…a little late. I seem to be having difficulty getting my link roundup out on Fridays. Maybe I should just call it the “Weekly Link Roundup.” Hmmm, we’ll see. Anyway, here are the links for, uhm, last week.
- Graduate of Purdue designs shelter for Haiti disaster relief
- Why Intellectuals are All Bad – An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discussing Thomas Sowell’s new book Intellectuals and Society. Sowell, a Stanford economist, “skewers” intellectuals in his book. Not a new song for those of us in the academy. Russel Jacoby notes in the review that Sowell claims that:
Intellectuals do not understand the genius of the market. They ignore empirical evidence. They are elitists. They operate with ideological blinders. Ultimately, they are “unaccountable to the external world.” They judge ideas by how clever or complex they are, not whether they work.
Jacoby also notes that Sowell
writes that his book is “about intellectuals,” but not “for intellectuals,” and he cannot be bothered if his victims find fault with him. But who besides intellectuals would be reading a book on intellectuals?
Ultimately, Jacoby offers a fairly scathing review of Sowell’s poorly argued text.
- 4 Days, 40 Papers, a blog post by Laurie Fendrich that is most interesting in the comments that it generated from Chronicle subscribers
- TC Record’s review of My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture by Susan D. Blum. I hope to get a chance to read it soon; it sounds fascinating and very relevant to my recent post on remixing and plagiarism. It also looks to provide some interesting fodder for those of us struggling with teaching research and writing in a world where the rules of research and composition are becoming increasingly blurry.
- Pa. School Official Defended in Webcam Spy Case in The Washington Post discusses the controversial story that a school allegedly used the school-provided computer to spy on a student at home.
- Inside Higher Ed on E-Library Economics