What could you get for  £500,000?

Or perhaps the better question is what would you be willing to give away or—let's be frank here—what would you be willing to sell for $717,650?

Have you seen the News of the World video where Fergie (not the singer, but the Duchess of York) is selling access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, for 500,000 pounds?

Although the Duchess of York seems not to have done anything illegal, the fact that she was caught on videotape making a deal with an undercover journalist posing as a Middle Eastern business magnate certainly makes us all think, doesn't it?

It's made me think, for example, about what I could auction off were there a bidder.

Come on, there must be some kind of influence or access I could...

Karen Renner, Ph.D., and I decided we had to discuss the cover of this week's New Yorker.

The May 24th, 2010 issue features a cartoon of a youngish man hanging his framed doctorate diploma on the wall of what is clearly the room he's had since childhood. An older couple, whose lined faces and worried expressions show their trepidation at Dr. Tim moving back, capture our attention as well.

We know the young man's name is Tim because there are signs saying "Tim's Room" and "Keep Out" on the door, which are, of course, exactly what you'd expect to find on the door of a kid's room.

You would not expect to find these signs on the door of a recent Ph.D. I guess that's the funny part.

The young man looks like an extra from an Archie cartoon. He...

It's my brother's 59th birthday today.

My brother is a gypsy scholar.

He used to be a gypsy cab driver.

He already has an MBA and a JD, but now he's going to school for the hell of it. He just sent me a paper he wrote for his graduate course at the City University of New York. The paper is called "Microfinance and Social Justice." It includes the line "money does not care who spends it," which I like enough to have printed on a T-shirt. But then, my brother has spent his life saying things that I'd like to have printed on T-shirts.

It would be easy to celebrate Hugo's many obvious accomplishments—his professional successes, his degrees, his three fabulous children, his long and happy marriage—as well the work he's done through the Double...

President Michael Hogan offered his resignation to UConn today. It's not as if we had a whole lot of choice but to accept it. Hogan had already signed on to become President of the University of Illinois.

One of Connecticut's local news stations just ran a story where a member of the UConn Board of Trustees told the camera he'd first heard about Hogan's decision yesterday evening (in a call made from Chicago, no less) and had no idea that this change was in the works.

Not that I'm bitter, but since I thought Hogan and UConn had bonded pretty well, I sort of expected him to be around for several more years. Also, I liked him. He was respected by many of the faculty, especially in the arts and the humanities, because he knew what it meant to write books (he's written them) and teach students (he'd taught them-lots of them) and not simply be an administrator, bean counter, or bureaucrat.

As if handed this by my own snarky, ironic Fate in order to force me to munch on my own words, I'm going to place a real link to a real article that I'd actually like you to read, because I'm quoted in the Sunday New York Times—and folks, trust me on this one, this will probably be the one time that ever happens.

A well-respected reporter asked me to comment on whether comic/writer Sarah Silverman's sense of smartest-adolescent-in-the-room appeal might need to change given that, with Silverman turning 40 soon, she'll be heading towards the estrogen horizon.

It was Thursday morning when the reporter's e-mail showed up in my in box. I was grading finals and working at home, awake since dawn and on my 56th cup of coffee, and I responded to Judith Newman's enormously polite e-mail within nanoseconds.

"YOU WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT SILVERMAN GOT OVER TWO-MILLION DOLLARS TO...

The only way to keep writing is to ignore your critics (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/ignore-your-critics.html). In any kind of profession or industry, apparently, the best way to keep moving forward is to put aside those who stick out their tongues at your efforts, or those who would stick out their legs to trip you up (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8510322.stm).

But it does seem especially important for writers—critics, scholars, essayists, poets, novelists, and bloggers come to mind—to develop a kind of professional armor when coping with the negative responses that inevitably accompany the publication of any work whatsoever (http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2006/07/02/ignore-your-critics/  http://www.dirjournal...

Successful women use fear not to undermine their success, but to apologize for it. 

Fear is offered to others as a compensation for achieved success.

Fear domesticates powerful women. A woman who is extremely competent in most areas of her life but supremely afraid of one is "humanized" by her anxiety; those around her realize she's not perfect. They can then breathe a sigh of relief and allow her into the community without burdening her with their resentment or their envy.

"Boy, Susan has the perfect life," someone might comment, only to be told "But do you know she has this thing about not drinking anything except bottled water? She can't even have a cup of coffee in the office. She's afraid of getting sick...

How would anybody who knew me well know I'd finished teaching for the semester?

--They'd see that my socks were matched. All those random, lonely socks, thrown into a wire basket in the closet for three months, are now bundled up with their partners like dancers at a high-school prom.

--They'd be eating a three-course meal, where two of the courses had not been removed from the microwave. They'd be savoring dishes with fresh cilantro, curly parsley, and oregano from the new plant in my kitchen (yes, a live plant, one I hadn't been able to kill yet—such signs of life and spring!). No frozen peas. No frozen pearl onions. No garlic from the tube. Maybe there'd still be some of those mashed potatoes from the container however; I really like those.

--Were...

Brenda wasn't sure what to call herself.

Her name was fine, but her racial and ethnic designation was something else. She thought about this as the Amtrak moved out of Manhattan against the night sky.

She turned her head and looked steadily at her profile from beneath her arched eyebrows; she approved of  her polo shirt with the collar pushed up in the back. The soft-pink headband complimented the shirt and the pearl earrings were perfect, even without the necklace. Was she African-American? That's how she was identified in terms of what she checked off the college application form. She was more comfortable with the word "Black." Besides, she wasn't only, wasn't even mostly,  "African-American." She was more Cuban, Jamaican, and Brazilian than African. It was simply easier to say "Black" which, when you thought about it (and she thought about it for the  entire fall term of her senior ...

What do you know about sex?

I'm putting together an anthology—short, sinful, and sweet.

I know you know something, but where did you get that information? Where did you learn it?

What kinds of books did you read that had sexy bits?

Did Catcher in the Rye turn you on? Shakespeare's sonnets? (And if so, which ones?) Did you turn down the page on the bridesmaid and Sonny passage in The Godfather, perhaps? Are there sections you reread in Notes on a Scandal? Did I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell seem to be the most accurate reflection on sex you've ever read? Was it Ginsberg who inspired you, or Yeats? Molly's monologue in Ulysees or was it Margaret Mitchell's description of kisses and swoons in Gone with the Wind? How about Fear of Flying?

Who made you laugh about sex? Who made you never want to touch...