Concrete Academic

Concrete Academic will return in January.

Just a couple of weeks ago Claude Lévi-Strauss—the father of modern cultural anthropology, not the blue jeans guy—died in Paris.  There will be no memorial concert or film (well, maybe in France), which is too bad because I consider his contributions to the world more significant than the moonwalk or “Thriller.” I have had an [...]

Numbers don’t lie, we’re told, but they lie all the time. Ok, in and of themselves they may be innocent, but numbers are open to such variegated interpretation that they shouldn’t be completely trusted. I’m somewhat suspicious of the widely reported article in Reproductive Health, a peer-reviewed medical journal, last month. What the press reported, [...]

Prescience or politics? Liability or leverage? Take our poll and pontificate poetically in the comments.

What Do You Think of President Obama’s Nobel Prize?
(polls)

From discussion boards to weblogs to social networking sites, the Internet provides ready platforms for self-expression and self-publishing. But what has been lost in the free-for-all is clear thinking and articulate debate. Our collective hunger for mental stimulation and interaction is being fed the junk food of inane Facebook updates and intellectually vacuous discussion board [...]