Earlier this week, we posted the sixth installment in our “Productive Summer” series, which discussed how academics can benefit from being unacademic every so often. But if you really follow the blog, you’d know that we take breaks pretty much every Friday. Sure, we try to keep these posts “vaguely academic”, but sometimes, after a week of preparing manuscripts for publication, or after a week of back-to-back-to-back seminars, or after a particularly bad set of office hours, you just don’t feel like being all scholarly on a Friday morning. Watch how we paint these time wasters in a scholarly tone:

  • Although, how could it not be scholarly to read the works of T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, or Gertrude Stein? Maybe if the Paris Review had reimagined them as the sorts of incoherent texts you get from your friends in the tender hours of the night after all the bars close. It turns out the Review’s Jesse Graynor does a lot of reimagining.
  • Sticking with language but returning to more serious subject matter, did you know that the Canadian government loves to talk grammar? The Language Portal of Canada (www.ourlanguages.gc.ca) provides pretty extensive guidelines for language use (in both English and French) and links to some useful free training resources. For instance, here’s how the Canadian government recommends best using gender-neutral language.
  • In order to balance the language with some art, we scoured the internet for the latest in pop culture and cutting edge artistic vision. Upon realizing how much work scouring actually is, we settled on telling you about this collection of NHL logos redesigned using Simpsons characters.

We warned you these Friday lists have scant scholarly value. Don’t make that face. Okay, fine. Well here’s a Wikipedia history of the Latke-Hamantash Debate.

 

 

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