Jonathan Yardley and I are of the same generation. His"Joseph Conrad's ‘Dark Victory'," Washington Post, 9 May, reminds me of the crucial role the discovery of Conrad played in my early intellectual life. I hope he is still being read. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

Scott Jaschik,"‘The Phantom Professor'," Inside Higher Ed, 11 May, tells the story of an adjunct professor who began blogging her experience at Nonspecified U. Others at Nonspecified U began recognizing itself in the accounts. Adjunct professor's services are no longer required. Here's her blog, The Phantom Professor. Elaine Liner and Southern Methodist University have parted company, but Liner may have more to say in a book. Institutions need the kind of candid insider/outsider critique that she was doing. Strong institutions can tolerate it.

Alan Charles Kors,"Academic Hypocrite of the Millenium," The Torch, 11 May, takes Stanley Fish apart, in a deboning that's long overdue. Thanks to David Beito at Liberty & Power for the tip.

Over 1700 of us have signed Jeff Weintraub's on-line petition in support of the American Association of University Professor's condemnation of the British Association of University Teachers' boycott of the Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar-Ilan, and blacklisting of their faculty members. Consider joining us. Here's a short list of some of us who have signed it.

Finally, my man, Mr. Sun!, calls our attention to"The Golden Age of Iron Men," a remarkable on-line library of self-help, body building books from the early 20th century. The pictures are worth a good laugh. I'd like to think we've gotten over it, but now we think these guys would make good political leaders.

Sharon Howard - 5/11/2005

http://gallica.bnf.fr/FranceAmerique/page.asp?/en/T2-0-Intro.htm should (I hope!) give you direct access to the English language version at Gallica (with a link to the French version). At least that's where I've just come from. It looks marvellous.

Dale B. Light - 5/11/2005

Thought you might be interested:
PARIS (AFP) - The US Library of Congress and the French National Library have joined forces to launch a bilingual website exploring the history of the French presence in North America from the 16th to early 19th centuries.

The site, which includes more than 100,000 images from the rare book collections of the two libraries, was launched at a ceremony in Paris on Tuesday.
...

"France in America" can be found on the Library of Congress site at http://international.loc.gov/intldl/ -- while the French version "La France en Amerique" is at http://gallica.bnf.fr/France-Amerique.

I have tried to access the archive through both of the URLs, but have so far been unable to do so. It looks interesting, though and might be a useful teaching tool.