I'm online a lot. Too much, according to some. Below are a few shameless plugs for my favorite sites, podcasts, blogs, etc. You, too, can be internet smart like me! If I feel like it, there's a blurb beside or below the link. This area will be better organized someday - when (as with everything else) I have the time. For now, I'm just posting my current top five.
Current Top Five
Keith and the Girl comedy podcast - funny as hell, but if you're easily offended you need to give it a few episodes to get a feel for the style.
"Intellectual Diversity" (ID) is the term used by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in legislation they are promoting in various state legislatures. The leaders of ACTA believe that the academy is biased and that legislation is required to restore ideological balance to the classroom and on campus. Proponents of ID legislation claim that college professors are overwhelmingly liberal and should therefore be forced to present both left and right wing perspectives in the classroom so they don't indoctrinate their students into their one-sided views. This conception of intellectual diversity reduces the broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in a given discipline into a narrowly conceived view of "liberal" and "conservative" ideas. What proponents of so-called "intellectual diversity" measures really want to do is substitute politics for scholarship.
Free Exchange on Campus is opposed to ID and the ABOR (The so-called "Academic Bill of Rights," which uses language that implies free academic speech while in reality discriminating against the ability of faculty to expose students to new ideas that might challenge their narrow worldviews. Both ID and ABOR are premised on an argument that professors presenting new or controversial ideas will "indoctrinate" students or make the classroom so uncomfortable that students aren't able to learn.
From the FEOC site: "Why shouldn't professors be required to represent all views in their teaching?" - Representing and respecting diverse viewpoints is appropriate, but insisting that every humanities and social sciences professor represent all views equally is neither possible nor wise. Students gain a diverse intellectual knowledge by selecting a variety of classes with a variety of faculty members who bring their specialized knowledge and particular perspective to the material in a way that challenges students. Moreover, all views are not inherently equal. While a discussion of intelligent design might be appropriate and rewarding in a class on religious studies or the philosophy of science, it is not germane in the scientific study of biology. Should a history professor be required to discuss the discredited views of Holocaust denial in order to bring "balance" to a class on the history of the Second World War?
Think Again - Stanley Fish - Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. He's an amazing critic and the blog is fascinating reading.
Oyez.org - The Oyez Project is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality 'tour' of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.
- a fascinating blog maintained by John Gruber.
Coming fairly soon, I'll update the page with a few categories, etc. The whole site is a work in progress, and I'm a busy guy, so for now, this will have to do. If you want me to check out your site, podcast, whatever, visit the Contact page and tell me about it.
The contents of this site are, unless otherwise posted, copyright © 2008 Christopher Berg. For more information, please visit the Permissions page or e-mail me at chris[at]cbberg.info