The Mumpsimus

  Over at my academic blog, I have written a post about ideas of strength and kindness . Part of it is about teaching (hence the reason it is at the academic blog), but a lot of it is also about reading and writing, and it ends with a poem by Liu Tsung-Yuan, so it may be of interest to a more general audience as well. Here is how the post begins: Take a moment, settle yourself, and note your immediate emotional response to these words: kindness joy contemplation generosity love peace Now think about them in the context of your work. Would your work be better if there were more of these things? Do you feel that they are relevant to what you do every day? I’ll be honest: a deep part of myself resists these words. On one hand, this makes no sense. Since adolescence, I have described myself as a pacifist (or aspiring pacifist); I don’t have many heroes (I’m skeptical of the whole concept) but if I have any they are people who in one way or another devoted themselve...

Over at my other blog, Finite Eyes (about academic subjects, and things related to my job as Interim Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State), I've got a few new posts, including one on the pricing of academic books , which might be of at least vague interest to Mumpsimus readers. There's also a post thinking about John Warner's excellent book Why They Can't Write . And a post that's gotten tons of traffic after being Tweeted out by a few prominent academics' accounts: "Cruelty-Free Syllabi" .