Image of the Day
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Don’t be entirely surprised if this Golden Pheasant replaces the Bald Eagle as the National Bird: Photographed at Hangzhou Safari Park in Hangzhou, China (Reuters/Stringer)
PostTruth Is the OED’s Word of the Year for 2016
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the opening paragraphs of “From Truthiness to PostTruth, Just in Time for Donald Trump: Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year Should Scare the Hell out of You,” an article written by Erin Keane for Salon: “Remember back in 2006, when Stephen Colbert, the fictional conservative blowhard TV personality played…
Two Writing Prompts for Students (and Faculty)
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is an announcement from Prose: Dear students: The platform that brought you #Write4Good invites you to participate in a new writing challenge. This one has a chance to make literary history. Let’s take a look at the prompt: It’s record-breaking time. Together, we are going to break the world record for…
Breitbarting: Post-Objective, Post-Responsibility and Post-Education
BY AARON BARLOW In 2012, I proposed the term ‘breitbarting’ with a narrower definition than, I think, the word deserves today. At that time, I limited it to what Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe proved so skilled at doing. They designed strategies of interview, editing and presentation to make a predetermined point (not to explore…
Juxtaposition of the Day
BY MARTIN KICH This is a double juxtaposition for the price of one. Note the order of the two articles—the implicit greater concern for the seeming epidemic of dog shootings by police over the incidence of hate crimes. Here are the six “Fast Facts” in the second article: “1. The new report covers incidents that…
News Flash on Trump U Suits in New York
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH President-Elect Trump Has Agreed to Pay $25 Million to Settle Civil Fraud Suits against Trump University By Washington Post Staff November 18 at 4:20 PM He has agreed to pay $25 million to former customers of the defunct real estate seminar program, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. From an…
Academe Author Ibram X. Kendi Wins National Book Award for Nonfiction
BY KELLY HAND Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi Hardcover On November 16, the National Book Foundation awarded Ibram X. Kendi the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. We congratulate him and…
Don't Mourn, Organize–Part II
BY AARON BARLOW The first ‘bigly’ Twitter and academic freedom case was that of Associate Professor Steven Salaita just two-and-a-half years ago (there were others earlier, including that in 2013 of Professor David Guth that resulted in a policy instituted by the Kansas Board of Regents that “faculty members and other employees can be fired…
Academics Earn $1,000/Hour Promoting Mega-Mergers
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the opening paragraphs of a new report by Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott for ProPublica: “A serial acquirer, AT&T must persuade the government to allow every major deal. Again and again, the company has relied on economists from America’s top universities to make its case before the Justice Department…
Putting the Election Results in Visual Perspective
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Standard Map: Map Adjusting for Electoral Votes: Map Adjusting for Population: None of this changes the results, but it may provide an incentive to change the results in 2018 and 2020. This map does not resemble the maps in 1972 and 1984, and yet the results were very…