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Year: 2008

President-Elect Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (November 4, 2008)

November 6, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive Comments Off on President-Elect Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (November 4, 2008)
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Who Is The Decider?

October 31, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive Comments Off on Who Is The Decider?
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Still here…

October 6, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

Several of you have written to me recently inquiring after my absence here on the blog. So, I wanted to let you all know that I am, in fact, still alive. I was in a fairly nasty auto accident about a week ago. (See my poor, beloved, now “totaled” car to the left.) Short story:…

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Blogging in the Classroom

September 22, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, The Search for Values 3 Comments

I’m trying out a new pedagogical technique in all of my courses this semester. I’ve set up a blog for each course and have required students, as a part of their grade, to contribute regularly to those sites. In one of my courses, blog posts and comments are the only writing students are required to…

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The “Handwriting” of College Radio

September 21, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

Yesterday, in my capacity as the faculty advisor for Rhodes Radio, I was a part of the committee charged with interviewing and selecting the next General Manager for the radio station. Because our little Rhodes Radio is still in its infancy stage, in a town with an abundance of colleges/universities yet a paucity of independent/college…

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The Trouble with Rapture

September 15, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

With Hurrican Ike, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the sale of Merril Lynch to Bank of America, it was pretty rough last weekend in the news. So, you may be interested to learn that according to The Rapture Index, which is a “Dow Jones Industrial Average of end-time activity,” we’re sitting at a very uncomfortable level…

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R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

September 14, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

Novelist, MacArthur “genius” and postmodern wunderkind, David Foster Wallace, was found dead in his home on Friday night after hanging himself. He was only 46. I know that just a week ago I was poking fun at the cult-status of Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I feel bad about that now. So, let me say for the…

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In Praise of “Very Short Introductions”

September 12, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

This semester, I’ve decided to use a few of the texts from the Very Short Introductions Series published by Oxford University Press in my courses. These very small, very cute, and very inexpensive little books, according to OUP, offer “concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects.” There are almost 200 titles in…

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Is he still around?

September 9, 2008 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

There are plenty of nut-jobs out there who dominate the news for a brief time, then sort of fade away. While they’re laying low, it’s easy to forget about them– until they raise their ugly heads again and show up on something like VH1’s The Surreal Life. Such is the case with David Duke (pictured…

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2 years and 10K people

September 8, 2008 Dr. J BlogCounts, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

Sometime last night, this blog received its 10,000th visitor. Crossing the 10K mark seems like a big deal, though I know that there are plenty of blogs out there that get that many visitors in a day. Even still, the event arrived at a serendipitous time, as this week also marks the 2-year anniversary of…

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