The good news is that the blog is back up. Bad news is that the old template is gone. Guess I’ll be doing some web design later.
Category Archives: Text
Well
that was an intense two weeks. A week of ICA stuff, then all the chair stuff I didn’t do during ICA. Now off to Minneapolis. See you sometime in June. As an extra special treat, I am going off email entirely while in Minneapolis.
Party Casualties
The last week of my life was consumed with the International Communication Association conference here and a variety of activities related to it. The climax of it all was a massive blowout party at our place on Saturday night. The guestlist was a little erratic. We missed a couple people we wanted to invite (especially …
Abortion Politics in Canada
My neighbor sent me a link to a petition, which I’m passing on to my Canadian readers: Stop Bill C-484. Called the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” it allows charges to be laid in certain cases where a fetus dies. While it’s expressed purpose is law-and-order politics, it also opens the legal door for anti-abortion …
Grad Students: Record Your Meetings With Your Profs
I know the headline sound paranoid, but it’s not. Just think about it. You’ve written a chapter of your dissertation, a seminar paper, whatever. You go in and meet with your prof for an hour or more and have a great discussion about it. You take some notes. You’re excited. You get busy. You leave …
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This is exactly what’s wrong with theories of leisure time
Sivacracy links to a speech by Clay Shirky about “cognitive surplus” which epitomizes the problem with how people think about leisure. They think that the best way to understand leisure is through its generation of things that are useful. Indeed, the whole essay uses an economic metaphor “cognitive surplus” to describe what people have when …
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TA Strike Exchange
If my count is right, the McGill TA strike is in its 6th week. When the strike started, the bargaining went on more or less in secret in mediated negotiations. Now, the debate is getting more and more public. Today, McGill Provost Anthony Masi sent AGSEM an open letter. AGSEM responded with an open letter …