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-John Sitter | Friday, November 16, 2018
With thanks to The Observer for its editorial hospitality this term to a faculty columnist, here are five farewell reflections. 1. Yes, professors procrastinate, too. Just as students procrastinate by looking at next semester’s course descriptions instead of completing work for this term, so do professors put off grading said work by thinking about next
John Sitter | Thursday, November 1, 2018
An old Election Day joke typically features an upper-crust woman from New England who is asked whether she has cast her ballot yet. She replies loftily, “Oh, I never vote. It only encourages them.” An unfunny counterpart appeared recently in a New York Times story about non-voters, in which a West Virginia woman explains why
John Sitter | Thursday, September 27, 2018
Last month’s column looked at some of the ways unconscious figurative language may shape our values, such as in the habit of implicitly equating growth and health, increase and improvement, “up” and “good.” So, for example, if quarterly numbers for production and consumption rise, the economy is declared strong and robust. But today let’s depart
John Sitter | Thursday, August 30, 2018
“Tropospheria” is a word (starting today) meaning things of the troposphere. Since in our latitude the troposphere extends from ground level to about seven miles up, this faculty column will over the next few months clarify everything under the stratosphere. Or maybe not quite. The “tropo” in troposphere means “turn.” The troposphere includes the air