The Stuff of Hollywood Spy Thrillers

The Arab and Israeli Press have both been reporting this week on the death of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, UAE.  Initially, Emirati authorities pronounced him dead after a heart attack, but after subsequent blood tests trace elements of poison were found in his blood.
Hamas, for their part, immediately and publicly accused the Israeli […]…Continue Reading The Stuff of Hollywood Spy Thrillers

VPR, Health Care, and Viewer Mail: Did Obama Make A Mistake?

I’ll be back on Vermont Public Radio this Monday as a guest on Jane Lindholm’s Vermont Edition program.   We’ll be discussing Obama’s first year in office. You can email questions to VPR in advance – as I recall, some of the best questions and phone calls during my last visit came from regular contributors to […]…Continue Reading VPR, Health Care, and Viewer Mail: Did Obama Make A Mistake?

Doha To Be Capital of A Dream

This morning I stumbled upon an old edition of The Economist – which I do not typically read – from July, treating on an topic that is occasionally forgotten: Arab nationalism. The article was entitled “The Arab World Wakes,” and went on to treat the Arab world as if it were a functioning whole of […]…Continue Reading Doha To Be Capital of A Dream

New WordPress Themes

New WordPress themes have been added to WordPress at Middlebury.  This blog has been updated to use Translucence, an interpretation of theme designs drafted by White Whale as part of the Web Redo project.
Translucence, like ShadowBox, is a theme series that includes a number of variations and options for layout.  This blog is currently configured […]…Continue Reading New WordPress Themes

How High Does a Dead Cat Bounce? Assessing the Likely Impact of Obama’s State of the Union speech

The State of the Union serves three broad purposes:

It is theater, in the sense of watching the nation’s political actors perform their traditional roles (greeting the president, standing, applauding) and occasionally ad-libbing (“You lie!”) – see Justice Alito’s mouthing objections to Obama’s mischaracterization of the meaning of the recent Supreme Court decision;
It serves as an […]…Continue Reading How High Does a Dead Cat Bounce? Assessing the Likely Impact of Obama’s State of the Union speech

User Services Goal: Centralized Student Employment

Goal Statement: Centralize student employment/ management/ training/ scheduling or some subset of that.  Shared training is for tasks already commonly shared across work areas – while cross-training might be an eventual outcome, this is not part of this goal.
Consolidation of repetitive tasks related to student employment.  This provides uniform policies and procedures, and reduces […]…Continue Reading User Services Goal: Centralized Student Employment