Academic freedom is not an inalienable right

We can always count on Stanley Fish to write something that will surely upset a bunch of faculty. (The small subset of the global population that we are!)

The latest is about academic freedom. This time around, I am not in the group upset with his column :-) Fish articulates a fine point that academic freedom is related to the job that we have to do, and is not the freedom to do whatever we want to do.
To quote Fish, To those who regard academic freedom as an unwarranted indulgence you can say, No, it's not an indulgence, it's a necessary condition for engaging in this enterprise, and if you want this enterprise to flourish, you must grant it. To those professors who turn freedom into license by using the classroom as a partisan pulpit, or by teaching materials unrelated to the course description, or by coming to class unprepared or not at all, you can say, Look, it's freedom to do the job, not freedom to change it or shirk it.
This is what it means to say that academic freedom is not a general freedom like the freedoms guaranteed you by the Constitution and the First Amendment; it is task-specific and task-limited.

I am reminded of an instance where a professor got upset at suggestions directed to all faculty not to convert classes into platforms for presidential elections, particularly when the course materials are not directly related to that. The response: "it is my academic freedom to teach whatever I want to teach in my classes." I agree with Fish that simply aint so.

The same issue of the Chronicle has a review of Fish's latest book. The reviewer is in the "other group" that is not happy with Fish's arguments--a group that I fall into every once in a while. But, perhaps when I am in the "other group" people like the reviewer are in the happy group?

Diddy on gas prices: oh poor me!

If ever anybody needed one single reason for why gas prices need to rise more, Sean Diddy Combs provided all the arguments in favor. This is so bizarre that I am tempted to conclude it is a satire from The Onion. Unfortunately, it is not. Maybe another piece for Mankiw's Pigou Club?

From CNN: Sean "Diddy" Combs complained about the "... too high" price of gas and pleaded for free oil from his "Saudi Arabia brothers and sisters" in a YouTube video posted Wednesday.
The hip-hop mogul said he is now flying on commercial airlines instead of in private jets, which Combs said had previously cost him $200,000 and up for a roundtrip between New York and Los Angeles.
"I'm actually flying commercial," Diddy said before walking onto an airplane, sitting in a first-class seat and flashing his boarding pass to the camera. "That's how high gas prices are. I'm at the gate right now. This is really happening, proof gas prices are too high. Tell whoever the next president is we need to bring gas prices down."

When to use 'fewer' rather than 'less'?

It looks like there are grammar vigilantes all over the world!

"Tesco is changing its checkout signs after coming under criticism from linguists for using "less" rather than "fewer"" says the BBC .... and
"Tesco is replacing its current "10 items or less" fast-track checkout notices with signs saying "Up to 10 items"."

The Plain English Campaign has a simple rule of thumb to help everyone: less means "not as much," whereas fewer means "not as many".