Hello, World–or, the week in which Prof. Hacker gets readers

When Dan Cohen tweets, readers follow

Prof. Hacker takes the weekends off, but here’s a quick round-up of the week’s highlights:

George and I welcome our first writer to the Prof. Hacker fold–Brian Croxall.  (More writers coming soon! And, if you’re interested, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.)

• The post of the week was Brian’s about “Short-circuiting RateMyProfessor,” which provoked an interesting discussion.  In comments, Nels pointed out that, given the ongoing realities of privilege in the academy, this is a more complicated topic than it might appear.  Don’t miss his fullest elaboration of these thoughts, at his own blog.
• Other posts of interest include guidelines on when you should / should not pay for a service, Brian’s two posts about Zotero, catching up on reading with Read It Later, and useful books for new faculty.
• A bonus link for the weekend: John Holbo and Belle Waring have released a translation of, and (illustrated!) commentary upon, three dialogues by Plato as both a free PDF and as a handsome paper version. Kudos to them, both for the book and, more important, for wrangling this dual-mode edition!  It would be great to see more academics & publishers explore this model.

Reminder: Prof. Hacker’s official launch will be on or about Sept. 1.  We are currently in a public testing mode, so features of the site may pop in and out of existence.  Something you want to see?  Contact George or me.