Category: Less Serious

The NFL Logo

Replacing the NFL: A Thought Experiment (with Chris Moore and Sam Mulberry)

September 27, 2012

By almost any measure, the National Football League is the most popular and profitable professional sports league in the United States, and likely in the world. Popular? In 2011 all but two of the top 25 most watched telecasts in this country were NFL games, and a Harris poll earlier this year found that 36% … More Replacing the NFL: A Thought Experiment (with Chris Moore and Sam Mulberry)

"Women are cooperative"

“When You Supervise a Woman”: Management Advice from WWII

September 3, 2012

Now it definitely feels like I’m working more than I should on Labor Day, but one more labor-related nugget comes to us courtesy of the blog Retronaut: a manual published during World War II to help the (male) managers of RCA factories know how to deal with the women flooding into the industrial workplace while … More “When You Supervise a Woman”: Management Advice from WWII

Google Logo

Fun with Googling

August 29, 2012

One of the statistics provided every day by WordPress (the service that hosts this blog) is a list of “referrers,” websites that blog visitors click on to get to your blog. Most of the referrers for this blog are sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and WordPress itself. Most visitors have been here before and … More Fun with Googling

Flags at 2002 Winter Olympics

The Best National Anthems: Special Olympic Edition

August 7, 2012

Okay, one more Olympic post… Last fall I spent a couple of weeks attempting (with a big assist from my HIS354 Modern Europe students, and with tongue mostly in cheek) to determine the “best national anthem” — pointing out at least once or twice along the way that there’s really no objective way to determine … More The Best National Anthems: Special Olympic Edition

Casting a Movie with Thirty Years of Presidential History

July 31, 2012

In 1952 an African-American man named Eugene Allen joined the White House staff as a “pantry man,” washing dishes, stocking cabinets, and shining silverware for $2400 a year. Thirty-four years later, he retired as the Head Butler of the most famous residence in the United States, having served under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, (LB) Johnson, … More Casting a Movie with Thirty Years of Presidential History

Amazon Kindle

Democratizing Bartlett’s: What Kindle Readers Highlight

July 31, 2012

I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own. So said American publisher John Bartlett of his most famous work, a compendium of quotations that is still in print today. While later editors went far beyond the founder’s favorite sources (the Bible and Shakespeare) … More Democratizing Bartlett’s: What Kindle Readers Highlight

Singing La Marseillaise

Happy Bastille Day!

July 14, 2012

We’ll get to a pretty loathsome chapter in French history in about forty-eight hours, but today, in honor of France’s national holiday, here’s a repeat of my 2011 post declaring “La Marseillaise” the best national anthem. At long last (okay, six days) we come to the end of our series counting down the best national … More Happy Bastille Day!

The Kilns

This Week in History

July 9, 2012

It’s not quite MacArthur hitting the beach at Leyte, or M.J. winning three post-baseball NBA Finals, but after a 37-week hiatus, behold the triumphant return of “This Week in History”! July 9, 1850 – Millard Fillmore succeeds Zachary Taylor as U.S. president This after the former war hero died of acute gastroenteritis, likely caused by … More This Week in History