Read-Think-b4-u-Write

  Have you ever been ghosted? Someone you know, and you thought a friend, for some unknown reason, cuts you off. How messed up is that? Pliny the Younger understands. Pliny the Younger was the only person who wrote an eye-witness account of the eruption of Vesuvius. A pyroclastic cloud killed his uncle, Pliny the Elder, after hanging around Pompeii too long. Being a noted naturalist, he wanted to record the volcanic eruption. Not a good idea. Over at Open Culture they present Pliny the Younger's response to his supposed friend, Septicius, for exhibiting such boorish behavior (You can read the complete text or listen to a reading by Rob Delaney.) You can feel the Pliny's hurt when he says things like, "What joking and laughter and learning we would have enjoyed!" and threatens him with a lawsuit because of the cost of "honey wine cooled with snow (you must add the cost of snow as well, in fact the snow in particular, as it melts in the dish)." Eventually, Pl...

Finally, someone has actually proved that zombies aren't real. I am always amazed how some people believe in zombies, ghost, the paranormal, but then claim there can be no god or spirituality. So, dare we talk about god? I'm sure it will offend someone...okay, let's do it. Here are some scientists who believed in a higher power and how they reconciled those beliefs (thanks Huffington Post ). 1. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Among his accomplishments (and getting him excommunicated from the Catholic Church) supporting the theory that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require use to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations....

In 1899, French artists presented the world of 2000 . They see the 21st century filled with flying fire fighters, postal deliveries, and the police catching the bad guy. School teachers feed books into a machine that will speak the books to students wearing headphones. Everything has wires - no wi fi here - yet.  These drawings remind me of the original Superman - Action Comics No. 1, July 1938. Maybe it is the printing. The pictures were printed as "illustrated trade cards" for public consumption.  Whenever I see pictures or stories like this, they are always filled with flying vehicles and people. But I always wonder where is my flying car or my wings? While we don't have people with wings delivering packages and such, we have gone a step further further, removing the human equation and allowing drones to deliver packages and unmanned cars to deliver us. It's interesting that these futurists never remove the human element in their visions. People are always present;...

  Over at Lapham's Quarterly there is a story entitled "Flesh and Page" . I knew a bit about the making of parchment and the switch to paper because it seemed like a good story. But this article is a full-blown history of how parchment was made--animal by animal. The author of the article, Bruce Holsinger, asserts instructions for making parchment were not well written, often incomplete, or even insensible. But since parchment was an expensive commodity, medieval creators more likely were loath to reveal their recipes. When making a local product with local animals and local organic base and acidic compounds, recipes were bound to vary and vary widely. Regardless, there are dozens of recipes left from medieval times. Parchment had a reverential place in most societies. So much so, that it caused religious uproars regarding the manner in which animal skins were prepared especially among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But another argument seems to rival religious authority....

There’s a recent article in The Millions that begins by giving a history lesson on “sorts” and “upper” and “lower” case. Now, this may not be something that gets you excited, but I find it fun to learn history, especially its minutiae. “How Many Errorrs Are in This Essay?” by Ed Simon is a jaunt through the history of errors of all kinds. Did you know the St. James Bible was called the "Wicked Bible" because the first printing contained the error "Thou shalt commit adultery"? Yikes. What a mistake to clean up. Books of the 17th century were created by gathering and placing miniscule "sorts" (individual letters) into frames one letter, line, and page at a time. You couldn't just leave them around gathering dust, you had to take them apart to create new pages. That means the page containing "Thou shalt commit adultery" had to be completely redone, by hand, for hours. But as they say, that's not all. The author goes into the history of huma...

No matter where, when, or how (before or after you graduate, before or after you write a book, etc.), someday you may be lucky enough to meet your career hero, be it Mark Zuckerburg or Elon Musk. If you are a writer, you may be lucky enough to meet your favorite author, agent, or publisher. What do you do? You prepare for success and pitch yourself. An elevator pitch is a short synopsis of your skills and abilities, and like any other sales pitch, first impressions are important. These pitches are also important when you go to job fairs, networking events, or conferences. thebalancecareers.com Your elevator pitch is a summary (or thesis, if you will) of your answer to the question "Tell me a little about yourself?" - an often used opener to the job interview. Here are some of the basics from thebalancecareers.com: 1) Keep it short. No more than 60 seconds. 2) Be Persuasive. This is a double-edged sword, be persuasive, not needy. 3) Share your skills . Not the ...

