The periodic table
[NOTE: I came across this post from 2006 the other day and thought it could bear a recycling.] When I was in junior high there was a large poster of the Periodic Table of the Elements that hung in the … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Academia
Obama at Columbia: the “lost” years in more ways than one
Now that Reid has escalated the attacks on Romney for not releasing a decade of his past tax returns, the issue of Obama’s secrecy about his Columbia years has resurfaced. The cry is: “Want Mitt to release his tax returns? … Continue reading →
Affirmative action leads to wondering
In a recent interview: …[Elizabeth] Warren repeatedly and adamantly proclaimed that the law schools at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania hired her as a professor because of her scholarship and teaching abilities, not to improve diversity on their … Continue reading →
Obama the stoner
So all right already—Obama was a stoner in high school. Didn’t we already know that? And although the photos are rather interesting in a retro-70s way, do we really care? Not all that much, although it certainly tells us some … Continue reading →
Elizabeth Warren, academia, and affirmative action
I can’t get quite as worked up about the Elizabeth Warren Cherokee flap as so many others have. That’s because I decided long ago (even before my political “change”) that however well-intentioned affirmative action may have originally been, it’s a … Continue reading →
What hath affirmative action wrought?
This. But my question is: why would anyone be surprised? Hasn’t it always been obvious that reverse discrimination is an inevitable effect of the whole affirmative action enterprise? And I’m not at all sure it matters anymore whether affirmative action … Continue reading →
Obama may not be dumb…
…but Russ Smith sure is. In an article entitled, “Is Barack Obama Dumb?” he writes [emphasis mine]: There are [the] usual caveats: Of course Obama isn’t illiterate or Bush-dumb because as Jesse Louis Jackson once said, “God doesn’t make junk,” … Continue reading →
Cornel West gets into a blackness contest with Obama
Cornel West has long been known to be a loose cannon, but this is pretty vile, even for him: Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and leading black intellectual, is harshly criticizing President Obama, a candidate he once supported but … Continue reading →
Trump: Obama’s gadfly and jester
Commenter “Daniel in Brookline” calls Trump a gadfly. It’s a word I’ve thought of often in connection with him and the Obama presidency, one that was originally used by Socrates to describe himself. Here’s an explanation of what Socrates meant … Continue reading →
If you’ve been wondering why the standards of writing have declined in recent years…
…wonder no more. Some time ago, the teaching of writing liberated itself from the surly bonds of clarity, rules, and white oppression (is that redundant?) and escaped to touch the face of diversity and self-expression. Now, huge numbers of writing … Continue reading →
Social psychologists, watch out: you have nothing to lose but your liberalism
For obvious reasons, several people have sent me this link to a NY Times article on the overwhelming presence of liberals in the field of personality and social psychology. Conservatives? This group has barely ever heard of em, except perhaps … Continue reading →
I think Lisa Murkowski is at least partly right
I think Lisa Murkowski is correct when she says that Sarah Palin isn’t big on “intellectual curiosity:” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowki told CBS News’ Katie Couric today that she would not support Sarah Palin for president because Palin lacks the … Continue reading →