Wednesday, May 30, 2007

26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong

26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong presents a list of cognitive biases. If you keep an eye open, you'll notice a lot of these being exploited by various advertising and political propaganda.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Spoiler t-shirt

Elizabeth needs this shirt. Don't read the text if you are like me and hate to have endings ruined.

35 Scholarships Anyone Can Get

35 Scholarships Anyone Can Get
Free money for college, though it's worth noting that some of these are pretty competitive.

Friday, May 25, 2007

J. D. Salinger's Uncollected Writings Online

If you've read Catcher in the Rye and are dying to get your hands on some more Salinger, J. D. Salinger's Uncollected Writings is a good place to get started.

Mirror

Monday, May 21, 2007

Template Sentences

PDF Handout from Long Island University (Brooklyn): Template Sentences

I first read about the concept of template sentences as a pedagogical approach to teaching writing "moves" in my course on teaching "basic" writers. But these sentences could be helpful to just about anyone being introduced to the world of academic writing. For more on this see Amazon.com: They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: Books: Gerald Graff,Cathy Birkenstein, which is one of the texts being used by English 110 students at Missouri State.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Truth vs. Fiction

"Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling."
-Jeremy Northam

Friday, May 18, 2007

Music vs. Lyrics

"A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction....But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magic."
-Sophie (Drew Barrymore) from Music and Lyrics (2007) PG-13

I'm a lyrics man myself, so I'm always taken aback by someone who claims that they completely ignore the words of a song. Here are a few lyricists that I especially enjoy: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, and Josh Ritter.

You can add your own favorites in the comments.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Searching Year

Well, I just finished reading the first of the novels from the novel class. I started with Casey's The Searching Year, a quick-paced fantasy about finding love and fighting for it set in a world with two suns. It was rich with symbolism, thoroughly foreshadowed, and featured a strong female character. I'm sure they'll be fighting over the library copy as soon as it hits the shelf.

LARGER VIEW

Brain Candy for your IPOD

Put something worthwhile on your mp3 player this summer. ThoughtAudio.com has unabridged classic works--and its not those lame computer voice recording versions (at least none of the titles I sampled were). Enjoy!

ThoughtAudio.com - an audio book publisher providing free audio book downloads and podcasts of philosophy and classic literature titles.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Five-star Summer Movies

Summer can be a great time to catch up on movies. I'm not saying you should spend every day that its over 80 degrees wadded up on the couch, but, hey, it rains sometimes in the summer, too.

If you've seen every movie at Video Showcase, then Netflix may be just right for you. I've had great luck with their service and the movies arrive in your mailbox.

I've seen over 1000 movies, and while that doesn't make me an expert exactly, I might be able to point out a few great films that you missed. Here are a few from my 5-star list that you should make time to see this summer:

12 Angry Men (1957) UR
Actually, only 12 of the men are angry and its a black and white film--but its worth your time. The entire film plays out in the jury room.

Finding Forrester (2000) PG-13
There's some great dialogue and Sean Connery's character gives some advice on writing worth taking.

Les Miserables (1998) PG-13
If you get a chance, go see the musical. I can't recommend it highly enough. However, chances are you are never going to read the book--let's just say its longish. While your waiting for the musical to come to town or working up the courage to read the novel, try this one out.

Lonesome Dove (1989) TV
My wife hates westerns, but she made me finish this miniseries all in one night. It is just that good. It's based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurty.

Pearls of Wisdom by Dave Barry

Dave Barry was a huge hit with the Class of 2004. Maybe he's ready to be adopted by a new group:

Pearls of Wisdom by Dave Barry

Pearls of Wisdom
"Fourteen Things That It Took Me Over
50 Years To Learn" by Dave Barry

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. You should not confuse your career with your life.

6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

7. Never lick a steak knife.

8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.

13. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14. Your friends love you anyway.

Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Great Free Software

Once I tried Firefox Web Browser I could never go back to Internet Explorer. Try it out and then check out all the cool add-ons.

If you do not have access to Microsoft Office, it can be a huge pain trying to take files back and forth from home to school, but with OpenOffice.org you can open, save, modify, and create Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations and more (with some limited functionability, of course.)

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut -- "So it goes."

Kurt Vonnegut -- americanstate.org: "Kurt Vonnegut

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10."

Top 10 Tips for Great Pictures

Here's a quick and simple tutorial from Kodak on taking photos. Rememeber that only so much can be done with cropping and photo manipulation software.

Top 10 Tips for Great Pictures