I think that's impressive less for the class not realizing the game than for him having the energy to keep it up. I can do a student oriented game face for maybe a month? And then it's back to whatever whimsy my brain meats are dictating for me.

To be fair , speaking as someone who has had to do some work, hmm, 'reforming' faculty in terms of their teaching and advising methods, there are certainly horrible and inspiring teachers on both sides of the aisle.

Well, there was the Simpsons, but given that it was a later season episode you'd still be safe from having seen it used in a comedy.

I don't know of anyone on the humanities who wouldn't classify history as a humanities even if there are people in history who would struggle mightily to be called a social science.

Nope. From the 19th through to WWII you had one empire go down (Austro-Hungarian) and you had two get reclassified (Germany, Ottoman*, and Russian) but keep the core of their imperial possessions or even expand. In the meantime, Italy reclassified its as an empire, and the remaining empires actually grew by gobbling…

I feel better reading histories from 2 centuries ago than I do histories from 30 years ago precisely because the level of churn is easier to track.

There's more than you'd think. It's just that the level of repackaging and absorption makes it difficult to track.

It's possible that that's true, but for the moment the current levels of conflict are well in-line with the historical patterns for singular hegemonies. The only difference being that we're either working in a global system or three hegemonic spheres (depending on how granular you wanna get).

I don't really think giant, long-lived empires were that common compared to now. I mean, nothing now is terribly long lived, but you've still got:
Russia, the US, Brazil, Canada, China, Indonesia, India, and more that qualify and aren't really likely to splinter.

Eh, considering the pre-Christian position was more or less:

Usually the perspective I get from people with vociferous post-modern hate is that you can't tell the difference between post-modernists, nazis, and/or nihilists.

Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Morgan LeFay.

For me it's a word that works pretty well in jargon in a way that makes it deceptively appealing out.

This is an awesome post, thank you.

Defoe had a number of other big successes, Moll Flanders is the BEST, but he was scrambling in an era where author as a profession was a new thing so he tried everything to get paid. All of the Robinson books were written and published within a year of the original he was just desperate to get paid (also I think he…

Though, to be fair, the version Rousseau knew was incredibly and heavily edited to remove all of the contemplative and philosophical aspects of the original book - essentially bowdlerized for a French enlightenment audience that would have reacted with either violent allergy or ridiculous affection to anything that…

I'd count No Country for Old Men as a western.

I am at a point where…

Cut to Xavier in Cerebro with frustrated face:

The point I heard him make is that spending your time figuring out which dead language you want to master now or how you want to climb X mountain this time is way far from boring and a super better way to live.