My complicated relationship with libraries dates to my childhood. I love books, but sometimes returned them late feeling a naughty child under the librarian’s stern gaze. Last December, when I tried to borrow books, I realised a freeze was placed on my library card. Internally I groaned. At the library desk, the librarian suggested checking […] … learn more→

My Nordic colleagues often say that the thesis has to have a red thread, a line of argument that holds things together. So what’s this red thread? Think of the red thread as a sturdy rope that guides the reader up the rocky mountain that is the thesis, making sure that they don’t fall down a […] … learn more→

Here’s a quick quiz for you: In the biblical story, what was Jonah swallowed by? How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark? Did you answer “whale” to the first question and “two” to the second? Most people do … even though they’re well aware that it was Noah, not Moses […] … learn more→

It’s been a while since I discussed the core issue which has done so much harm to higher education: the student loan scam (so long, in fact, that a reader asked me to explain what I meant by it, and so here we are). The Rise of the Jumbo Student Loan Most students with loan […] … learn more→

As reported in Politico’s Morning Education today, the Department of Education will be pursuing yet another regulatory agenda in the coming year, to include rewrite (or remove)  the state authorization rules, the credit hour rule, accreditation regulations, and the requirements for regular and substantive interaction with instructors in distance education programs.  This action comes while Congress is […] … learn more→

The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies. In an email to me, Cambridge University scholar Aleksandr Kogan explained how his statistical model processed Facebook data for Cambridge Analytica. The accuracy he claims […] … learn more→

Iguazu Falls, also known as Iguazú Falls, Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls, isn’t just a waterfall but up to 300 individual waterfalls that bridge the border between Argentina and Brazil making it the biggest waterfalls system in the world. The falls live inside protected national parks, Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Iguaçu National Park (Brazil), […] … learn more→

A large crack, stretching several kilometres, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear, which continues to grow, caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse and was accompanied by seismic activity in the area. The Earth is an ever-changing planet, even though in some respects change might be almost unnoticeable to us. […] … learn more→

I first came to fairies after a brush with mortality in my mid-thirties. I’d been trained as a medievalist, but under the strain of my treatment, the Monumenta Ger­maniae Historica lost their charms: the memory of their leather covers, their weight in my hand, their smell, still make me nauseous almost a decade later. I’d […] … learn more→

When teaching medical students at a famous university in London, one of us would initiate the first tutorial with a question: what is the essence of an education? If you are sitting next to someone at a dinner party, how do you decide how educated they are? Is it about where they studied and how […] … learn more→