Britain or America for the PhD in English? I recently reached the halfway point in my 6-year PhD program at the University of Michigan, allowing me to ponder the consequences of my having chosen to do the doctorate in America rather than Britain. If I’d started my PhD in 2008 in Britain, I’d be expected to have pretty much finished my dissertation by now, to be on the verge of the abysmal job market.

Met up with my usually Stateside fellow Pynchonite Jesse Sherwood last week when he visited London. While sampling the delights of the city was important, he also took time out to get himself branded with a Lot 49 muted posthorn. While tattoos aren't, personally, my thing, I think it's great! Just remember, though: Don't Ever Antagonize the Horn.

So, here's a short post on the Dropbox problem. I'm sure others have picked up on this aspect, but it merits further coverage. Yesterday, I tweeted at Dropbox stating my belief that the terms and conditions they are trying to enforce are, in fact, untenable.

I've been engaged recently in a discussion on Twitter as to the appropriateness of Creative Commons licensing for Open Access journals wishing to remove permission barriers, ie. become "libre". It seems there is a real problem as to how to define academic work. My original instinct was to go with a CC-BY-NC license as this would allow redistribution, use etc. in a context that was non-commercial.

Today is the day that we've all been dreading waiting for. The final unveiling of the UK Higher Education White Paper. It's expected later today, but here's some early reactions. The Guardian runs with "'Naming and shaming' for degrees with poor jobs record", which gets to the core of the matter: The BBC are going with "Universities shake-up eyes greater competition", focusing on a fight for proportion of places.

In the spirit of writing up my recent conference visits, I thought I would share a rundown of the conference entitled "Enslavement: Colonial Appropriations, Apparitions, Remembrances, 1750-present day" hosted by the Centre for Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth. This report is incomplete as my notes for the day were sporadic, this being so far from my usual field, but I'll put up what I can reconstruct.

A quick roundup of goings on from the final day of the 8th Biennial Symbiosis Conference! Again, the summaries are potted and do great damage to the nuances of the originals, but are presented here for interest. Apologies to Elif Arrmbruster; my notes on your paper went walkies and so I felt unable to write up a review! Many thanks to Chris Gair for organizing this event, which was thoroughly enjoyable in every respect.

As before, I will present here a brief rundown of the conference panels I attended with comments as they occurred to me! Obviously, in such reductive accounts, I do great damage to the content of the papers, but I do so in the hope that it will be of interest. If I have misunderstood any authors, I will, of course, be happy to make corrections.

As with my previous posts on International Pynchon Week 2010, I thought I would try to take a little time on each day of this conference to write a few words with some thoughts. Symbiosis is a conference designed to study Anglo-American relations, be that trans-atlantic, post-national, in literature and in history. Having held previous events in London, Boston and (I believe) Edinburgh, this year's conference takes place in Glasgow.

After the success of the piece that I co-wrote with Jennifer M. Jones for The Guardian last week, I have had several requests to read the original version from which the final published version was excerpted. When the press writes disparagingly of dangerous university radicalisation, it should be remembered that radicalism sits among the core functions of the University.

The Excursions editorial board are pleased to announce the launch of Excursions , Volume 2, Issue 1: Virus (2011). Issue: Virus See also: Archive / CFP Featured image copyright Luke Jerram, 2011. Used with permission. Excursions, Vol. 2, Issue 1: Virus (2011) was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on June 21, 2011.