Author Archives: Robert Basil

Holiday season re-post: Keep your online platforms happenin’

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

It is a truism that dormant websites and social media platforms can do more harm to you than good, no matter how active you have been in the past. I teach my students numerous methods to keep their online presence … Continue reading →

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The Interruption

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

The renowned and divisive Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller would tell this little story about an exchange he had with the great Niels Bohr: Some of us, including Bohr, were having a discussion about the spectrum and states of molecular oxygen. Bohr had some opinions, … Continue reading →

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The Hobo Ethical Code

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Robert Basil

This is beautiful. From Open Culture: 1. Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you. 2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times. 3. Don’t take … Continue reading →

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Where are the experts on who we are, in the social sciences, or in the arts, … anywhere?

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Robert Basil

Over at Research as a Second Language: Writing, Representation, and the Crisis of Social Science, Danish writer Thomas Basbøll does not view this question as an academic one. Neither would he give “both” as his answer. In his stirring dissection of the United … Continue reading →

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Elitism in the classroom

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

Professor Mayhew’s recent take on the topic: Teaching is transactional. The instructor is not feeding information to the students, teaching them that information, but interacting with them. A third element is the text in the class. The text is not … Continue reading →

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Hence, teaching manners matters

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Robert Basil

In a blog post this morning called “A Raging Snowflake,” my good friend Clarissa writes: Remember the Oppressed Tiffany, a very special snowflake whose “narrative was erased by the entire field of academia” when a hapless prof asked her to … Continue reading →

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Battle

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Robert Basil

In the New York Times obituary section recently I came upon one for Jacob Neusner, a scholar (and polemicist) who published more than 900 books in his lifetime. I calculated – on the back of a napkin, as it were – … Continue reading →

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Real Words

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Robert Basil

One of the best pure writers I have ever seen was a psychology student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University named Emily (she gave me permission to use her first name). She could amalgamate and compress numerous, complex source articles into a … Continue reading →

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Good Motto

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Robert Basil

“I have never sacrificed an idea simply because it might go over the head of someone not yet ready to understand it.”

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged mental hygiene | Leave a comment