Been slowly working through the videos I made in Houston and just finished this one about Kaboom books. Love that bookstore. Hope you like the video.

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I was away for the weekend in Houston and had a great time with my family. Now that I’m back in New York I’m starting to realize that the summer is quickly coming to an end. Today represents really the halfway point for me, give or take. I have to be back on campus for…

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Sorry I never wrote a second night piece about the Democratic debates, I was too busy catching up with a friend having some wonderful margaritas, which has its own political value although I’m not sure what. Safe to say this post isn’t about that. The Presidential Campaign debates have been talked about as many different…

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Detail from The Statue of Four Lies, The Art Guys, 1983. University of Houston campus. I took this photo. This post is inspired by the continual efforts of one scholar in NCA to get people to debate him on the value of diversity versus merit in deciding who the best communication scholars are. I am…

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I spent most of my first year or so working at St. John’s here once or twice a week, in the New York Public Library reading room. Great spot to work on a dissertation. You don’t have to buy anything, they have every book ever printed (not really exaggerating here), and it’s just not-quiet enough…

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I don’t have a formal or even a really organized response to this explosion of speaking. What can you say? The easy way out is to say it’s not a debate, it’s a failed debate, and to leave it at that. Another easy way to respond is to create some way to determine a winner…

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In a few minutes the first part of the 20 deep Democratic debate will start. There’s no shortage of ways you can watch this event, think about it or talk about it, but most of the commentary and interpretation of it will attempt to limit how it can be seen. Debate is a hot issue…

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Interesting piece in the March 26th Bloomberg Businessweek about disrupting the US admissions test industry. The question is begged: Why are we preparing people for work? Why is this the metric? Most of us professors, I hope, are not interested in preparing people for a “life of work” but “a life of which work will…

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I had no idea what to make of the new Taylor Swift video because I am a middle aged white dude who spends a lot of time thinking and talking about video games and books. So this text went right by me. I still really don’t have a handle on what it’s supposed to mean.…

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I showed this video to the argumentation class that I took over for the last 6 weeks. This was shown (well most of it) just after everyone had done some in-class debates. One of the biggest goals I have in teaching debate and argumentation is to address fact addiction. Students strongly believe that access to…

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