Things Not Yet Noted

Michael McCarthy,"Message Understood?" EducationGuardian, 11 April, tackles academic English. But if we commit written atrocities, we're also teachers of good writing. Tim Burke and Margaret Soltan have sharpened up their red pencils.

He Who Is Without Military Experience explains that five retired generals lack"resolve." (See, for instance, Daniel Drezner. Sorry, Tom. Not"fantastic"; just"fanatic.") He Who Is Without Academic Qualifications complains that higher education is in the hands of"thugs" like Michael Berube. Actually, Michael is most thug-like when he attacks my colleague, KC Johnson.

At Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Mark Grimsley posts the third in his series about academic blogging, Letters to Leila.

You can listen to excellent examples of call and response in the African American pulpit at The African American Pulpit.com's Listening Room. Caesar A. W. Clark's"The Worms Got Him" and Clarence LaVaughn (C. L.) Franklin's"The Eagle Stirreth in Her Nest" are two classics. In popular memory, Franklin will be known as Aretha's father, but Cornell's Nick Salvatore has published an excellent biography of C. L. Franklin: Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America.