Discourse Chronicle

Nelson first played 007 in a one-hour TV adaptation of “Casino Royale” in 1954, eight years before Sean Connery played the British agent in the big screen adaptation of “Dr. No.” The occasion was the CBS series “Climax!” which had purchased the rights to the first James Bond novel from author Ian Fleming, reportedly for […]

category: Popular Culture, Television    

“Without question, this new enforcement initiative has invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music,” said Steven Marks, executive vp and general counsel for the RIAA. “The question we ask of students is this: With high-quality legal music options available for free or […]

category: Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

“We are excited about bringing Shia into our Indy family,” director Steven Spielberg said in a statement. “His talent has impressed not only his audiences throughout his young career but the directors, producers and fellow actors who have worked with him in his television career and now his film career.” In his short career, LaBeouf, […]

category: Popular Culture    

[Today I appeared in a colleague’s class as a guest-speaker presenting about comic books, so I used an opening lesson about comics from my time as an undergraduate TA, which begins with distinguishing three genres of comics: comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. All three are different and those differences are dependent upon length […]

category: Comics, Life, Popular Culture    

While Apple is promising several new features in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac fans won’t be able to get their hands on the Leopard OS until later this year as a result of Apple diverting Leopard engineering and testing resources to the launch of the highly anticipated iPhone, which couples iPod-like functionality with smartphone […]

category: Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

[Here is a recap of my trip to Boston: Day 0 Continental Airlines showed Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness during the leg from Houston to Boston. An excellent movie and definitely inspiring given my string of rejection letters from PhD programs. Boston experienced unseasonable weather equivalent to that of a Wisconsin winter. I […]

category: Life, Popular Culture    

For instance, as Kakalios recently pointed out in his lecture “The Uncanny Physics of Superhero Comic Books” that was part of the MIT Physics Colloquium Series, when the Green Goblin kidnapped Spiderman’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, and pushed her from the George Washington Bridge to her death, was it the fall that killed her or Spidey’s […]

category: Comics, Popular Culture    

The award-winning actress, who graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1946 along with her husband, noted producer and director Jeffrey Hayden, will present “On the Divide: An Afternoon with Willa Cather.” The readings of Cather’s works, which will benefit the Eva Marie Saint Scholarship Fund, will be held April 14 at 2 p.m. in […]

category: Popular Culture    

Thank you very much for your application to the Department of English. We received a surprisingly large pool of excellent applications and the department’s Executive Committee reviewed each one carefully. Our decision had to be based primarily on the fit between applicants’ experience and our immediate teaching needs for the coming academic year. I regret […]

category: Life, Rejections    

I am glad to be able to let you know that the rhetoric faculty is impressed by your file and that it recommended you for admission to the Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program. [Awesome! Official letter is on its way. Now only Purdue is left…BK]

category: Acceptances, Life, Rhetoric and Poetics