I survived the first day teaching in a masked classroom. As I expected, I had a very difficult time hearing my students. I felt awkward taking up the first class talking about myself, but I told them I’ve recently been diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. My ears can pick up the sounds of their…
Bee walked on six spindly legs to the spot where Spider had stopped moving. Bee, whose job was to record the doings of the lab, had been across the room, but its video feed had captured the moment. The tiny arachnid-shaped bot had been monitoring the bio-nanobot colonies when it teetered and fell, alone. “Can…
Plenty of news organizations have reported on the tragic case of a white boy who was murdered while riding his bicycle. One must ignore easily verifiable opposing evidence to claim that “the media” are universally ignoring this story. It’s even more unhinged to latch upon the conspiracy theory that the reason for this (non-existent) lack…
One of the few harsh critics of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which premiered 70 years ago. Mr. Bentley, who was also a playwright, was an early champion of modern European drama in the 1940s but had little use for American plays. Source: Eric Bentley, Critic Who Preferred Brecht to Broadway, Dies at 103
On Tuesday, as Florida set a daily record for covid-19 deaths, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods prohibited his deputies from wearing masks at work. His order, which also applies to visitors to the sheriff’s office, carves out an exception for officers in some locations, including hospitals, and when dealing with people who are high-risk or…
block of American society. But for critics of how the term is used today, Judeo-Christian is vague, historically flawed and even inflammatory. These opposing views reflect a deep rift in American society and illuminate very different fundamental political beliefs.
“This is a term defined by exclusion,” said Shalom Goldman, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, arguing that the term is often used to reject secular values and Muslims.
“It’s essentially saying our values are not the values of the Enlightenment or the Constitution, but instead our values are the values of the Bible,” he said.
Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, called the term a “generalization” and said it is one “Christians in particular use to put a patina of universality on a certain Christian culture in the United States.”
Good news writing, and praise for Trump’s cool demeanor during a crisis, from : The Independent The large man in the grey suit interrupted Donald Trump. No one interrupts Donald Trump – especially at the White House. At his White House. Then the man turned his back to the television cameras showing the utterly surreal scene live around the…
You might have been asked to submit a short video assignment. Don’t do what I’m doing! You can’t see my eyes, the background is distracting, you’re looking up my nose and the lighting is awful. This short video demonstrates some quick tips that will greatly improve a video submission assignment. Your instructor and your classmates…
I regularly teach Flannery O’Connor, and assign a whole book of her short stories when I taught an American Lit 1915-Present course. Now that I’m teaching “American Lit 1776-Present” I keep her stories in rotation, but I have more material to cover, so I have to be more selective. O’Connor’s fiction contains many themes and…
Jerz > Writing > Technical Writing Tips
BURKE, Va. (AP) — On a recent car ride, my sons, Billy and Jimmy, were discussing an interactive “Minecraft” show on Netflix that allowed them to choose the direction of the story. I said it sounded like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, an artifact of my 1980s childhood. Then Billy, who’s 10 years old,…
Was it a lizard person who was collecting a government dossier on the lying, America-hating fake news “journalists” at the BLM “protests,” or was it a lizard person who STOPPED the guy who was collecting the dossier? Real “patriots” who like to deploy “ironic” quotation marks demand “answers”! A senior Department of Homeland Security official…
I’m interested in the way the “Thin Blue Line” design remixes the American Flag. I’m amused by the quirky way the “Thin Bread Crust” meme remixes the remix. As I was fact-checking (as I habitually do before sharing) I found a 2018 USA Today article reporting that “drivers/sales workers and truck drivers” suffered 135.9…