Lord Peter Wimsey remarked that “Books…are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.” (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club) I see the truth of that whenever I scan my bookshelves, my stacks of CDs, my files …
Tag Archives: blessay
More on panic and discomfort
Mark Z at ZhurnalyWiki paid me the great honor of referring to my panic post. He ended with this thought: And of course there’s my favorite strategy: try to identify what causes panic and avoid situations where it might arise. Sensible (and I think a little tongue-in-cheek) advice, though I believe there is more to …
“Dreams with Sharp Teeth”
Thanks to the glory of Netflix, Liz and I saw this documentary that I can assure you never visited the Carolina Theatre. It’s a bio-doc on the writer Harlan Ellison, 72 years old at the time of the movie’s release in 2007, and covers an impressive sweep of his life, with samples of him reading …
Writing the Lit Review for Research Methods
I recently finished a pretty big, for me, literature review that totaled about 17 pages, including the title page and two pages of references. Here are some scattered thoughts and lessons learned, at my customarily hideous length: I saw the wisdom of The Scholarly Cassidy’s advice to begin the search haphazardly. I spent much early …
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Lavers on The Simple Life
My previous post Fred Stutzman and Facebook reminded me of an essay from the May/August 2000 issue of North American Review. The essay I tore out and kept in my “Essays” folder lo these many years was by the writer Norman Lavers, now retired from teaching English and enthusiastically maintaining a site on The Robber …
On specifying your terms
One of the books I read over the Christmas vacation was Writing the Mind Alive, which one Amazon reviewer tags as the book to go to after freewriting has taken you as far it can. I used to write morning pages and still enjoy journaling, but I’m always open to new approaches and methods (the …
Late night thoughts on getting a Ph.D.
Anthonio. In sooth I know not why I am so sad, It wearies me: you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuffe ’tis made of, whereof it is borne, I am to learne: and such a Want-wit sadnesse makes of me, That I have much …
Nirvana, or something like it
My friend Rani left me the following intriguing comment: Mike – would love to know how the life/school/work balance (or juggle rather) is going. Have you been able to obtain equilibrium at all? What about nirvana? I was going to reply as a blog post that night but spent too much time working on an …
Digital History Hacks
William Turkel, an assistant professor of history at the University of Western Ontario, runs a great blog, “Digital History Hacks: Methodology for the infinite archive.” I first ran across his blog last year via a couple of his research-related posts, the kind of “how to succeed at grad school” material that I continue to scarf …
Mark Hurst’s “Bit Literacy”
Mark Hurst’s book Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload attacks a problem that, of all people, my Alexander Technique therapist mentioned to me today. She said that evolution has granted our bodies numerous ways to deal with few or no calories, but no way — except obesity — to deal …
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