Reunion (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 7) Picard Arbitrates Klingon Leadership Struggle

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. The Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire requests Picard’s help about an urgent matter.  Chancellor K’empec names Picard arbiter over the power struggle that will follow his impending death. He suspects that one of the two rival faction leaders has been slowly poisoning him. The scenery-chewing Ambassador K’Eyhlar gets…

The false link between Amy Coney Barrett and The Handmaid’s Tale, explained

One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group of which she is a member, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The book isn’t an established inspiration — but the story has developed legs anyway.

Something to Ponder — Let Me Fix That Meme For You

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Boy, this sort of thing sure makes some racist people very angry.

We stand together against racism. #ItTakesAllOfUs pic.twitter.com/xfeUACPu8Z — Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 14, 2020   Similar:Why scientists should care about artMy artsy daughter loves stories about sc…ArtThank you, frog and friends, for reminding us all what the Internet is supposed to be for.  https://twitter.com/PicturesFo…AestheticsVerizon's $4.4 billion deal for AOL sends AOL stock on a tearVerizon…

Remember Me (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 5) Dr. Crusher vs The Universe

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. When people start disappearing from the Enterprise without a trace, only Dr. Crusher remembers them. Some cringeworthy lines (e.g. “If there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe”) still earn a facepalm, but I really enjoyed Gates McFadden as she Shatners her way through increasingly…

Drumming Kid Is Epic. That Is All.

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Suddenly Human (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 4) Picard Bonds with Human Teen Raised by Aliens

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break The Federation faces war with the Talarians over a culture-shocked teenager who sees Picard as a father figure. The Enterprise detects faint life signs on a damaged Talarian ship. Of course they can’t just beam the injured directly to sickbay; they must first send an away team to wave…

How hate and misinformation go viral: A case study of a Trump retweet

On Sunday night, President Donald Trump retweeted a video of a violent incident on a New York City subway platform. The video shows a Black man pushing a white woman into a train car and is captioned “Black Lives Matter / Antifa.” The problem? It is over a year old and has nothing to do with either Black Lives Matter or Antifa. It, in fact, shows the actions of a mentally ill man with no known ties to either group.

Story Pitch: How writers present an article idea to a busy editor

I hoped this slide would appeal to my students as I taught them about pitching a news story. Similar:Source: Wenner Declined Resignation from Rolling Stone Deputy EditorAccording to a source inside Rolling Sto…Current_EventsArsenic and Old Lace. I haven't seen this show since I played the lead as a high school ju…CultureMy hard-working media students curated…

What are ‘Judeo-Christian values’? Analyzing a divisive term

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.”

The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2 ( #StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 1) Your resistance is hopeless, Number One.

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break After a tight recap of Part 1, we pick up where we left off. The jerry-rigged deflector dish weapon unleashes all its sparkly-glowy MacGuffinality at the vessel containing the Borgified Picard, and — nothing. “Your resistance is hopeless, Number One,” Locutus intones, borrowing Picard’s nickname for Riker. Chills! On…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In July, 2000, I was creating handouts on the sounds of poetry, prototypes, and writing for the web

It seems that an unusually high percentage of links I posted to my website in July 2000 no longer work, but here are a few links that I could find via the Wayback Machine: The guy who invented the “pet rock” won the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest for really bad writing. Humorous courtroom transcripts Q: All…