http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/ musings on the state o' the world en-us 2011-06-02T15:07:57-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2011/06/02/thoughts_on_the.html It gets harder after 20 miles. But all marathons get harder after 20 miles, or you're not doing it right. On the internet and in real life, opinions on the difficulty of the Twin Cities marathon course devolve into what... eroberts 2011-06-02T15:07:57-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/09/01/i_encourage_tha.html In a really good discussion of how technology has altered historical research David Turner writes My only complaint, and I don't know if this is a complaint to be aimed at the camera manufacturers or the historians, is that I... academia and graduate school eroberts 2010-09-01T14:45:06-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/08/30/measuring_up_to.html No really, metric is interesting. Returning to America has reminded me of the absurdities of imperial measures in everyday life, but also that metric enthusiasts overstate the benefits of metric. Although Thomas Jefferson proposed a decimal system for America in... cultural exchange eroberts 2010-08-30T15:04:41-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/08/03/excuse_me.html One thing I didn't anticipate about moving back to America 10 days ago was that things I got used to in the 7 years I previously lived here could appear like new cultural experiences and misunderstandings. To wit, I had... cultural exchange eroberts 2010-08-03T08:17:32-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/05/13/but_now_they_ca.html This story is a doozy for academics (chronicle of higher ed version, sub required). Two business school professors sent a fake email to 6300 professors purporting to be from a prospective PhD student, with different versions of the email asking... academia and graduate school eroberts 2010-05-13T00:07:39-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/05/11/why_not_just_fu.html The poor will always be with us. What a lot of social policy strives to achieve is that the poor are more of a random, changing aggregate and not a static, related and identifiable group. Unfortunately there is lots of... eroberts 2010-05-11T22:05:29-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/04/15/paying_twice_as.html I'm sure the usual idiots will be out loose on the internet soon explaining why the fact that the United States spends twice as much of its national income on health care as the average OECD country, and has a... eroberts 2010-04-15T20:24:38-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/04/11/why_whanau_ora.html Good ideas and the thrill of the new are not the same as good outcomes in the long run. If the good idea of integrated social service delivery was that good we wouldn't have a century long international record of people calling it a new idea. economics eroberts 2010-04-11T23:04:51-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/04/08/there_was_no_go.html Interesting discussion at Crooked Timber about how much original reporting there is on the internet. Not much. Or maybe a lot. All depends what your prior expectations are, I suppose. There is certainly a lot of recycling of content, and... cultural exchange eroberts 2010-04-08T20:56:52-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/04/08/flying_business.html The latest episode in Duncan Garner's exposing of Chris Carter's travel shows two like-minded men really made for each other. Both men have opted to appear to be doing their job, rather than really doing it. For a little-bit-lazy political... parliamentary politics eroberts 2010-04-08T04:02:26-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2010/03/08/i_want_to_give.html In Wellington there is a fabulous non-profit bird sanctuary in the valley of an old reservoir. If used to be called the Karori Sanctuary, and now to try and attract more visitors (for whom Karori means nothing) it has renamed... cultural exchange eroberts 2010-03-08T19:30:39-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2009/12/30/technological_f.html The response to the Northwest 253 attempted terrorist attack has been interesting. As after 9/11 and the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempts, one of the distinctively American response has been the reach for the technological response. A common lament has... cultural exchange eroberts 2009-12-30T15:13:30-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2009/12/21/a_tutorial_disc.html Tutorials (discussion sections, but referred to as tutorials throughout because it's shorter) are an important part of university education. Done well, students come away knowing and understanding a topic. Also, students make friends in this form of class. This is... academia and graduate school eroberts 2009-12-21T16:25:19-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2009/12/02/predicting_the.html Now that Obama has given his big speech on Afghanistan we get the predictable debate between people who think that the June 2011 deadline is arbitrary and signals to the enemy how long they need to wait for America to... u.s. politics eroberts 2009-12-02T16:38:06-06:00 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/robe0419/coffee/2009/09/01/laws_and_langua.html The creativity of the Wanganui gangs protest against gang patch laws was amusing. Like the anti-smacking law we have a nice demonstration here of the ultimate ineffectiveness of laws, because language is not complete. You can ban gang patches, but... parliamentary politics eroberts 2009-09-01T22:59:06-06:00