's worth a listen.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Natives Are Restless
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Method to the Madness

Monday, February 18, 2013
A Curtain Call for Culture?

Timeless Moments

Friday, February 15, 2013
Marking Facebook's Face

Are Scientists Normal?

Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Science of Fabrication

Throwing the Book at Them
“The writer of a dictionary is an historian, not a lawgiver,” observed the renowned semanticist S.I. Hayakawa. Perhaps, that is why the citing of dictionaries by the U.S. Supreme Court was so rare prior to 1987. Over the past 25 years, however, as Profs. James Brudney and Lawrence Baum note in their Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper, as many as one of three statutory decisions by the High Court have invoked dictionary definitions. As is frequently the case with dictionary definitions, the connotations merit our consideration. Oasis or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst for Dictionaries
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Data Driven
Our ability to amass droves of data drives certain assumptions. Among them, as David Brook notes in the New York Times, are these: that everything that can be measured should be; that data is a reliable, transparent lens that filters out ideology and emotions; and that data will enable us to foretell the future. In introducing what promises to be an informative, ongoing exploration of what he dubs “data-ism,” Brooks extols data's capacity to disabuse us of views that fly in the face of the evidence and to shed light on emerging and overlooked patterns of behavior. The Philosophy of Data
Monday, February 11, 2013
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Sunday, February 10, 2013
Games People Play
Children know something adults have forgotten, philosopher Mark Rowlands reminds us, something we lost when we began to play “the great game of growing up and becoming someone.” Today's world is a utilitarian one in which actions have instrumental value, worth not inherent in their essence but derived from the tokens they amass ― money, for one. “Work is a classic example,” Rowlands notes. In its pure form, play has no external purpose or reward. Young children know this intuitively, reveling in the joy of the moment. If we could get lost in their spirit, we might find what we have lost. Tennis With Plato
The True Ice Age

Friday, February 08, 2013
By Jeeves, It's Wodehouse!

Monday, February 04, 2013
Racket Bawl
As arbiters of science's reputation system, journal publishers acquire copyright to the world's leading scientific output for free. They then charge scientists, who authored and reviewed the articles, and taxpayers, who
funded the research, $8 billion a year to access the findings. The exit from this revolving door lies in creating new reputation metrics, Academia.edu's Richard Price argues.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Carnival of the Animals
As Mardi Gras nears, what better time to celebrate a carnival? Composed in 1886, While French composer Camille Saint-Saens was vacationing in Austria, Le Carnival des Animaux, a suite of 14 movements, remained unpublished until his death. From an era when cartoons were also classics.
Search . . . for the Motive
In a day in which “Google” has assumed the status of a verb, the increasing role of search engines is readily apparent. Less well known is the significance of the ongoing shift from keyword to semantic search. Yet, as physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis points out, with semantic search results are determined not by data but by the proprietor's Weltanshauung. Thus, search engines have moved from indicators of what is important to arbiters of truth. “From now on, search engines will have an editorial point of view, and
search results will reflect that viewpoint,” he concludes. “We can no longer ignore the
assumptions behind the results.” Nor Hillis' analysis. The Opinions of Search Engines
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Pursuing Knowledge Is Never Useless

Friday, February 01, 2013
Hybrid Hype
For modern theorists of technology, hybridity is ontological. They believe that to be
human is to be technological. This seemingly innocent assumption has significant implications about how we think about morality, law, and politics. Perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing
masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New
Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as
redemption, and slogans masquerading as truths. The Naked and the TED
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Garbage In, Culture Out
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Revolting Academics

Monday, January 28, 2013
A Wealth of Words

Saturday, January 26, 2013
Secondary Thoughts

Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Idle Worship
“There is no such thing as not worshipping,” the writer David Forster Wallace once advised college graduates. “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” He then delineated a litany of false gods that will fail us in the end: money, beauty, power, and intellect. With appreciation to Brain Pickings' Maria Popova for calling his address to our attention. This Is Water
Labels:
beauty,
David Forster Wallace,
education,
intellect,
life,
Maria Popova,
money,
power,
society,
speech,
worship
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
What We Read Shapes Who We Are
Since broadband began its rapid expanse at the millennium's start, Internet use has skyrocketed. In 2012, users topped 2.4 billion, more than one in three of Earth's inhabitants. Time spent online averaged 16 hours a week
globally (double that in high-use countries). “We have changed how we interact,” the New York Times confirms. “Are we also changing what we are?” The question was posed to three knowledgeable observers. Their responses raise others. Are We Becoming Cyborgs?
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