First impressions are really important when it comes to a job interview, meeting the in-laws for the first time, trying to land a sale, and many, many other social situations... ...and it only takes two to three seconds to make a first impression. According to Mind Tools the key elements to making a great first impression are:      1. Be on time.      2. Present yourself appropriately.      3. Be yourself.      4.  Have a winning smile.      5. Be open and confident.      6. Use small talk.      7. Be positive.      8. Be courteous and attentive. We have all probably heard this list before (or something like it), and you've probably been to a job interview, or have had to meet someone you wanted to impress, but did you ever think about the first impression your writing makes? You should. When you send a letter or an article to a colleague or publ...

Sometimes writing an annotated bibliography leaves students and even professional writers wondering, Why? The annotated bibliography and the essay for which you are producing the annotated bibliography are two entirely different pieces of writing. NOTHING that you put in your annotated bibliography will appear in your final essay. Understand that your annotated bibliography is the preliminary list of sources you will be using. Often times, when writing a paper, you will change your mind or go into another direction once you dive into the subject. So, more than likely, you will probably need to do a little more research once you begin writing the actual paper. Be mindful and collect relevant college-level sources. Here some things to remember : 1. Qualifications of Author Limit your articles to scholarly/peer reviewed articles and you'll generally be able to find the qualifications of the authors on the first page of the article. The qualifications generally consist of...

What first attracted me to this article entitled "Novelist Cormac McCarthy Gives Writing Advice to Scientists … and Anyone Who Wants to Write Clear, Compelling Prose" was STEM - the bane of any English professor. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is the current trend in public education, pushing aside the arts for technology. But STEM should really be changed to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) because while some may believe that the Arts are just a supercilious area of study that no one really needs, that is just false. Rhetoric is taught in the Arts and everyone needs to know how to argue properly, especially scientists. If not, how are you ever going to prove your hypothesis or spot a fallacy in your problem? So what does that have to to with Cormac McCarthy? McCarthy loves science and scientists. The writer of such novels as No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian, and The Road has   "Since the 1990s, maintai...

We all know someone who died too young or too soon. Some of us have friends and relatives that were killed in a vehicle accident that we memorialized in a roadside shrine. Some have added a tribute to their own vehicle or inscribed some bit of graffiti on the side of a building to remember their loved one. In the past it was popular to compose a poem to our dearly departed and this habit goes way back . . . past the Victorians, the Renaissance, the monks of the Dark Ages, all the way back to the Romans. Sometime after 120 A.D., a grieving Terentia visited Egypt. She was so moved by its beauty and the death of her brother that she inscribed the following poem in the limestone of The Great Pyramid. Open Culture records it: I saw the pyramids without you, my dearest brother,  and here I sadly shed tears for you,  which is all I could do.  And I inscribe this lament in memory of our grief.  May thus be clearly visible on the high pyramid the name of ...

You've heard this piece before in many, many, many creepy movies, but why do we find it so creepy? First, the Dies Irae was written by 13th-century Catholic monks as a funeral dirge for the funeral mass (that's pretty creepy). But that's not really why we find it so creepy. It's not as if we subconsciously connect a funeral dirge to creepy things. We find it creepy because the first four notes of this music are in a minor key . . . and minor keys are always creepy. In western culture, our ears are trained not to "like" those notes, especially when they are played together, or go down the musical scale. As pointed out at Open Culture: "Of course, we know these notes from the iconic, oft-parodied Amadeus scene of Mozart composing the “Dies Irae” movement of his Requiem in his sickbed, as ultimate frenemy Salieri furiously transcribes. Once you hear the magisterially ominous sequence of notes, you might immediately think of Wendy Carlos’ themes for  ...

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd recorded his musical interpretation of William Shakespeare's 1595 Sonnet 18. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date;   Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd   But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:             So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,           So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Shakespeare is talking about poetry and immortality. The young man described in the sonnet will never lose his youthful beauty as long as this sonnet lives on. How does...

Let's take a step-by-step look at how to write the introduction for a response to a literary critique. First write a sentence mentioning the novel you read for class and include an overview of the entire book.            Benito Cereno  by Herman Melville (1855), Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945), or Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897). This will help your audience to understand what your paper is about. Next: Write a sentence explaining to what critical literary essay are you responding?           1) Grandin, Greg. “Who Ain’t a Slave? Historical fact and fiction of ‘Benito Cereno’. The Chronicle of Higher Education . 16 Dec. 2013. www.chronicle.com.            2) Rodden, John and John Rossi. “Animal Farm at 70.” Modern Age . Vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 19- 27. EBSCO host.            Or 3) Senf, Carol A. “‘Dracula’: The Unseen Face in the Mirror.” The Journal of Narra...

