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Presenting in Three Rivers and Fresno, California

My latest attempt at stand-up tragedy is embedded below. It's based on my 5 October 2013 presentation in Three Rivers, California. My presentation is about 30 minutes, and subsequent Q&A accounts for the remaining 40 minutes or so. Big thanks…

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The Absurdity of Authenticity

I'm often accused -- or credited, depending on one's perspective -- of leading an authentic life. As nearly as I can tell, the accusation or accolade refers to the following definition from Merriam and Webster: true to one's own personality,…

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Or Die Trying

I wrote an entire book on the life of the mind, if you can imagine that. A significant portion of the book was dedicated to the importance of a liberal education, and I've written about that topic in this space,…

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What works: community

As we continue into the decades-old, but only recently acknowledged era of destruction and extinction, it’s apparent the current model is not working. Truth has fallen and taken liberty with it. A vast majority of Americans are aware the industrial…

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Resources and Anthropocentrism

As I indicated in a previous post, the word “resources” is problematic because it implies materials are placed on this planet for the use of humans. We see finite substances and the living planet as materials to be exploited for our comfort. Examples of intense anthropocentrism are so numerous in the English language it seems unfair to pick on this one word from among many. And, as with most other cases, we don’t even think about these examples, much less question them (cf. sustainability, civilization, economic growth). My only justifications for singling out “resources” are the preponderance with which the word appears in contemporary media, the uncritical acceptance of resources as divine gifts for Homo sapiens, and previous posts on a few of the other obvious examples.

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Illegitimi non carborundum

I love the Socratic aspect of academia, and it’s the part I do best. I supervise nine independent-study projects this semester, with a total of ten students. Most of them have spent a weekend at the mud hut, or soon will. Indeed, I’m just back from the mud hut, where I spent the weekend with one of the students, the poet in resident at the renowned University of Arizona Poetry Center. He called the trip “transformative.” I meet regularly with all the students, probing and pushing until they do more and better work than any of us thought possible. Ditto for the small, hard-working herd of graduate students I advised and mentored during two wonderful decades.

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Reason: Four Classics

While reading through an earlier post, it occurred to me that it might have relevance to today’s political drama. So I tracked down a few essays and put a contemporary spin on the year-old post.

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