Every semester, I enter my classroom with almost zero knowledge of my students’ interests. So as a rhetoric and writing teacher, I ask them to employ that which is most beneficial to them in their lives: discourse. I want to know what they think, why they think it, and how they see themselves in the […] … learn more→

One piece of advice that just about every career resource out there gives: Tap into your alumni network. Have you ever noticed … no one gives you tips on exactly how to do so? So this networking advice — without additional guidance about how to access your alumni network properly (what to ask, and what […] … learn more→

More than 150 data sets accompany Lester R. Brown’s latest book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. These tables and graphs help to explain the precarious situation in which humanity finds itself, as the world leaves an era of food surpluses and enters one of food scarcity. Here are some highlights […] … learn more→

I know a lot of you will disagree with what I’m about to say. I admit, I haven’t done a humanities PhD (I’m a physicist), so I don’t have first-hand experience, but no matter where you sit on the science-humanities scale, there are some general principles that apply to research and writing. So I’m just […] … learn more→

Facebook is currently trialling a range of new buttons that could influence how your data is harvested. The trials have been construed by some observers as a response to the corporation’s anaemic share price, media interest in competitors such as Pinterest and Twitter, and forecasts that many users will move to the “next new thing”. […] … learn more→

Late last week, Gawker’s Adrian Chen followed through on a promise to “out” a prominent, but anonymous member of the Reddit community — “Violentacrez,” the creator or moderator of many racist and misogynist subreddits including “Creepshots” and “Rapebait.” Chen’s article “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web” is an important story, one that […] … learn more→

A recently published study in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking suggests most videogame players are governed by the same moral codes they apply to real life. But there are a whole host of problems with any attempt to link the actions players take in videogames with real-life situations. At the heart of […] … learn more→

You’ve taken all the right steps. You\’ve come up with your personal brand, made business cards, customized your resume, wrote cover letters, accumulated recommendations, compiled a portfolio/blog/website, completed your social media profiles, and set up your professional, brand-compatible e-mail account. You’ve networked, applied for jobs, and put yourself out there. But after all that work, […] … learn more→

“There is one thing I want to make clear at the outset,” Dr David Bainbridge stresses in his new book Middle Age: a Natural History. “There is one reason and one reason only why I bought a Lotus.” It was not, he says, to make him feel better about hitting middle age, or to impress […] … learn more→

How we die, as well as how we live, has profound and lasting effects on the environment. Nowhere is this more true than in China, the most populous nation on Earth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 9.6 million people died in mainland China during 2011. Considering that between 2000 and 2009 the average […] … learn more→