Posts published in “From the Archives”

Quiz by PHL posted on NOVEMBER 5, 2011 At the start of every undergraduate class at Stanford I asked the students to take the following ungraded quiz. How well would you do? 1) The American Civil War was between: a)  1750 and 1800 b)  1801-1850 c)  1851-1900 d)  1901-1950   2) The purpose of The Federalist Papers was: a)  to gain ratification of the Constitution. b)  to assert U.S. rights in the Western Hemisphere c)  to give reasons for the War of 1812 d)  to line Thomas Jefferson’s birdcage   3) The controversy surrounding Senator Joseph McCarthy focused on: a)  Corruption b)  Communism c)…

It Was (and Is, and Will Continue to Be) a Dark and Stormy Month by PHL posted on NOVEMBER 3, 2011 This is a blog. This is also National Novel Writing Month. And this is a warning that your blogger will be blogging less often this month as a result of his commitment to write 50,000 words of his novel in 30 years days. Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wilkie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other literary luminaries would have been able to blog and compose novels simultaneously; they were masters of the serial…