Found another corner in my rec room office today after I set up some shelves in the garage and moved some books there. As I looked at some of the journals and how-to-books and other texts that I had barely cracked open, I tried to remind myself, and not for the first time, that I […]
I will be in a new classroom this year – same school, same classes to teach, but I’m moving three floors down. I saw the new room for the first time today. I don’t have a desk (yet). I’m actually wondering if I can make that a feature. Looking at my desk right now, I […]
Let me pick up on the discussion of the British House of Lords that I started a few days ago. I’m a big proponent of changing some of our government institutions here in the US, so it’s been instructive to me to look at the difficulties that the UK has faced in trying to do […]
I’ve been sitting at my desk for the last two hours trying to think of something to write. I’ve been walking around all day putting sentences together in my head, starting and stopping. I’m wondering what I have to say that I haven’t said before. I’m walking around the rec room that I use as […]
I started rereading part of my dissertation today. It’s been six years since I defended it and finished my Ph.D. Since then I haven’t done a lot of purely philosophical writing. I went right back to grad school to study education, and then I started learning-and-thinking about teaching by doing. I think philosophy gave me […]
I’ve been thinking about ways that I can use the upcoming conventions and elections in my World History and Ethics classes this year. Right now I’m thinking a lot about those biographical videos the candidates produce. I was already planning to have the students make short videos about their own personal history or their family […]
I’m glad to live in the world that Neil Armstrong and Jerry Nelson contributed to. My daughter likes roller coasters much, much more than I do. For everything I’ve read about the Apple-Samsung case, I’m still not sure what I think about it. I’m trying to wrap my brain around the latest Boston Red Sox […]
I posted yesterday about my efforts to learn more about the United Kingdom’s efforts to reform its House of Lords. At the moment, it looks like that effort is going nowhere, because a small number of Conservative members of Parliament are refusing to support it. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends in part […]
I want to use contemporary media reports and current events in my teaching, but it doesn’t always work as well as I want it to work. Reading the British press last month gave me some ideas that might help out this year. Let me set the stage. I like to keep track of efforts to […]