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Matching entries from mistersquid: a digital fiction
Correction on the Usefuless of Torture
I recently overheard someone explaining that intelligence acquired by means of torture was crucial in determining the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, which determination led to bin Laden’s death by US armed forces. This lie must be exposed as...
Speaking of Flying
The powers-that-be of the United States are having a difficult time understanding the Fourth Amendment. The problems with universal, arbitrary searches are manifold, and present surveillance techniques at US airports are not specific enough for the dangers they ostensibly...
Obama Administration Considers Depriving American Citizens of Their Constitutional Rights
It is time to start shouting. Representatives and appointees of the Obama administration—particularly David Axelrod and Attorney General Erich H. Holder—are considering abridging one of the most important Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination,...
Obama Administration Warns About Using Information Devices Which Have Produced the Most Widely Distributed Publishing Platform in Human History
I really want this thing to work out with President Obama. He’s smart. He’s a constitutaional scholar. His adminstration has taken steps to advance the welfare of US citizens and the welfare of people worldwide. So I don’t get...
Coda de Cinco
I loved celebrating Cinco de Mayo when before leaving California for the University of Virginia in Fall 1993. Because I was unaware of the historical significance of the holiday, Cinco de Mayo was a low-pressure excuse to have a...
The Sadism of American Waterboarding
“Waterboarding” is a euphemism for a form of torture older than the United States itself. What makes the term “waterboarding” particularly grotesque is its winking reference to the American pastime of surfing. I’m reminded of the moment when Colonel...
Hooked Through the Eye
I feel like a musky with all the fight gone out of him.»Jackson, Gordon. “Billy’s Girl.” Robert Shapard Ed. Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. 1st ed. Salt Lake City: G.M. Smith, 1986: 180.« Last night I told one of...
The Decline of the English Department
Early in his analysis of The Decline of the English Department, William Chace asserts that what is at the root of the decline is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books...
Harry Connick Jr. Hates Blackface
The contestants, all medical professionals, are none too talented and, judging by their routine, racially oblivious. The audience cheers the jerking minstrels, clapping to the beat of a racial lampooning. At 1:49 Harry Connick Jr. looks dumbfounded, and at...
Full Speed Reverse
In the last month, there’s been a lot of mainstream media attention on the borderlands between paper print and digital print, between text and etext. Google seems to be the focus of much of this interest, and my guess...
Some Thoughts Regarding the Creation of Text-to-Speech Audiobooks Using Consumer-Grade Software, or One Possible Outcome for Academic Professionalism as a Result of Fully Digitzed Text
Codex Books, Audiobooks, and Assistive Devices: A Tale of Near Misses The last book I checked out of Alden Library while still a faculty at Ohio University was Clay Shirky’s 2008 Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without...
Reorganizing This Movable Type Blog: Mistersquid Refreshed
Before returning to California after a 17-year adventure in the world of higher education (one that may not quite be done done), I restructured the way I was developing material for this blog. That restructuring was born of a...
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