Monthly Archives: January 2014

Lifestyle keys to cutting dementia risk

You may have seen some recent press around a book (\’Grain Brain\’) written by a US neurologist with the claim that eating grains (and most carbohydrate foods in general) are a major culprit in causing dementia, depression, ADHD and headaches. What the book boils down to is yet another variation of a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, gluten-free, […] … learn more→

Put undergraduates to work, for their own good

Despite an improving economy, eager and talented new college graduates are still encountering significant difficulty in securing jobs. The fallout has landed squarely on colleges. Parents are demanding higher returns for the significant investment in their children\’s education, and the government is backing them by increasing its efforts to collect and publish postgraduation employment and […] … learn more→

Who’s afraid of ‘Rate your Professor’?

A number of years ago as a PhD student, I was told that you must “publish or perish”. The advice was clear: teaching should be secondary in any considerations. Instead, I should prioritise producing as many “A-Star” journal articles as possible, apply for all sorts of grants and consider teaching a necessary evil. “Universities would […] … learn more→

The threat to email at Colorado State

Colorado State University at Pueblo administrators have banned email access for sociology professor Timothy McGettigan after he sent an email to people on campus criticizing the administration’s budget cuts, compared the cuts to the Ludlow Massacre a century ago by calling top administrators “hitmen,” and promoted a rally on campus to protest the proposed cuts. […] … learn more→

Does a \’cancer cure\’ diet really exist?

A published review of 13 ‘anti cancer’ diets has arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that there is a lack of solid evidence to support a benefit for any of them, and a real risk of harm from malnutrition from several of them. When a person is told they have cancer, a common reaction can be […] … learn more→

End the games of higher education

Me, as a college student, whining: “How come you will only let me sign up for two electives?” Advisor: “Because we want you to graduate in four years.” (which I, and many of my friends of the time, did). –nowadays, around 60% of graduating students needed 6 years to graduate. It used to be that […] … learn more→

The perfect storm for Adjuncts in Illinois

The Great Recession impacted everyone, but it contributed to a real hit for public college and university adjunct faculty. Pressures on budgets over decades have slowly increased higher education’s dependence on adjunct faculty. Now they are a majority of teachers at all levels, and an astonishing 80 percent at community colleges. They form a pool […] … learn more→

Yale bans a website, and violates its own free speech policies

We all know how the totalitarian government of China censors websites by blocking access to their IP addresses. But it’s shocking to learn that the administration of Yale University is now utilizing this same tactic to ban access to a website they dislike. A group of Yale students created a website they called Yale Bluebook […] … learn more→

‘Love’: Final exam

I’m thrilled to have you in the course “Love.” My intention as teacher is to make you think, to push you to unforeseen boundaries. To achieve this, I will do a single—rather ambitious—thing throughout the entire semester: define the word in our title. What do we mean when we say I love you? Is there […] … learn more→