The end of YPIS?

As mentioned below , the trend of calling out others' "privilege" as a way of asserting one's own commitment to social jus...

Big city living

Links that could be posts, if it weren't for Napoleon

-Jane Brody declares herself an optimist. A commenter has a different interpretation. -Jezebel commenters will have you know that a dead 2...

Of interns and housewives

It's abundantly clear that the rise of unpaid internships is bad for those who need to work. But it's surprisingly tough to convey w...

Fundamental human rights

-The Atlantic had a piece recently by Talia Minsberg about Israel's new skinny-model ban . The comments go in precisely the two directio...

"'We still have to cater to the administration’s personal and exceptionally professional fashionista tastes.'"

The NYT links to a new, and evidently controversial ,  dress code policy  at Stuyvesant, which goes as follows: As we approach warmer weath...

The mean girls of Pinterest

Having just about run out of things to pin onto Pinterest, I suspect that this will be my last post musing on that site. (The previous .) It...

"[U]n jeune astrophysicien"

Typically, when this blog goes astronomical, it's to tell you about the latest in space-age attire . But today I must make an exception:...

"Most people have more pressing things to do with their time than actually find out whether the organic berries at the store were grown using sodium nitrate mined in South America that leached perchloride into surrounding waterways, which might interfere with the human thyroid gland if it seeps into drinking water."

Not-so-deep in the archives, PG and I got to debating the food movement. And I think we got sidetracked. The question, as far as I'm co...

Daily Mail Online headline brilliance

" Man goes to hospital with a kidney stone... and discovers he's a woman " " 'It was the pasta's fault': Dr O...

How civilizations end UPDATED

-At their new Manhattan branch, Montreal-themed Brooklyn deli Mile End lets you order an $18 deluxe sandwich platter to stay, but doesn'...

On my immediate surroundings, as I wait for the shuttle

Love: -It's the only reliable, one-stop source for (almost) everything I buy. I want a big bag of bulk rolled oats, and a splurge on plu...

Middle-school followers

I've written here before that I think one thing repelling many from the (primary and secondary) teaching profession is the expectation ...

Why I'm off to the library

For context, this is Bisou standing on top of a large chair. In between cameras at the moment, so Photobooth it is. I think she's offici...

The Napoleon chapter

I've reached the clichéd point in dissertation-writing, where I simply must sit down and force myself to do it. I understand that, accor...

"A little humility"

As promised , below is the letter I emailed off to the Times, in response to what was about the most absurd defense of unpaid internships on...

A big deal

You know when you find out that someone you went to high school with is now kind of a big deal? And you feel that special mix of excitement ...

Rufus of the Day

In response to  Rufus Wainwright calling a church on 23rd Street "crappy" in comparison to Notre friggin' Dame in Paris, One n...

The height of philanthropy

-There was a girl in my high school class whose stomach really did go in, or at least not poke out, even when she sat down. Perfect skin and...

The accompanying text

Much to the severe disappointment of my male readership, these days I'm directing more of my extracurricular-online attention to Pintere...

At least I'm not dressed like Napoleon

Thank you, NYT, for tossing this WWPD-bait in my direction. Because my current environs don't lend themselves to roaming around Broadwa...

The male gays

Hilton Als, in a recent New Yorker , wrote of a well-known mid-century writer, that he "found a number of ways to talk about his sexual...

Quote of the day

A ringing endorsement : "[T]here have been no recent accounts about bullying behavior by Mr. Romney."

"[A]ctual fields of knowledge"

Between Obama's announcement (sometimes I'm incredibly sappy and un-cynical, and today was one of those times - no doubt there were ...

An Oh, Riley job*

The laziest, and (thus) most popular, conservative critique of higher education involves listing a few course, discipline, paper, or lectur...

Ring finger as crafts project

Coughing, fixing the parts of my Napoleon chapter that don't require too much intellectual capacity, jogging incredibly slowly around Ge...

Scraps

College graduates, recent and not-so-recent, take unpaid internships . As that first episode of "Girls" demonstrated so elegantly...

(Cough)

Quite a weekend. Bisou is now a year and a day old, and groomed. Not matted in the least, thanks to daily brushing and combing, neither of w...