[This space has  been quiet because I've been fact-checking and otherwise researching my Unsucky Gilgamesh chaptersso far (which I hope to publish as a book when finished) and, since school started two weeks ago, writing for my students. The below is one such piece for my History of China students. There's no reason other students [...]

Remember, this is a man with that old-fashioned European humanist faith in the library as a model of good society and spiritual regeneration – a man who once went so far as to declare that “libraries can take the place of God.” –Lee Marshall, “The World According to Eco,” Wired.com I have a hallway for [...]

Why is Mark Twain’s autobiography only coming out now, 100 years after his death? Because he stipulated so before dying. What he expresses in these screenshots from a PBS Newshour clip of the manuscript suggests why he might have wanted these thoughts to stay silent for a century. And they’re strangely resonant in our own [...]

It’s weird to call him a prophet, what with all the F-Bombs and other NSFW obscenities he drops, but consider that this dead jester said the below in 2005. Prophetic indeed. . (h/t to Hullabaloo)

[A fun little conversation I'm having with Laura in this comment thread includes her question about differences between Chinese literary types and Western ones. It reminded me of this post I wrote last year on Change.org, and planned to cross-post here eventually anyway. I hope you agree that its quotes are lovely things.] ~     ~     [...]

Readers of George Orwell’s Animal Farm should remember Squealer, the pig whose “journalism” manipulated the entire animal society into unquestioningly supporting the dictatorial pig Napoleon. If they studied Animal Farm in the classroom, the depressing odds are they learned it as a good, all-American attack on socialism. The most simple-minded of our teachers make a [...]

A teacher recently dismissed, I gather, for encouraging critical thinking in her class in (where else?) my native United States writes: I am stunned by the number of “conservatives” who truly appear to loathe teachers. What is up with that? Why the distrust of educators? And all I can say is, “Come teach in Asia. [...]

Gasland is one to watch: . Anybody want to place bets that we’ll be buying oxygen at 7-11 within the next 20 years?

MAD=Mutually Assured Destruction. A serious Cold War joke. Don’t have students read about this in textbooks. Show them the below instead. Amazing. From Zero Hedge: Who needs a wartime nuclear exchange when you have peaceful countries nuking the gamma rays out of their own sovereign territories – now that the environmental theme is rather popular, [...]

From the YouTube blurb: [Stanford Psychology] Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world. Interesting all the way through, but the gallery below previews  parts that should  interest [...]