Some links for your Thursday.  Almost Friday, people!  

An opinionated, but still interesting and worth hearing, perspective on the crisis in the academy, which for this guy is mostly a crisis in the humanities, and also a crisis caused by traditional institutions.  What I would like to see is more information about the rise of for-profit institutions, and their influence on this situation.  

The Moravian book shop—in business since 1745!!

I should probably look at this book before judging it, but I'll give in to temptation this time: a journalist from Santa Barbara California looking at the Religious right is not someone I would expect to understand what is going on, and my lack of expectations seem to be amply unfulfilled by her argument here. I think it should be pretty clear from what I’ve written elsewhere that I also don’t think that the Religious Right is a good thing.  But I don’t think they’re simply grabbing for power, for power’s sake.  Certainly, some of the elites are doing that; but I think the main motivation of the movement, the way they get the people going, is not lust for power but fear, a fear of losing their status and the world they feel at home in.  This isn’t for me a good rationale, nor do I mean to make them “more sympathetic” by arguing this.  Rather, I think it’s about knowing what is motivating them.  If you treat them like Genghis Khan, you misunderstand their basic M.O..  I think that’s what this is likely to do.

Should you listen to music while you work?  According to this study, it depends very much on the kind of work you’re doing, and a little bit on the kind of you you are.  

“Seldom, very seldom,” as the narrator cautions us in Emma, “does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”  A nice piece about Jane Austen.   

A really good idea: voluntary national service.