In working on a review, I had occasion to reference George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. While I’m not a particular partisan of plain prose, his advice on writing is — in general — still quite sound for anyone today, and especially scholars.
Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
Secret Blog
One reason why I have been blogging less lately — besides travel and the fact that September appears to be the Devil’s Month at McGill (as February was at my last job) — is that my move to administration, while taking up some time, doesn’t make for interesting blogging. And when it does make for …
Raves
first of all, I am absolutely and completely in love with this Besnard Lakes CD and am sorry I had to miss them in pop montreal while I was in Durham, but that happens. I am especially fond of a song called Thomasina that compresses just so in my headphones or on my earbuds. Interestingly, …
A Week Later. . .
. . .I have returned to Montreal and undertaken the long and complex process of reducing the huge piles of paper (and bits) awaiting me. But I write not to complain about impending fellowship deadlines. Rather, I write to extoll the virtues of the podcasting conference. It was an unusual conference for me, since it …
A Milestone
Today, I answered my first query letter in French without running it through an automatic translator. POST EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I have no idea how to type in French. I answered in English. — As of tomorrow evening, I’m off to North Carolina again for the second time this month. This time, it’s a podcasting …
Lost Wallets and Plot Questions
So tonight Carrie’s wallet was stolen while we dined at Basha on St. Catherine. Her bag was literally right next to the table the whole time. Someone was very tricky. There were a couple charges one credit card, but that was dispatched quickly and there was only $10 in the wallet, so it’s more PITA …
The Illusion of Mastery
This blog entry is brought to you by my intense desire not to clean my workspace, which I badly need to do in order to make further progress on my talk for next week. It’s one of those things: I think I’m just getting on top of all these administativa and my seminar is going …