Rest in peace, Richard Avedon...
The great photographer Richard Avedon died this week and tributes are appearing all over the web, as they should be. The New Yorker, where Avedon had been staff photographer since 1992, offers theirs, with a gallery of photos.

Nouvelle Godard!
Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique plays at the New York Film Festival on Monday - a US release will follow sometime later next month - and from most reports, it's a major achievement. The New York Times review is here.

Lights! Action! Education!
Our Director of Pedagogery Carmen Zaentz brings the following item to our attention:

If you've ever spent time behind the lectern these days, you know the inescapable feeling that the students are expecting something - a joke, a song, a dance - that will wake them from the ordeal of education, and that you, dear professor, are the star of the show. Some teachers I know take a little too much pleasure in blaming the students. Others see it as the Way of the World, a lost battle. An elementary school teacher once told me "it's all the fault of Sesame Street. Learning isn't supposed to be entertaining", though I like to give equal blame to the Dead Poets Society model of the wacky/inspirational problem. Whatever the cause, Mark Edmundson offers a painfully accurate look at some of the problems of teaching in a world where the classroom bell has come to mean "Showtime!" .