This ought to be engraved somewhere.

(Across the country, middle school math teachers are weeping.)

This THURSDAY, September 25, at 4 pm. a panel discussion on liberal arts, featuring yours truly plus other good folks. Check it out. www.altliberalarts.org/upcomingeven...

Breaking News: The Pentagon said it would require journalists to pledge not to use unauthorized information or risk losing credentials to cover the military.

Next step: make smallpox great again?

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

idk i read in the free press that the real risk to free speech is three oberlin undergraduates who say geometry is ableist. this is pretty confusing to me.

Horrifying. And he's not joking.

Q: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up? TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get for about 150 years.

Curious how hiring freezes and "right-sizing" rarely extends to athletics.

For those of us with long memories.

wow

Breaking News: The Trump administration moved to lay off about 500 employees at the news network Voice of America, two months after it retracted layoff notices. nyti.ms/3HT3cfV

A once great paper.

Talk about sane-washing: How NBC frames Trump's ramping up his tough-guy flexing in DC by arming troops: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

Somebody clearly slept through high school history class.

Nothing here that specifies what is being done wrong, only that the results aren't great. Did the reporter not ask? Or do the critics not say, or not know? www.nytimes.com/athletic/655...

The Political Economy of Incompetence open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Something tells me that if this same guy saw a bunch of teenagers driving ATVs down a dirt road in a White rural community, he'd be trumpeting about how great it is that the youths of "real America" are getting outside, rather than spending the whole day on screens.

"Bias monitor" or worse yet "ombudsman" are really just euphemisms for what in the USSR they called political commissars. Assigned to every institution and organization to make sure they agreed with the government --or, in the original use of the phrase, make sure they are " politically correct. "

Thinking about the relationship of routine, which is so important to expertise, and its relation to innovation/creativity / improvisation. How and when to make the move from one to the other. A question of expertise.

Another social science thought: many theoretical problems can be solved by cutting through the abstractions. Try to be concrete about what actual people are doing, and quit worrying about simply manipulating abstract concepts. C Wright Mills, was, of course onto this problem. A very powerful tool.

I've been thinking lots recently about the importance of salience, of sheer attention, in the creation and maintenance of prejudice against out groups. Repeatedly drawing attention to one group of people, while pointing out negative things some of them do, can easily begin a cycle of animosity.

I tell you, as someone who was once mugged, when someone points at gun at you and says, "Give me your wallet," it's best to give them your wallet. But the media shouldn't describe the exchange as "a deal."

My entire profession (sociology, academia, science, the learned occupations) is centrally about trying to discover and tell the truth, which turns out to be quite complicated and difficult to do well. So a broad-scale -- let's say "society-wide" attack on that basic value is profoundly threatening

I've found that for short (750 words) articles I've published, it takes me, on *average*, 30 to 45 seconds per word to write. It's about 8 hours total. Shorter published pieces (NYT letters, for instance) run about one minute per word to write (250 words, requiring about four hours of work).

Great news! Soon they will be paying *us* to take the drugs.

I'm honored to be giving the Keynote Address for the American Sociological Association's Teaching Preconference *next Friday*, August 8, 1:35pm in the East Tower-Ballroom Gold of the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. Topic is "Respecting Students and Self: One Teacher's Approach." I'd love to see you!

Herding cats isn't difficult. Just open a can of tuna. Yeah, it's a metaphor.

I.e., "I don't know how much a kilogram is."

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

When universities make these "deals" to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, to whom do they write the check?

The more we learn about the U.S.-Japan "trade deal", the more we learn there is no deal. Trump rushed out an "announcement" after a 70 minute conversation with Japan's trade negotiator and the press dutifully reported a deal. 1/ No text and widening disagreement on terms.

A well-edited, fun, 30-min. interview ; no fluff. Thanks to Kyle Green of SUNY Brockport! thesocietypages.org/theory/2025/...

Columbia University has handed over its undergraduate admissions process to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, who will now decide at their sole discretion whether the university has admitted enough white people. It's no longer an independent institution.

The subway risk chart you've been waiting for (Sawyer County, Wisconsin, is where Sean Duffy is from). Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

"Wow, you sure couldn't see that one coming."

Is there really a replication crisis in academic research? Or isn't this just a way of saying that any individual research finding, standing by itself may well not be correct? Put differently: what are some major consensual scientific results that have been proven to be incorrect?

On dealing with difficult students/athletes, here's a principle: You (student) can listen or not, do the assignments or not, have your own motives. It's your life. But the minute you interfere with OTHER people who are trying to get an education, or to improve their work, I'll ask you to leave.

Blasphemy. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

"Reich citizenship will not be laid in the cradle of every one born in Germany, but will be ceremoniously conferred on him after he has shown himself worthy of it through special accomplishments, through loyal services to the State." NY Times, July 6, 1933.

Revoking the citizenship of a person born in the USA is not something a president can do. Under any circumstances. Ignoring that fact in the headline - as almost all news outlets are - normalizes Trump’s unhinged, unconstitutional threats. www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

You don't get to be mediocre by accident. You have to work at it, every day.

Ummm... Medicaid pays medical bills. The sicker you are, the higher your bills; the higher your bills, the more Medicaid pays. There's no "savings" to Medicaid unless they cut off people who are really sick. It's not 35-year-old guys who are unemployed. It's old people in nursing homes.

Just as the recent political events can best be understood as college educ v. No college, we are about 5 years from the big divide being literate v. Functionally illiterate. Much like the “dark” ages in Europe we are on the verge of losing literacy for a significant swath of people. Willingly tho.

For professors, teachers, etc: It's way more difficult to create a successful video than an engaging lecture, because the audience reaction doesn't affect the video -- can't affect it. The video isn't responsive -- a live teacher can be.

Applying serious social science findings is really difficult, because in the real world ceteris are never paribus.

Higher USAID support was associated with a 15% reduction in overall mortality and 32% reduction in child mortality. This was the effect of not just its health work but also its development support for economies, people, and institutions that transitioned numerous countries off of aid.

When looking for serious intellectual stimulation, I turn to the philosophy of history, or to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Or, of course, Nietzsche.