Eco and Pamuk discuss being a novelist

from Hurriyet Daily News

Two eminent novelists, Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk, met in Istanbul on April 9. The authors told their stories about how they became writers.

Against Open Access: A change of heart

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Ryan

Open Access (OA) has always been an issue that the contributors to Savage Minds have covered thoroughly.  When I joined the SM crew, I too joined the chorus singing the praises of OA and calling for change in our publishing regimes.  I spent a lot of time over the past year or so writing about OA issues.  It was always OA this, and OA that, and on and on.  I am sure many of you got sick of it all.  But I haven?t written about it much over the past couple of months.  There?s a reason for this.  After some recent experiences, and a lot of reflection about academic publishing, I have completely changed my position about open access.  In fact, I think the whole push for OA is a waste of time, if not a complete delusion.

Open access rising

from Culture Matters by Jovan Maud

Is it just me or is the push towards an open access mentality in academia gathering steam? Recently, we?ve had the encouraging news that the Australian Research Council has introduced an open access policy for research it funds and the Obama administration has backed open access for federally-funded research.

2013 Hugo nominees announced

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

This year’s Hugo Award nominees have been announced, and it’s a great slate! Congrats to all the authors, artists, fans and editors who are up for the award in San Antonio, Texas this Labor Day weekend.

Web Roundup: Technology and storytelling by Lily Shapiro

from Somatosphere by Lily Shapiro

Inspired by last month?s post, I decided to format this post loosely around the theme of storytelling. Storytelling is fundamental to many of our lives, both academic and otherwise, and numerous new formats for telling, collecting, and archiving stories are cropping up. This post focuses on the ways in which technology is shaping and changing the kinds of stories we tell, and the kinds of stories we have access to.

Chinua Achebe, Father of African Literature, Dies at 82

from Writerswrite.com’s Writer’s Blog

Bestselling novelist Chinua Achebe has died after a brief illness, reports The New York Times. He was 82. Known as the Father of African Literature, Achebe is the author of Things Fall Apart which was one of the first African novels.

72% Of Professors Who Teach Online Courses Don?t Think Their Students Deserve Credit

GREGORY FERENSTEIN

This is not a good sign for online education: 72 percent of professors who have taught Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) don?t believe that students should get official college credit, even if they did well in the class. More importantly, these are the professors who voluntarily took time to teach online courses, which means the actual number of professors who discount the quality of MOOCs is probably much (much) higher. The survey reveals the Grand Canyon-size gap between the higher-education establishment and the coalition of tech companies and lawmakers that aremandating college credit for online courses.

Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012-2013

from Docuticker

Source: Times Higher Education The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012-2013 powered by Thomson Reuters are the only global university performance tables to judge world class universities across all of their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The top universities rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators

Resources for Understanding Islam

from American Anthropological Association by Oona

Eight modules, with discussion topics and links to a TED lecture, have been collated by TED Studies and Wiley-Blackwell on the theme ?Understanding Islam? and there?s an iTunesU course app for the iPad, too.