2010

We are currently reading The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein in my Revolutions in Communication class. It’s an excellent book, even though a) I spend hours each day blogging and thus using the very technologies that Bauerlein despises, …

We have been studying poetry in my Creative Writing class. Several students brought Sylvia Plath’s work into the class to analyze. These students were raving about Plath’s genius, so I read her poetry with great curiosity. I didn’t like it. I found it to be simultaneously dull and melodramatic; the diction is simple and the …

I write visual art reviews for The Uniter. Typically I check out the art, ponder it a while, jot down a few notes, and then go home to write up my review. E-mail it to my editor and a week later, it’s published. Last week, however, I had the opportunity to attend a visual art …

The Superbowl, the Olympics, the Academy Awards: the majority of North Americans flock to these events. The media is full of information on the best recipes to have as snacks while we watch these events, the intense exercise regimes and nutrition plans that athletes use during their training, and the secrets of how celebrities “tone …

I’ve talked about PETA’s extremist advertisements before. Now, after I’ve read Lesli Pace’s excellent article Image Events and PETA’s Anti Fur Campaign, I’d like to discuss not just the effectiveness of these advertisements, but also our response to them. Consider: Nikki Craft, a women’s rights activist, finds a few issues with the PETA “I’d Rather …

In my Revolutions in Communications course at the University of Winnipeg, we have been reading Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid. A fascinating book which discusses “The Story and Science of the Reading Brain”, Proust and the Squid delves into a discussion on brain development throughout human history as well as the development of individual …

When I tell people that I study “rhetoric”, I usually follow this up by explaining that it’s “the study of communication”. It’s the easiest way to quickly describe what exactly “rhetoric” entails. Of course, it is much more than *just* (ha!) communication, but in a pinch, it’s a fairly apt explanation. Sometimes, however, people interpret …

Earlier this week, we examined how it is human nature to make judgments based on first impressions. Now I would like to address an adjoining part to this same issue: namely, the problem of acting upon assumptions when we have no real basis behind them. As a writer for a local newspaper, one of my …

As a health writer with a particular interest in body image, one of the issues that crops up time and again for people who are trying to come to terms with themselves has to do with body composition. Body composition refers to how we look and how the body distributes our weight. Three people of …

In Neal Gabler’s Life: The Movie, the reader is thrust into a world where life not only imitates entertainment, it is entertainment. And no, this is not sci-fi. This, as Gabler demonstrates, is real life. The book discusses how everything that we do is a performance. We dramatize and use theatrical expressions and gestures across …

The difference between saying “shut up!” and “quiet, you!”: Shut up! is a dismissive order, indicating that the rhetor does not care for nor has any desire to hear your perspective. Quiet, you! is a passive command, suggesting that the rhetor respects your opposing viewpoint but would really rather not have to incorporate your way …

Every year, the Texas A&M University holds a contest for people to submit definitions of a contemporary term. This year’s priceless term and winning definition was: Political Correctness Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is …

The two images below depict the famous photograph of the Kent State University massacre. The first photograph is the “original”; the second has been retouched: one of the fence posts was removed from the photograph to make it more aesthetically pleasing. The second photograph was the one that first appeared in the media. In some …

I recently came across the new I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter advertising campaign promoting their “Turn the Tub Around” video competition. The videos include a “cute” little song featuring the product I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter as a “healthy” alternative to real butter. The company declares that their product has less saturated fat …