Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Daytime session at Sherigu Community Library
- La deuxième journée des activités de café littéraire à la bibliothèque de Boni
- Échanges avec la nouvelle gérante de la bibliothèque de Koho
- Reprise des activités de la bibliothèque mobile Pénélope
- Sortie de la Bibliothèque Mobile Pénélope à l’école Sainte Thérèse
- Bonne nouvelle pour les amoureux de la lecture à Niankorodougou
- Bibliothèque communautaire de Zimtenga ! Les livres attendent patiemment le retour des communautés
- Bilan des activités du mois d’août de la bibliothèque de Bougounam
- Bilan des premières journées du café littéraire
- Nyariga community library, daytime activities
Author Archives: mkevane
Bolivian Urkupiña street parade in Madrid
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Bike ride tour of Madrid
A gorgeous morning.
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Cantinflas!
A Cantinflas movie on the tv in our Airbnb in Madrid. I’m twelve years old again.
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Bonsai at the Madrid botanical garden
The paintings by Goya, Velasquez, Fortuny, and El Greco are amazing in the nearby Prado but you can’t take photos in the museum and really what can I add about Las Meninas, just a spectacularly amazing painting? The bonsai are … Continue reading
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Just arrived in Madrid
Will write more about our very smooth travel later, but for now just want to say that it’s nice to be in Madrid!
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Colours of Time, a lovely French film for a trans-Atlantic plane flight
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Nimby’s in 1870 Oviedo Spain
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Traveling in Spain
I will be traveling in Spain for the next couple of weeks riding bicycles in the Galicia area. Very much looking forward to this break. We will be in the towns of Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra. will try to post pictures … Continue reading
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Continuing to adopt terms: tenure-stream and teaching-stream
Last year, our Faculty Senate President suggested widespread adoption of these terms. No binary set is ever going to cover the complexity of academic appointments, but, as he pointed out, defining one group of faculty as “non” is just not … Continue reading
Posted in Governance
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Discretion demands accountability
Discretion demands accountability, is my motto for the year. Does not show up in jstor or Google Scholar or Google Books, though it does show up in a few AI-related web articles…. So, at my discretion, I declare myself the … Continue reading
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Reading June-July 2026
La casa verde, Mario Vargas LlosaWhat we can know: A novel, Ian McEwanI, Claudius, Robert GravesLa Hojarasca, Gabriel Garcia MarquezThe Dream Hotel, Leila LalamiSplendeurs et misères des courtisanes, Honoré de BalzacNives by Sacha NaspiniCatastrophe, Richard PosnerEl Amor en los tiempos … Continue reading
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Random quick thoughts on AI
In conversation with a friend….I think “unemployment” and “no paid work” are the wrong likely descriptors of 2050…. possible, but unlikely…. For it to be likely, to me, one would have to lean harder on the dystopia…. the rich and … Continue reading
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Recent reading March-May 2026
The Abyss, by Marguerite Yourcenour. Historical fiction set in medieval times after the plague. Interesting but a little too didactic and not enough plot, for my taste. In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes. Sci-fi about a discovery deep in an ocean … Continue reading
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Tagged book-review, book-reviews, books, fiction, Reading
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Notes on 12 days in Bora-Bora, Moorea, and Tahiti
In early March my wife and I and another couple spent 12 days in Bora-Bora, Moorea, and Tahiti. I thought I would write up some trip notes since one thing we noticed was how bad many of the online sources … Continue reading
Posted in Personal Kevane life
Tagged adventure, french-polynesia, moorea, tahiti, travel
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Reading Feb 2026
Álvaro Enrigue, Tu sueño imperios han sidoCristina Rivera Garza, Autobiografía del algodón Christopher Priest, The Prestige Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
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Reading Nov-Dec 2025 and Jan 2026
Charles Burns, Final Cut. Appreciate it. Leaves you with fleeting emotion. Cinema and meta pretty nice. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Things really do go rather badly for Okonkwo. Javier Marias, Todas las Almas. Gave up 1/2 way through. Just … Continue reading
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AI as an existential threat – Kevane preliminary draft
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“What can it do?” A living list of computational problems that deep learning/AI/neural nets can or seems likely to “do” (at varying cost and efficacy)
It goes without saying that the suite of AI-related software technologies (which seem to be constantly repackaged and redefined) are very good at playing most strategy games and defeating grand-masters at the games. I don’t really know how anyone could … Continue reading
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Tagged AI, artificial-intelligence, chatgpt, technology, writing
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