How smart can a rock band be? Super-smart, that's how smart. If you have 2 minutes to spare, turn on your sound, click HERE, and enjoy a delightful rock n' roll romp through Western art history. The Franco-American band, Hold Your Horses, will delight anyone with even the least sense of humor and the littlest bit of knowledge about painting. I played this for my advanced painting class yesterday (a sort of on-the-spot midterm), and I’m here to report that my students passed this little exam with flying colors. My personal favorite is “Las Meninas,” but “The Raft of the Medusa" gives it a run for its money.

Tonight, millions will gather round the fireplace (AKA television) to tremble with excitement over who will win what at the Academy Awards -- that holy annual event where Hollywood, performing directly to its loyal fans, congratulates itself for the previous year’s work. Oscar night's competition, celebration, and glamour, stirred into a delicious TV brew, invites movie lovers to watch people they adore from afar -- people who make their living practicing the art of pretending to be other people -- pretending to not care all that much whether or not they win one of those strange-looking little statues.

Since I like, rather than adore, movies, I prefer to read about who won the next morning, after the tinsel is down. And though I think acting a fascinating human endeavor, and am as stunned as the next person at the raw talent some people have in luring the rest of...

After arriving home from school last night, I read a long reader response to my post on why the idea of “consumer empowerment” (now used by everyone in the health-care debate) is wrongheaded. Commentator ledzep, arguing against my unapologetic liberal leanings on the issue of health care, concluded by saying it was not my “most responsibly argued piece” -- as if, like a teenager arriving home a little drunk, I needed chastising. Here’s my response:

ledzep (quoting LF): "Translation: Keep the bountiful profits rolling into the pockets of the private health-insurance companies." And how does the individual mandate do anything different from this? Even more, in fact - the profits will increase. Do you think the insurance companies are afraid of being given a...

Last Sunday, David Brooks said in The New York Times that to solve the mess that’s called “health care” in America, Republicans believe we need to “create a genuine market with clear price signals, empowered consumers and an evolving process.” Now, fellow “Brainstorm” blogger Diane Auer Jones chimes in with “We must empower consumers to make good decisions by providing them with more information about the options they have. …”

Ah, the “empowered consumer”! -- that unicorn invoked by the Republicans whenever a societal need that obviously requires some substantial government participation doesn’t jibe with their mantra that the market always...

Having just finished studying Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the large group of freshmen in our team-taught “Culture and Expression” course was ready for the real thing. Lucky for us, then, that BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music) is in its second season of “The Bridge Project”—a three-year series of co-productions of classical theater by BAM, The Old Vic, and Neal Street, and that right now they’re offering The Tempest. Directed by Sam Mendes, the Prospero in this Tempest shows from the very start of the play that he’s exhausted with art. But to go into that would be to tell a different story from the one I’m going to tell here.

Our huge group of freshmen was divided into manageable groups who would see the play on a succession of evenings. From Hofstra, it’s a short train ride on the...

No matter that the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world not to have universal health care. We Americans are different. We’re independent. We don’t need others -- especially our government -- telling us what to do. No less a giant than Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, “Self-Reliance,” gave us a clarion call (“trust thyself”) reminding us that real men make decisions for themselves.

The 19th-century Emersonian idea of self-reliance, slapped on top of 21st-century realities, yields a very odd result. On the one hand, many Americans -- especially Republicans -- deeply loathe “government nanny-state programs.” They argue that whenever the government interferes in the marketplace, people lose their sense of initiative and their freedoms, costs go up, and whatever was wrong in the first place simply gets...

I know fellow Brainstormer Michael Ruse blogged on Tiger's press conference, but I'm going to throw in my two cents as well. I didn’t have time to listen to yesterday’s full Tiger Woods mea culpa, but I heard enough to know that sports commentators wrestling with whether or not he was “sincere” or “convincing” are spinning their wheels on a poorly understood track. Although we all move about this world absolutely sure that we can tell when the people we know or meet are sincere or not, weighing in on sincerity is a risky, risky business. Whether or not Tiger was “sincere” is a particularly worthless enterprise. Although Tiger’s success as a golfer derives from his spectacular talent at hitting a tiny little ball with...

There seem to be two complaints in the comments so far about my post from yesterday, “4 Days, 40 Papers.” The first is that I didn’t supply “rubrics,” or some other form of a priori guide as to what constitutes good, fair, and poor papers. The post was about grading, not assigning. In assigning the papers, I was, as I always am, thorough and precise about what should be present in the papers. I both discussed the assignment, in detail, in class, and posted it, in detail, on Blackboard. Moreover, since there are to be several short papers assigned during the semester, and since my marginalia is relatively copious, most students learn very quickly my de facto “rubrics” concerning quality. Finally, an a priori “rubric” will neither solve the problem of subjectivity...

Forty papers, each two or three pages long (typewritten, 12-point type and double-spaced, as per my instructions) sit neatly stacked in two piles on my desk in my home. They stare accusingly at me, but they’ll not get my attention until I’m finished writing this post, watering my lone plant, and bundling yesterday’s newspapers and magazines for tomorrow’s recycling. The papers arrived yesterday, like little ships docking in the harbor of my hand -- tenderly steered to me by students with tired-looking faces.

This semester, I’m teaching in a large lecture course that’s for first-year students in our Honors College. The course is team-taught -- 12 of us developed the curriculum, and we each give a couple of lectures as well as teach two separate discussion groups of 20 students each. We’re at the moment in the course where...

If you were intrigued by the headline to a recent letter in The Chronicle, “Improving Teaching Will Require Strategic Thinking” (7 February 2010), you also might want to read, “Improving Strategic Thinking Will Require Teaching.” To deepen your understanding of the issue even more, go to “Teaching Will Require Improving Strategic Requirements.” For additional reading on the topic, try “Teaching Will Improve Strategic Requirements.” And don’t miss, “Requirements Will Improve Thinking Strategies,” either -- or the brilliant analysis found in last month’s “Thinking Strategically Will Teach Improvement.” But for the most comprehensive discussion of the issue, turn to “Will Requires Improving Strategic Thinking.”