Posts by Clarissa
I want to believe in the younger generation. It's nice to think that today's kids will be smarter than we are. Sometimes, though, it's hard to maintain this illusion, especially in view of news like these:
HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- General rule of thumb: when looking to buy marijuana, don't text the sheriff. Authorities said a Helena teen hit a wrong number and inadvertently sent a message to Lewis
Corporate structures and conservative political forces that support them are seething with hatred towards the last place in America where people don't have to slave 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year without job security, guaranteed leave, etc.: the academia. They will not rest until they destroy us because while we exist, we will serve as a reminder to everybody else that some freedom from
It will take you just a couple of minutes to send an e-mail to Prof. Davies and Mr. Ciborowski of Swansea University but the benefits of doing so might prove to be enormous.
To: Professor Richard Davies, Vice-Chancellor, Swansea University, vc@swan.ac.uk
Cc: Raymond Ciborowski, Registrar and Head of Administration, Swansea University, raymond.ciborowski@swan.ac.uk
Bcc: mlswansea@yahoo.co.uk
I have been asked to distribute the following sad news. Please do the same and take action to save Modern Languages in Wales. We cannot stand by while the Humanities are being destroyed everywhere in the English-speaking world. If it feels like Wales is too far away and shouldn't be any of our concern, think about all the similar measures that are starting to take place here in the US. Tomorrow,
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (Second Edition) just came out. It's a huge volume of 2,500 pages that offers selections from the writings of 150 major theorists of literature. Many changes have been made since the first edition, and for the most part, these changes are welcome. Sometimes, the editors go a little overboard in their wish to be less Eurocentric in their selection of
I have no idea why I keep coming across these hilarious scientific studies today, but here you go.
A group of researchers just proved that thinking about money makes most people unhappy and less able to enjoy life:
Psychologist Jordi Quoidbach of the University of Liège in Belgium and his colleagues divided 374 adults, ranging from custodians to senior administrators, into two randomly assigned
Turns out it's better to be a heavy drinker than to abstain from alcohol completely:
Even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables - socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on - the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year
This is a sentence every literature professor hates hearing. I can torture my students with endless lab assignments, written exercises in their workbooks, oral presentations that need to be prepared in their free time, and all kinds of boring, time-consuming activities. They bear everything patiently and almost never complain. When, however, I mention that we will be reading something, a
Since I started working at my current university, there has been one aspect of my job that made me feel blessed: the Chair of my department. We are not very used to having great bosses in academia. A person can be a great scholar, a fantastic colleague, and a talented pedagogue but that doesn't mean they will make a good leader of people. There is a certain set of skills and a certain way of
Check out this brilliant post on why buying real estate in this country is a truly bad idea.
I know that this isn't the kind of news that anybody wants to hear, but the reasoning in this post is unassailable.
