THOUGHTS ON ACADEMICS and getting your hands dirty: “Where the skin does come off my nose is when some of these professors, very senior in their fields and thus likely to take a back seat to nobody, get themselves put in charge of campus events and projects. Some of these folk shouldn’t be charged with organizing a church bake sale. They apparently can think abstractly, but they can’t think concretely. And the concrete world is where things happen (or fail to).”