After two years of somewhat consistent posts on this blog, I regret to inform that I will be taking a sabbatical. It could last anywhere from two to six months, or maybe longer.
Posts under ‘books’
The Visionaries Have Breached Academia
About a month ago I was preparing a streaming video player for an event at work. During downtime, the player streams old content from Michigan Television (public TV at U of M that has now been closed). In a pleasant coincidence, I happened to see an interview with Thylias Moss, an English professor at U-M [...]
Printing Custom Books from Wikipedia
The most interesting news I’ve heard lately on the topic of custom publishing came last month from Mashable.com. As Jolie O’Dell reports, you can now create and print a custom book using content from Wikipedia. Just click “Create a book” in Wikipedia’s left sidebar (under “print/export”), and then click “Start book creator.” The video below [...]
Thank Bog There’s No Religious Newspeak Here
Before I moved out of Michigan, I tried to connect with other Evolvers (that is, members of the site Evolver.net) in my area. I contacted Alan Scheurman, who leads the Evolver Detroit spore. He had listed EcoZoic Detroit as the spore’s website. The About page at that site is brief: We are a locally focused [...]
WikiLeaks: The Beginning of the First-Ever Golden Age of Journalism
Now that I’ve emerged from my symbolic journey through the desert that took place over the last few months, I need to start cracking away at a variety of topics that have sparked my interest lately. The timeliest of those topics is WikiLeaks, a site that I heard about a few weeks ago via an [...]
Wait! You’re Not Lost! It’s Just a Different Dream!
Please don’t go! You haven’t navigated to the wrong website! It’s still the same old Refractor Blog. I just switched the WordPress theme to match the new Supraterranean blogs, Prana Genius and Flux Window. I hope you’ve had a chance to look around at those places. Things are getting very exciting in here (by “here,” [...]
Tom Burrell On His Book ‘Brainwashed’
I feel like everything I’ve been working on is suddenly coming together with a new clarity. On March 18 NPR ran an excellent interview with Tom Burrell, who worked in the advertising industry for 40 years and just published a book called Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority. I find Burrell’s story to be [...]
The Human Mystique
I have a feeling that when I’m older and reflecting on my experience as a young man, there will be a vital point in the story when I exclaim, “And then I found The Feminine Mystique!” It’s bewildering to consider that the work — which launched the modern feminist movement almost 20 years before I [...]
The Co-opting of Youth Culture
Yesterday I took my little sister to the mall to pick up a DVD and look for anything related to Alice in Wonderland. She’s really, really excited about the upcoming remake — and it makes me sad to think that this younger generation won’t be as critical of these so-called “films,” these CGI landfills. But [...]
