I spent the 4th of July post singing the praises of Rolling Stone magazine, and suggesting that their investigative reporting, arguably the only remaining vital component of the magazine, has served mightily over the pas decade in the service of American liberty. I still believe that, but today I wanted to wonder with you about [...]
I wouldn’t want fcrp to become a narrowly sectarian blog, and hope that today’s post won’t be taken in that spirit. I think I’ve “come out,” previously, as a Christian in these pages, so my own prejudices in that area are already on the table. But I’m going to complain today about the depiction of [...]
My apologies again, faithful readers: not the 24 hours I’d promised I’d keep you waiting, but quite a few more. My “technological problems” boil down really to a new installation of Windows 7 on my College laptop—and its seeming unwillingness, now, to do most anything I ask of it when I’m working at home. I [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about my job lately, in the early days of the new school year. I know this is nothing a hipster would say, but I just love my job. I love my profession; I love my career. And I was thinking today about how it all started. When I was sixteen [...]
For those fcrp readers who aren’t regular readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education—c’mon, I know you’re out there—I bring you this story from the groves of academe. Pop quiz: Where is Drake University? Why, it’s located “at the northeast edge of Des Moines,” the web page tells us, with no apparent sense of irony [...]
My apologies in advance—or in arrears, perhaps—to any and all fcrp readers who have both heard, and are utterly fed up with, this Justin Bieber party trick. It’s hard for a guy with a day job to keep up with the speed of sound, even when the sound’s this slow. Maybe Hipster-hated Chris Martin can [...]
Thanks to my friend Michael Coyle for today’s provocation. The term “hipster”—which just a couple of years ago would have seemed as lame and dated as “cat” or “daddy-o”—has inexplicably become “hip” again. Pomona student Tim McKee wrote a great paper about this last year; I owe most of what I know about it to [...]
So, I’ve noticed something in the conversations of my students and my hipper colleagues, over about the past year I’d say. As a part of speech, “so” most commonly acts as an adverb, and often as an intensifier—”He’s so good looking!” It’s much less frequently found at the start of a sentence, especially in formal [...]
Not surprisingly—no surprise to me, anyway—discussions last night of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read with our first-year students were very animated and very smart. Each year we assign one common book for all of our incoming students to read, ostensibly as a kind of community-building exercise: All of our first-year [...]
I’m going to write today’s posts in two parts: the pre-freshman portion and the post-freshman portion. (We don’t really use the word “freshman” anymore, of course, but the phrase “pre-first-year students” just doesn’t work. The eye is offended.) Tonight (Sunday night), along with a couple dozen of my colleagues at Pomona College, I’ll be leading [...]