Some recent graduates of my alma mater, Wake Forest University, are up in arms over this year’s commencement speaker, former DISH Network chairman Charlie Ergen. They penned what struck me as a thoughtful, well-considered letter to university president Dr. Nathan Hatch, in which they chastised him for a pattern of pandering to business interests to the exclusion of those who
Read moreAs I Facebooked last night: After more than three years of writing, editing, revising, and of course enduring the emotional agony that engenders so many of my best ideas, I have finally arrived at what I’m choosing to call a 1.0 version of my new book, tentatively entitled The Butterfly Machine. Now, like any business-savvy poet, I’m on to the
Read moreWatch the two TED talks below. The question, which represents 100% of your final grade, follows. First, Nick Hanauer in 2012.
Read moreEvery once in awhile we will, for a variety of reasons, pick out a word that has positive connotations and proceed to flog that motherfucker to death. Like “engineer.” Engineer is a word with a meaning. From the Oxford: Pronunciation:/ɛndʒɪˈnɪə/ noun person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures. – a person qualified in a branch of engineering, especially
Read moreThe uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotic and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a
Read moreWe recently did a three-part ArtSunday series on the work of Denver photographer Greg Thow and I know many of you were as blown away by his shot of Colorado and the 5280 as we were.
Read moreAmerican propagandists and PR hacks have developed remarkably innovative ways of making words lie. Back in the ’80s we had “freedom fighters,” which was the way we described death squads who were friendly to America. “Pro-life” can be used to describe those who bomb clinics and murder physicians. “Enhanced interrogation,” of course, means “torture.” And so on. In some cases
Read moreA little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say. How true, how true, especially when it comes to reducing the wisdom of brilliant, complex minds to their pithiest quotes. In a recent thread on what has become of the GOP, one commenter went all-in with Henry David Thoreau’s famous (and greatly abused) edict: that government is best which governs the
Read moreLast week, in part one of our series on Denver photographer Greg Thow, we saw some fantastic shots of the 5280, one of America’s most beautiful cities. Of course, stunning nature photography is a prerequisite for shutterbugs living in Colorado, and while it was his urban photos that first caught my attention, Thow has an eye for the Centennial State’s trees,
Read moreRecently one of my Facebook friends posted a link to a photograph that just staggered me. The shooter was someone I had never heard of, a guy named Greg Thow.
Read moreChristopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. If Chris Corner’s tribute to the man seems conflicted, that is perhaps appropriate.
Read moreMy colleague Michael Sheehan recent offered a tip of the cap to a local staging of Frost/Nixon, which starred our old friend Stuart O’Steen. If anything, Mike was understated in his praise of the show and O’Steen’s performance. Anytime the big-city Denver Post says nice things about a community theater production up in the hinterlands of Longmont you know something special
Read moreTeresa Milbrodt is earning a good bit of acclaim lately, and her new short story collection, Bearded Women: Stories, should only amplify her reputation. Fiction Editor Dr. Jim Booth will have a review of the book in the coming days, and in the meantime we were able to persuade the gracious but extremely busy Milbrodt to field a few questions.
Read moreWhen we were putting S&R together in 2007 I hunted down Gavin Chait and begged him to join us. He’s one of the smartest guys I know, a relentless, good faith thinker and someone you can count on to hit you with a perspective you hadn’t thought about. He wrote our very first post and also penned at least one
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lullaby pit 