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Disciplinary reading recommendations
Congrats to Margaret Soltan (aka University Diarist), whose Inside Higher Ed column today explores the nature of English as a field, or the lack thereof. It’s not my discipline, but I understand her concerns. History was in the midst of such consternation a while ago, or maybe it’s still there and I haven’t noticed. And […]
A paean to the city where I learned
This morning I just discovered a wonderful weekly-paper article on linguists’ analysis of native Philadelphian speech. I spent ten years in the Philly area, and I have to distort one of Jim Quinn’s sentences thus: Our dialect is so unique the University of Pennsylvania has had a whole department, led by William Labov, one of […]
Do I look like I’m from MIT?
Yesterday, I was at the Central Park hawk bench, enjoying a discussion with one of the birding regulars there about Pale Male, when she asked me if I taught at MIT. Well, I’ll admit that’s the most unusual question I’ve ever heard from an adult. Occasionally I pretend that I’ve heard a rude question for […]
Plagiarist e-mails…
I just received an interesting e-mail from Judith Kelly, the author of a “memoir” whose work was surprisingly similar to a work by Antonia White in 1933 and more recent work by Hilary Mantel. I’m a bit at a loss as to how to respond, so I thought I’d let my readers vote. Here’s what […]
Volunteer annoyances
By Sherman Dorn on December 13, 2005
I volunteer in my son’s elementary school on Monday mornings, but things have changed this year. Because of a state law requiring fingerprinting/background checks for vendor employees in public schools, school districts are having to make choices about which volunteer situations require fingerprinting (at a cost of $50/person, which the district can’t really pay and […]
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