"O, Beware, My Lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Iago to Othello (3.3)   Let's do a close reading if these lines. Think about why Shakespeare depicts jealousy as a green-eyed monster. Why not a blue-eyed monster or a black-eyed monster? How does jealousy tease or make fun of the meat it feeds on? What is that "meat"? When looking at possible essay topics how would you use these lines as evidence to prove your thesis. How does jealousy play into Othello's "uncertain vision"? How does Iago manipulate Othello's inability to distinguish between what is and what seems to be? How does this quote foreshadow Othello's destiny and/or self determination? How does jealousy lead to Othello's irrationality? Desdemona can't imagine any woman cheating on her husband, but you could say she dies at the hands of the "green-ey'd monster". How does jealousy contr...

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!  What is explication? Let's take a quick look at the  beginning of an "A" example : This poem dramatizes the conflict between appearance and reality, communicating the idea that even in the unnatural city Nature’s presence can be seen. From Westminster Bridge, the speaker looks at London at sunr...

We all know that Amazon is going to take over the world and we are all going to end up as bot-tenders in some factory somewhere where our robot overlords will spray us with bear spray when we try to organize for our rights. Is this the basis for some sci-fi movie? No, but it just seems like it could be the next Hollywood blockbuster. Anyway, back to the non-fiction. An Amazon robot in New Jersey malfunctioned and ripped through a can of bear repellent that sent 24 workers to the hospital. LOL!? Too soon. I guess, but all the workers are expected to make a full recovery. The repellent-spraying robot does bring up the issue of workplace safety and working conditions. But not to worry, Amazon released a statement saying, "The safety of our employees is our top priority, and as such, all employees in that area have been relocated to safe place and employees experiencing symptoms are being treated onsite,” an Amazon spokesperson told ABC in a statement. “As a precaution, some empl...

I wonder if Little Brother's author, Cory Doctorow, ever thought we would be under surveillance in our homes at our own hands? He presents the government as roaming through our neighborhoods tracking us with antennas or through our FastPass systems, but did not see home assistants in his near future work. Recently, Amazon's Alexa has been called as a witness in two murder cases. It is assumed that Alexa was listening the whole time and Amazon is being subpoenaed to provide evidence need to solve the murders ( a double homicide in New Hampshire and the one described in the video above ). Once you unbox your new assistant your commands (and conversations) teach its AI to learn and predict  your habits, ummmm.... is this something you really want? What about the possibility of being hacked? Does Alexa profile you? Well, of course, it does, so it can report back to its Amazon overlord all your needs and wishes. Remember what Doctorow says, anything you can dream of with comput...

Long ago in a land not so far away all students had to learn to print and write in cursive. Penmanship was an item on your report card, like keyboarding is today. But penmanship in the 1960s and 70s is nothing compared to 16th century calligraphy. There were no machines on which to type and the printing press was the new technological mainstay. The combination of text and image was  w ell  understood by Renaissance  calligraphers  and painters Calligraphy was seen as a dying art, but what an art. Calligraphers and illuminists had to compete with the printing press to prove the value of their art for what it added to texts, and art is what they were striving for. If you have ever taken one of my classes, you know how important your initial presentation is, how I feel about combining text and image (esp. comics), and how important it is to present a beautiful and functional text. Getting your professor to appreciate your layout is the first step towards gett...

What? I knew Sears was the retail giant of America in the late 19th and early 20th century, but how did they help stop Jim Crow? By now I'm sure you've heard that Sears is closing its doors after more than 100 years in business. But like me, you probably never thought of Sears as a champion of civil rights, however it makes sense when you think about American economies. Sears made consumption possible for communities with few stores and fewer choices during the Jim Crow era. People who lived in small communities, especially small rural communities, might only have one choice when it came to purchasing goods -- the general store. Not to say all general stores were racist or evil capitalists who preyed on their customers, but most general stores had a small range of goods and no competition, so prices could be steep and owners might unfairly prey on their consumers Over at Open Culture they describe Sears' innovation this way: " the democratizing power of the Se...

The Star Map from Jordan shows the sky at the center of the Universe. I just love maps. They bring back cherished memories or they remind me of trips I'd like to take. Some are abstract concepts depicting places of which I can only dream others are concrete places I can't imagine. There is a new project spearheaded at the University of Chicago  that purports to include maps from all corners of the earth and beyond--even to the spirit world. According to Open Culture , "The project includes non-Western and pre-medieval maps, presenting itself as 'the first serious global attempt' to describe the cartography of African, American, Arctic, Asian, Australian, and Pacific societies as well as European. In so doing, it illuminates many of those 'obscure origins.'" The heart of the world Old maps show us how people used to view their surroundings, which some may find funny or disturbing, while modern maps represent what is real or true. The ancient...