Been a while since I’ve had an afternoon coffee and just read. (In this case, to prep for my class tomorrow.) ☕️ 📚

    Cup of black coffee and a small book by Montesquieu

    Finally got approval from my work to buy Omnifocus 4. Tomorrow will be a very good day in the office.

    Got a paper submitted. I think I spent more time formatting to the journal’s house style than I did writing the thing. But it’s off. A Christmas miracle.

    Formatting LaTeX tables into Excel, by hand, because ::checks notes:: the journal submissions guidelines want everything in MS Word and each figure or table in a separate file of its own.

    It’s about be my third cup of coffee—and we had two cups of tea to break up the coffee.

    Not every day that you get to have dinner with Consuls General from two foreign nations. 🤙🏽

    One of my students emailed to tell me he read the Declaration of Independence this morning. My work here is done. God bless, America! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

    While writing my narrative letter of the previous year for my annual review, and I gotta admit, adding that a student of mine is a Rhodes Scholar still feels “like wow, he did that. Boss move.”

    In welcome news for academe, eLife is ending accept/reject decisions. Here’s hoping more of this follows.

    “At this point we can all agree that Angelo is a piece of shit.”

    —a student paper on Measure for Measure

    Always something a little endearing when all the late assignments on the final paper are from the best students who fret and stress about every last minute detail and miss the deadline by 5-10 minutes. Average students (and below) just turn in “what they got.”

    And with that, I’m done teaching for 2022—grading final papers notwithstanding.

    About this time of the semester, the illusion of safety collapses for students who haven’t been coming to class. Suddenly, without warning, final papers are due. Never mind that they’ve been on the syllabus and Canvas since the start of the term. 🎓📑

    Thankfully I do not need to adjust to the weather. Flying back to sunny, and much warmer, Tempe this afternoon. Great conference at Notre Dame this weekend. I’ll be back.

    I was expecting a marvelous display of injury from the plenary lecture, but MacIntyre shows no sign of slowing down his deep probing of the universe and ethics. So far this conference exceeds even high expectations.

    I need to minister my time well when at a conference with so many good panels and lots of old friends and colleagues in town.

    I’m certain about few things in life but among them, seeing old friends from grad school later tonight, and their kids, will be worth waking up at zero dark thirty for the pre-dawn flight out of town.

    I’m still reading through the comments from my manuscript review two weeks ago. So much insight from the reviewers—more than I can get into the revised manuscript. I’m grateful for the experience. Oh, and we’re on cup two this morning, likely not slowing down this morning. ☕️

    🗞️ Professors and academics will stay on Twitter—for now

    Mostly confirms my priors the network effects will keep most of academe on Twitter.

    Not only did I kinda my Padres beating the Dodgers because I was hosting a manuscript workshop, I also missed the Vols beating Alabama. What a day! 🏈

    A modest proposal: If university libraries are going to lean into eBooks over physical books, they should also make it easier for logging into whatever eBook reader app is necessary to read said books.

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