academia

intellectual

dad joke

Pokemon

academic discipline

history

light bulb joke

academics

scholar

scholarship

graduate student

graduate school

JSTOR

academic journal

philosophy major

essay writing

peer review

publishing

journal writing

academic writing

citation

linguistics

Noam Chomsky

research

grant

essay

access

faculty

professor

university

Michel Foucault

academic job market

genetic engineering

is only useful when trying to be useless and dangerous when trying to be useful.

Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful. (Taleb)

usefulness

value

is legitimized voyeurism, providing one with psychological as well as ideological distance from the subject of one's research.

This passage makes clear that dela Raza, devoted as he is to his historical research, recognizes that for him, academia is legitimized voyeurism. Dela Raza realizes that academia provides him the psychological as well as ideological distance from the subject of his research, and, as this dream suggests, only a return to his historical origins can reposition him as an agent rather than as a passive bystander.

is composed largely of supply- rather than demand-oriented research

As a result, research that is produced in academia tends to be supply rather than demand oriented.

supply and demand

is marked by viscious university politics precisely because the stakes are so small.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. Henry Kissinger

is a domain in which a subject, as soon as it becomes totally obsolete, is made into a required course.

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. (Peter Drucker)

is to knowledge what prostitution is to love --- close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love... close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing.* (Taleb)

prostitution

is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

is the study of the passion-stains on the bedsheets of the orgasm of poetry.

If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.

academia, n.Dad Jokes

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