A Poem About Your University’s Absolute and Unwavering Appreciation of Its Faculty in Spite of Said Faculty’s Crap Salaries | McSweeney’s | April 2018 “When we are not doing somethingMore importantLike asking humanities departmentsTo justify their existence,Preferably in relationship toScience or capitalism.”
The Tyranny of Convenience | New York Times | February 2018 But we err in presuming convenience is always good, for it has a complex relationship with other ideals that we hold dear. Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort
The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’ | New York Times | February 2018 [T]he ballooning assessment industry — including the tech companies and consulting firms that profit from assessment — is a symptom of higher education’s crisis, not a solution to it. It preys especially on less prestigious schools and contributes to the system’s deepening divide into a narrow
Bans on Plastic Straws in Restaurants Expand to More Cities | New York Times | March 2018 The latest is Malibu, Calif. Before that came Seattle; Davis and San Luis Obispo, Calif.; and Miami Beach and Fort Myers, Fla. They’re all cities that have banned or limited the use of plastic straws in restaurants.
Tax the terminator: Chinese adviser calls for levy to stop robots taking over the workplace | South China Morning Post | March 2018 For years, we have been warned that the day will come when machines will be able to do our jobs better than we can. Now a leading Chinese economist is offering a time frame.