Archive for the ‘Academic life’ Category

« Older Entries

One more remarkable tie

October 23, 2016

From Steven Levine on Facebook today:

A recent posting by Arnold Zwicky [about paisley ties] reminded me that several months ago I provided him with my nominations for what I considered the most unusual tie in my collection. It also reminded me of the egegious oversight on my part that I neglected to include this one, which on reflection probably wins the award: Late 40s tie with a print of workers sitting in a tree, each sawing off the very branch upon which they are sitting.

I don’t even have a wild fantasy explanation for this, much less a plausible one.

Posted in Academic life, Clothing | Leave a Comment »

On your day off

December 9, 2015

The PHD Comics from the 7th:

Deep sighs. A long-standing tradition for me: using the hour or two before going to bed for necessary academic work (like entering data) that doesn’t require real mental effort.

Hat tip to Nathan Sanders, who is of course an academic (a linguist, in fact), at Swarthmore.

Posted in Academic life, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Morning Zorn

June 21, 2015

It was a morning name many days ago, but it led in so many interesting directions that I’m just now getting to post about it: Zorn’s Lemma, a remnant of my days in logic and set theory (now almost entirely forgotten).

From the lemmatist Max August Zorn, with a brush against his newspaperman grandson Eric, to Max’s wife Alice, on to the amazing musician John Zorn (no known relation to any of the above), and then to James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, Books, Jokes, Music, Names | 2 Comments »

Academic friends

June 6, 2015

(A posting about my life and about the academic world, not specifically focused on language.)

In the June 8th/15th New Yorker, a letter about Adam Gopnik’s May 4th piece on Anthony Trollope (“Trollope Trending”), from Deborah Denenholz Morse, a professor of English at William and Mary:

As the author and the co-editor of two books that Gopnik mentions, I was glad to read a piece reflecting that Trollope stands the test of time. He is as relevant today on gender, race, and politics as he was in his own era. Still, I have never taught a student who has read a Trollope novel before taking my class. Many students are thrilled to discover a writer with whom few Americans are familiar. Over the years, I have come to appreciate his work more and more, thanks to scholars such as Robert Polhemus … and James Kincaid … Academic literature helps students see Trollope as writing not only about Victorian England but also about their own lives — about psychology, the environment, the political nature of all relationships, the comedy of human foibles — and about the need for faith in something, usually the love of one individual for another.

What caught my eye here (beyond the further good words about the admirable Anthony Trollope) was the mention of Polhemus and Kincaid, who are old academic friends of mine.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, My life | Leave a Comment »

Academic disciplines in competition

May 6, 2015

A recent xkcd (#1520, “Degree-Off”) on competition between academic disciples:

Competition between academic disciplines — not just in the natural sciences, as here — is a recurrent theme in the strip. We have to wonder what the Chemistry panelist is going to say. Better Living Through Chemistry?

Posted in Academic life, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

This week’s remarkable photo

April 8, 2015

From a memoir piece by Sissela Bok in the Spring 2015 issue of The American Scholar, “Meeting the Mystics: My California encounters with Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley”, about a time in her life shortly after she married Derek Bok (in 1955) and settled in the United States. Through her husband, she met a set of mystics, rebels, and countercultural icons. A photo from January 1960 in Southern California:

Left to right: Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, Sir Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, and Linus Pauling

Rebels all, mystics, LSD explorers, and so on. All, of course, men. And all in suits; well, the ’60s had not really gotten underway yet. You can tell that Heard was the true rebel because he’s the only one with a beard.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, My life, Social class | Leave a Comment »

Chaitins

March 22, 2015

This morning’s name was Gil Chaitin, and that led immediately to Gregory Chaitin. Both academics, but in very different fields.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, Names | Leave a Comment »

Journalists and their names

February 11, 2015

Late last week, the Stanford Linguistic Department’s assistant e-mailed me about a phone call (for me) that had come into the department: a Mr. Ethics, representing a magazine, wanted to talk to me about a story he was working on, and left a New York City phone number.

I tried to check on this fellow Ethics, to no avail, until I realized that the assistant (who is very good at her job, but is not a native speaker of English) had almost surely gotten the name wrong. Eventually I figured out that the man’s name was Essex, not the unlikely Ethics. By then the day was over in New York City; in any case, I thought the phone call to my department was an ominous sign.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, Mishearings, Names | Leave a Comment »

Academic freedom

January 26, 2015

In the January/February issue of Stanford magazine, “Watch Your Words, Professor: In 1900, Jane Stanford forced out a respected faculty member. Was he a martyr to academic freedom or a racist gadfly who deserved what he got?” by Brian Eule, beginning:

On a Tuesday afternoon in November 1900, Edward Alsworth Ross gathered several student reporters in his campus office. Ross, 33 years old and a Stanford economics professor of seven years, had joined the university just two years after its opening. He was a captivating sight, 6-foot-5 and nattily dressed in a suit that favored his athletic physique.

Ross was popular with students and esteemed in his field. David Starr Jordan, the university’s first president, had recruited him not once but twice. Plucked from Jordan’s former home at Cornell, Ross was emerging as a scholarly star. Now, his time at Stanford was coming to an abrupt end.

Ross held a lengthy written statement he had prepared for the San Francisco newspapers. He handed it to the students.

“Well, boys,” he said, “I’m fired.”

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, Stanford | Leave a Comment »

Pat Suppes

November 25, 2014

From today’s Stanford Report, an obit for Patrick Suppes: “Patrick Suppes, Stanford philosopher, scientist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, dies at 92” by Michael Friedman.

The overview:

Patrick Suppes’ long career at Stanford began in 1950. As both a philosopher and scientist, he influenced a large number of fields. Drawing on his experience as an army meteorologist, he once compared predicting the weather to economics, both handling a vast flow of non-experimental data. As a successful entrepreneur he was also a leading donor to educational activities at Stanford.

(more…)

Posted in Academic life, Death notices | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries