Blogs

Lolo Jones and the Harvard Cheating Scandal

A few months ago, Dahlia Lithwick had a charming piece in Slate about two kinds of Muppets: Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets. She suggested that most people fall into one of the two camps. The Order Muppets -- Kermit, Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle -- are concerned with keeping the show running. The Chaos Muppets -- Cookie Monster, Ernie, Gonzo, Animal -- are a bit more, well, demonstrative. They bring energy, and entropy.

Apple is now the most valuable company on the planet. It has a market capitalization of $632 billion dollars. A share of Apple stock, bought today, will cost you $675. What follows are some risks are I see for Apple. I think that these risks for Apple have been under-reported, and I offer them not as an argument to sell your Apple stock but perhaps as a counterweight to all the Apple hype.

Our family has fallen out of our school day routine over the summer. We were ready far too quickly this morning and ended up arriving 25 minutes early for my children’s first day of the new school year. I’d forgotten what time we needed to leave the house. The funny part is that students go back on the first day just for an hour.

People are always asking me about which schools/department do social media "the best" in higher education. My usual response is that the professionals who are actively engaging via social media are spending less time talking about what they are doing and more time focusing on the needs of their campus. However, when it comes to social media and campus dining, there's one operation that is consistently using social media at a level that I can easily say is "the best."

This time last year, I was sitting around my apartment and waiting for the results of my comprehensive exams. I was jittery and nervous, and jumped a mile every time my computer made the “you’ve got an email!” noise. I couldn’t focus on teaching or the zillion other responsibilities that I had, and spent most of the day in an anxious state of stasis. What saved me, surprisingly, was a ball of yarn and two knitting needles I found in the back of a closet.

Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, my previous post about a table of energy inputs and outputs for various forms of food production contained description and discussion, but not the table itself. If you're reading this, those difficulties have been resolved.

This year, for the first time since leaving grad school, I’d love to hear students on campus seriously discuss the election outside of class.