Smart like a fox

Grunt. Too busy with work and life lately to write about work and life.

Not too busy to maintain some basic level of my cubicle Times-reading habit between manuscript files, though, which today yielded this article about education. (The loyal reader out there who'd probably most applaud this one is in transit to Boston as I type, happily, but it should be more generally consumed and applauded, and so I post.)

Unrelatedly, before I return to the manuscript, I have to offer the following definition for a verb I use too often to ever be truly cool in this life, which sort of made my morning. (Before a certain transformative hour when the coffee kicks in and I'm mentally limber, it doesn't take much to make my morning.) And so:

skulk |skəlk|
verb [ intrans. ]
keep out of sight, typically with a sinister or cowardly motive : don't skulk outside the door like a spy!
• [ with adverbial of direction ] move stealthily or furtively : he spent most of his time skulking about the corridors.
• shirk duty.

noun
a group of foxes.