In this post I react an article posted by Michael White revealing the mythical nature of the narrative of the underdog used by science journalists. I agree with him but also examining the mythical nature of the narrative has led me to believe that the peer review process must err on the side of accepting rather than rejecting.
I’ve gotten word from Karen Lang that she and Paul Groner rated my Buddhism comprehensive exam with an “enthusiastic pass”. (Those exams are not graded with letters: either you pass or you fail.) Yay!
I’m working on my Hinduism comprehensive now.
And then the methodology comprehensive.
And then the dissertation proposal.
And then 9 months of research [...]
Hubert Guillaud noted in a post titled Perplexité des éditeurs face au numérique that a study reports that book publishers still do not know how to handle the digital revolution. (The actual study is a pdf file.) I will here quote two passages of the study and offer my reaction.
By and large, professors [...]
A few days ago, I finally posted my belated reaction to the AAP’s position on a possible government mandate to make all articles published from publicly funded research freely available to the general public. I was not aware at the time but some reactions to the AAP’s position had already been published when I [...]
Just after posting yesterday about how the AAP uses dubious rhetoric to try to preserve its current power and revenue in the domain of scholarly publishing, I learned of a new alliance dedicated to corrupting public policy in favor of copyright holders called the Copyright Alliance. I examined their list of members. What [...]
The AAP is trying, like the RIAA and the MPAA, to force time to stand still with dubious logic and a general hijacking of public policy. In this post, I show how their attempt at protecting their obsolete business model is flawed. Specifically, I show the flaw in their objection against the proposal that publications from all governmentally funded research should be available at no cost.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
Everybody is familiar with the usual bouts of anxiety that manifest themselves as dreams (or perhaps, nightmares) of academic disaster. Although dreaming of going to class naked seems to be popular, that never happened to me, whether in dreams or for real. However, numerous times I’ve dreamed of finding at the end of [...]
I’ve been thinking about how academics often produce fanciful interpretations of artistic works. As I was trying to fashion a patently absurd example, I came up with this:
Alien is really a movie about immigration. Forget the monsters, the gore, the fear. It’s all about the trials and tribulations of a misunderstood alien [...]
Professor Tamanaha posted an interesting blog entry in which he admits having become a coward: he no longer wants to write negative reviews of books.
Tamanaha seems to have made his mind up, but I am still deliberating what my own stance is going to be. I always tell my students that their grades does [...]
Article titles with the word “towards” should be banned! “Towards a Theory of Ritual”, “Towards a Typology of Religious Practice”, “Towards a Phenomenology of Cows”. It feels like we’re moving in a million different directions without getting anywhere!
