Author Archives: mkevane

So my classroom was very warm… and I mentioned David Johansen….

OMFG this novel is so friggin great!  As a set, The Concubine, The Slave and The Great Ponds should have gotten Amadi the Nobel Prize for literature.  These are perfect novels.  The dialogue is amazing.  The Concubine starts off with … Continue reading →

What happened was, I started singing “slip away” to myself, and I couldn’t place it, and I knew it was one of the saddest things I had ever heard sung and then of course I remembered it was Lou Reed. … Continue reading →

In Burkina Faso, men and women 25 years and older completed on average less than one year of schooling via International Education Statistics.

« Attendez qu’on crée notre parti et on va vous donner les grandes lignes de notre action. Que ce soit le président Comparoé ou les autres camarades qui sont restés là-bas, on était sur une plateforme politique, idéologique. J’estime qu’ils … Continue reading →

This is pretty amazing news.  of course the pundits and ordinary population are already asking whether it isn’t some kind of complex ploy.  One way for President Compaoré to “enable” modification of the constitution is if the “opposition” agrees to … Continue reading →

The Senate confirmed Janet L. Yellen as the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, marking the first time that a woman has led the country’s central bank in its 100-year history.  As a Fed official, Ms. Yellen, 67, has been an … Continue reading →

The United States economy grew at a surprisingly robust 4.1 percent annual pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. That is the strongest growth in nearly two years and only the third time the economy has expanded … Continue reading →

Type this EQ \o(ˆ,p) Select what you just typed, press Ctrl+F9 to make a field out of it, and press Alt+F9 to switch between display of field codes and field results. You make the ˆ by pressing Alt+0136 (that is, … Continue reading →

The security situation in Juba is very tense. There is open fighting throughout the entire city, with occasional heavy fighting flaring up in certain areas. The house of the sacked ex-VP, Riek Machar, was assaulted with heavy artillery for several … Continue reading →

I frankly had no idea who Lionel Shriver is, so I read the story completely cold. I quite enjoyed it. The theme, of the way we become aware of our adult selves emerging, and awareness of our life-projects emerging, is … Continue reading →

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is accusing the U.N. Security Council of prolonging the conflict in Darfur by failing to take action to arrest Sudan\’s President Omar al-Bashir and others accused of war crimes.Fatou Bensouda said the council\’s … Continue reading →

Irony: Famously, when opening his club, The Establishment, in Soho in 1961, Cook remarked that he was modelling it on ‘those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the … Continue reading →

When an instructor uses class time for student work, rather than lectures, very often the active learning is structured around activities that can be done in small groups (from 2-5 persons).  There are a number of good reasons to do … Continue reading →

All the rage these days is the idea of “flipping” the classroom.  The idea is simple.  Technology has made it very easy to record and distribute (through Youtube etc.) anything that a teacher might do in a lecture.  A lecture … Continue reading →