| pronouns | he/him/etc. |
| blog | https://chuckpearson.wordpress.com/ |
| formerly | @ShorterPearson |
| quizbowl | (please stand by, schedule in flux) |
Closing down iowadon.org
A year ago I set up my own Mastodon server at iowadon.org. Elon Musk had just bought Twitter and was quite obviously going to ruin it, Bluesky was still a very small beta test, and I thought hey, why not, I would enjoy the project and could try my hand at administrating a social media instance. So I dropped $15 for the domain name and $50 for a year of a cheap VPS and gave it a shot.
Tusculum student research, as reported by the Washington Post.
This is my department, and I’m so proud of these students. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/05/new-blue-crayfish-species-tennessee/
I was teaching math at a public high school on the west side of Manhattan on 9/11/01. Awful day to say the least.
But you know something? I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that today also marks the 50th anniversary of the US-backed coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile. I don't remember a single significant note about that on this, "our day to remember", in the US news in 20 years at least. Wonder why.
A little perspective, maybe. Horrors aren't all local. Disasters and wars happen everywhere every day, and way too many people die who shouldn't have. Unfortunately, until human beings learn that being assholes to each other isn't the way for us to act, this won't stop. And we here in the US will keep patting ourselves on the back for our resilience while the rest of the world burns.
The clock is ticking.
West Virginia University is recommending slashing its language department and dozens of other programs amid a $45 million budget shortfall. The crisis comes as the GOP leadership is pushing economic development and promoting innovative programs like cybersecurity that can’t be found almost anywhere else. All agree education is a tool to attract young people and improve quality of life in West Virginia, but disagree on what kinds of education add the most “value.” Many at WVU, however, say foreign languages and other humanities offer students opportunities they might not be able to access — or afford — elsewhere that are just as valuable.
@bryanalexandee Grateful for your recent updates on climate pressures but was sad to read in your last update about the health issues plaguing your family.
All the best to all of you; may your time in need of a hospital be brief.
In another universe, I’d be writing a full blogpost about each of these people, paragraphs for the ones I’ve known nearly my entire time at Tusculum to the one I’ve not even known for a month.
Right now it’s enough to say that I’m deeply grateful for all of them.
This is my department, Fall 2023.
It's syllabus season. And I'm team-teaching a course this term, so I've annotated the mess out of my syllabus shell for that course, too.
The work is going to be so hard this term. So why am I so excited for it?
Someone actually considers what this #BigTen story means for the climate crisis:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/08/climate-change-and-conference-realignment
The big news in college football at the moment is that the old conference alignments are falling apart, as the most powerful conferences from a media rights perspective pick off the most desirable teams from weaker media entities: As the Pac-12 faces the possibility of being picked apart by the Big Ten and Big 12 […]
Chris Hubbs
Joe Heafner
quadrivial, tall and graying
Bryan Alexander