Eisgruber's State of the University letter

Recommended read.  This essay largely does an excellent job of addressing some of the challenges "elite" schools are facing today, with one stumble, I think.  The following two sentences get their own paragraph:

'

I have little sympathy for the lingo of “safe spaces” and “microaggressions.”  They strike me as the wrong way to describe the University’s inclusivity goals.

'

... and they strike me as the words of a person whose place at Princeton was never questioned because of their race, or was advised while there that their grade in certain professors' courses could be improved by wearing a short skirt and sitting in the front row.    

I get that what Eisgruber *means* is that he would prefer a different terminology; he declares in the following paragraph that Princeton offers 'what might ... be called "safe spaces"'.  However, he offers no reason for why he'd prefer a different terminology, and provides no alternative terminology, so his little diatribe is not a useful one.  It would have been better to simply exclude that paragraph from the essay. 

Makt Myrkranna (Valdimar Asmundsson, 1901)

I read the 2016 English translation by Hans Corneel De Roos of Valdimar Asmundsson's 1901 Icelandic "translation" of Bram Stoker's Dracula, serialized into his weekly publication Fjallkonan.  It is significant because the Icelandic text differs quite a lot from the original text: the scenes in Transylvania are expanded, and the scenes in England are cut to 10% of the text in Dracula.  They are really little more than an outline, which is a shame.  It's unclear why Asmundsson cut the story short, but I can't really recommend it as a story, only for the curious. 

Some years ago I read the Icelandic sagas, so I found it interesting early on in Makt Myrkranna where Harker self deprecatingly notes, "I am too much the lawyer." (translator's note says it could also be read as "completely the lawyer")  In the sagas, poets, warriors, and those who knew the law were held in the highest regard, so this would read a little weirdly for someone coming from that tradition.

The foreward of the translation also mentions the Thames Torso Murders, which I had not heard of before.  I guess Jack the Ripper was the more acceptable serial killer for late 20th century kids to learn about?