1860 Audio Recording

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison UPDATE (Saturday): It’s now making it’s way around AP. I talked to an LA Times reporter yesterday and have a few quotes in their story, though they are of mixed quality and the guy appears to think that McGill is in West Montreal (a loaded error if there ever …

An Organizational System That Works (for me, sort of)

As promised in the last post. The next one will be about television. I’ve mentioned my ongoing struggle to be more organized elsewhere on this blog. The chair position has forced the issue and I think I have a system that sort of works. It’s not perfect, but it’s alright. Keep in mind I hate …

Academic Labor Politics in the Air

It must be the season or something. Today, our TA union staged a demonstration outside the front gates in support of their ongoing contract negotiations. McGill teaching assistants are quite underpaid compared to their counterparts at other Canadian universities and “R1” universities in the U.S. It’s a Quebec thing, since they’re better paid than TAs …

That’s what happens when I make promises. . .

. . .that I can’t keep. But it’s been quite a couple weeks, as we’ve gone from lizard. . . > (on the grounds of the resort where we were staying)… …to yet another blizzard, this one putting us within 30cm of the all-time record for snowfall. Here’s a pic of where we would have …

This week’s blog topic: our vacation in Mexico

That’s the plan anyway, if I can get the time free to write (even though I swore I was done with book reviews, I’m finishing a review of Steven Wurtzler’s Electric Sounds for Cinema Journal). In the meantime, I would like to briefly comment on two things only loosely vacation-related: 1. The Orlando airport is …