On laws and effects that aren’t so
There is a certain piquancy in the utter solemnity with which Wikipedia entries assume the truthfulness of Baumol’s cost disease and Campbell’s law. The first is a putative truism that labor-intensive fields have lower productivity increases by dint of that trait, and the second is another putative truism that all stakes on measures distort the trustworthiness […]
Watch, but ridicule
A blog entry today on the Inside Higher Ed site helped me realize what's bugging me about the conversations around Bill Cronon and the Wisconsin GOP's crass efforts to intimidate faculty: [Another reason to be skittish about working in public higher ed is] the open records request in Wisconsin for Bill Cronon's emails. Not that, […]
I’m sick of the “it’s tough applying to colleges” genre
Today, Rebecca Catalanello has a detailed, thoughtful story in the St. Pete Times all about getting rejected by private and flagship state universities. And I gritted my teeth through every paragraph because nowhere in the piece is there any discussion of a few facts: Every single one of the high school seniors she interviewed was accepted […]
I am the most boring teacher, to me
Thank goodness for new "easy to use" programs to record lectures, and we hates it. Hates it. FOREVER! A week ago, this part of Florida saw nine tornadoes on a day of severe thunderstorms, and only a small part of my T-Th morning class came. This Tuesday, another line of severe thunderstorms in the morning. […]
Bill Cronon: a quick note
Like thousands of other historians, I have admired Bill Cronon's scholarship for years and think the Wisconsin GOP was nuts to go after his emails through a public-records request of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the epitome of the solid scholar and far from the evangelizing radical I bet the Wisconsin GOP was hoping […]