Author Archives: insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Catching Up

Wow, has it been this long since I posted? A few quick thoughts before I head out to teach: Rowan’s MRI was clear–this is very good news. Retinoblastoma patients have a high chance to develop other forms of cancer, especially … Continue reading

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Some Quick Sports Thoughts

In between pieces of fruit (a healthy non-Subway lunch), I wanted to spout the following: The injury is the best thing to happen to A-Rod this year. He needs to go away for awhile. Distance is good. There is nothing … Continue reading

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Colbert on the”Danger” of the Internet

This comes from Colbert’s interview with Keen–it is presented as something of a nightmare. But I think it adequately describes a digital/rhetorical/sophistic new media environment, one in which there is not getting outside the cave. Responding to Keen’s claim that … Continue reading

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I never thought I would say this, but…

I actually find myself agreeing with Andrew Keen. Today Keen responded to Patricia Cohen’s NYTimes article on how the pending economic crisis will affect the humanities. Keen concludes: What I do know for sure, however, is that academic humanists — … Continue reading

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I am confused… someone explain this to me

Granted, I didn’t get through my morning coffee today. But something really confused me on the ride to work. I live about 20 miles south of University of South Florida. Everyday I drive on I-75 I experience an incredible irony: … Continue reading

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Lanham definition of rhetoric; the Aim of Education(s)

I need to remember this somewhere, why not the blog. Now you can remember it, too. “Rhetoric” has not always been a dirty word, the opposite of sincerity, truth, and good intentions. For most of its life it meant the … Continue reading

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Student Strikes Gold

I had my students do an assignment in which they had to characterize blogs. One student offered these nuggets: Fourth, the blog that is the most idiotic tends to win. This is just like high school. The weird blog is … Continue reading

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Obligatory Post from a Sophistic Baseball Fan

[A little context: last week I used a series of ESPN articles in a workshop on direct quoting, hence the sometimes forced references. I think the workshop was successful, however.] Dear Commissioner Selig, I understand in the wake of recent … Continue reading

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“It is the opposite which is good for us”

Because a certain someone keeps trying to shove Parmenides down your throat, I thought I’d share some Heraclitus. Thanks to Plato’s misunderstanding, most of us attribute to Heraclitus the trite paradoxical aphorism “you could not step twice into the same … Continue reading

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Hearing what the Presidents Don’t Say

Recently I have become enamored with the feed over at FlowingData, a collection of quality visualization projects. Today has several offerings, but I am most interested in Descry’s project “Their First Words,” which provides a searchable database of all inauguration … Continue reading

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