It’s the end of March, and the kids’ school break, so we’re heading down to Florida for a few days to see the grandparents and soak up some sun. It’s not clear whether I’ll write anything here while we’re on the trip (on the pro side, I’m up earlier than anyone else in the family, on the con side, it’s vacation…), but this seems like a reasonable break point to clear a bunch of open tabs.
Me on Substack:
— On Academic Hiring: A much-delayed post about the academic job market with some information from the hiring side.
— The Fall of College Hoops: On the reasons why I’m no longer obsessed with what was once my favorite sport in the world.
— On Gambling: I vaguely supported legalizing sports betting in the US, but the implementation is pretty gross, and I’m having second thoughts.
— Why Does Academic Writing Suck?: A lot of factors, but mostly Sturgeon’s Law.
Me Elsewhere:
— Counting the Hours at the Times Literary Supplement: I don’t think I’ve linked this before; it’s a book review that took quite a while to end up online.
— Time: Ten Simple Answers at Europastar (you may need to page through a bit to get to my part): This is a Q&A I did with a reporter for a trade magazine. A lot of the answers aren’t direct quotes, but paraphrases of my too-long answers.
Links Dump:
— We Are Living in a Sports Gambling Scandal and What DraftKings Revealed About Itself With Jontay Porter by Ethan Strauss: More on Things That Make Me Feel Gross.
— The Plane! by Paul Jackson: A very weird episode. (h/t to Kate for sending me the link)
— Why Did Supersonic Airliners Fail? by Brian Potter: A fascinating deep dive.
— The Take Bakery: Anonymous Congress by Ben Krauss: Kind of a tempting model, honestly…
— Academia: Ten Designs by Timothy Burke: A list of different ways you might consider organizing an institution of higher education.
— The War at Stanford by Theo Baker and Are the Kids Alright? by Robert Farley: Point and counterpoint about a third-rail sort of issue.
— Ask A Music Critic: Will Timothée Chalamet Be Good At Playing Bob Dylan? by Steven Hyden: Some fun alternative ideas for a movie about everybody’s favorite Nobel laureate.
Pseudo-Random Photo:
We had a late-season winter storm last weekend that made a mess of the roads and knocked out power for a lot of folks, but got me two bonus ski days (one very good, the other less so). This is from the local golf course as I was setting out, and doesn’t quite capture the way the ice-encrusted trees catch the light.
Pseudo-Random Song:
Two of my favorite indie-rock icons doing a Pogues cover at a rehearsal for a benefit show. I could hardly not link to this…
And that’s a bunch of stuff. We’re off to the Gulf coast of Florida later this afternoon; if you want to see whether I get twitchy enough to blog on vacation, here’s a button:
And should you feel so move the comments will be open: