Since it first premiered on the Discovery Channel 3 years ago, I have been addicted to the show Deadliest Catch, which follows some of the heartiest devil-may-care boats and fisherman during the Alaskan Crab fishing season on the Bering Sea. Crab fishing ranks as one of the top ten deadliest jobs (hence, the title) and,…
Read MoreThis is a very happy day in the blogosphere! I woke up this morning to discover that three of my favorite fellow-bloggers, who had let their pages lapse for quite a while, are back in business with new posts. Petya, Ideas Man,PhD and Professor KGrady… welcome back! You may be interested to read about a…
Read MoreIn a recent article for the Mail and Guardian, Brendan O’Neill suggests that adoptions of African children by the likes of Madonna and Brangelina may show us that “having a black baby is the new black.” O’Neill calls this phenomenon the “White Madonna’s Burden” (in not-so-thinly-veiled reference to the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The…
Read MoreNow that the semester is over, I had the rare opportunity to actually see a movie in a movie theater last night. For the last year, I’ve been almost entirely reliant on Netflix, and I had forgotten the magic of the big-screen experience. My friend and I went to see The Visitor, a film about…
Read MoreSome of you may have seen Mary Kolesnikova’s recent Los Angeles Times article entitled “Language that makes you say OMG.” There, Kolesnikova tells of a Pew Research Center study that polled 12- to 17-year-olds and found that almost 40% admitted to letting “chat-speak” slip into their essays and homework. And a full 25% of them…
Read MoreIn my humble opinion, May is absolutely the best month to be in Memphis. We have a month-long festival every year called “Memphis in May,” which includes a killer Music Fest to kick things off and a beautiful Sunset Symphony at the end of the month. Spring is also the best time to catch our…
Read MoreIt doesn’t happen often in sports, but that thing that all true sports fans dream about and hope for happened last night. The underdog was victorious. And today, the world seems a kinder, gentler and more just place. The New York Giants weren’t simply an underdog. They were, to use the parlance of Plato, the…
Read MoreThen why aren’t you listening to my radio show? Go to the podcast home for “Americana the Beautiful” and download all the episodes. Come on, is there anything more purely noble than supporting college radio? I can’t think of anything off-hand, except for maybe rescuing abused puppies (cute ones) or helping one-legged children achieve their…
Read MoreWhat is “nanophilosophy”? Nanophilosophy is the search for and study of very, very small philosophical questions. It was begun by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo in an attempt to drag our age-old discipline kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. The Century of Very Small Things. I think this is a…
Read MoreIt doesn’t really matter whether or not you know who bernadette is, because she poses a great question for the next installment of the Just Ask Challenge. She asks: What should I do with my life? Now, it just so happens that I DO know who bernadette is and I could, theoretically, provide an answer…
Read More
Recent Comments