As you begin stocking your backpack and laying out your clothes for the first day of the new school year, here are some sites for back to class:
Advice for seniors
Are you absolutely sure there are no absolutes?
Creative writing resources
Does DNA disprove evolution?
Encouragement for when a) your locker won’t open, b) you can’t find your first [...]
Entries from July 2008
July 30, 2008
• ‘Back to school’ supplies
July 29, 2008
• Is new search engine ‘cuil’?
Former engineers from Google rolled out a new search engine Monday that they claim can, and I quote, “index faster a far larger portion of the Web than Google.” (Google claims to have indexed 1 trillion—as in 1,000,000,000,000—unique URLs.)
Instead of focusing on Web link and audience traffic patterns, www.cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) analyzes the [...]
July 28, 2008
• It’s Christmas in July
Are you ready for Christmas? I am! I hate hot, humid weather. Hallmark will be decorating their stores next month. And, with all the bad economic news, I’m ready for some Christmas cheer.
So, it’s Christmas in July at www.jameswatkins.com. Put on some Manheim Steamroller and check out my new Twelve Sites [...]
July 26, 2008
• ‘Last Lecture’-er lived fully
“We don’t beat the reaper by living longer, we beat the reaper by living well and living fully,” Randy Pausch told students at Carnegie Mellon. The Last Lecture became an Internet sensation and best-selling book.
Pausch died early yesterday. The college professor, husband and father of three young children had been diagnosed with [...]
July 25, 2008
• Sex and the City: part trois
In a recent post, I mentioned that Sex in the City’s anthrologist and sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw needed to do some more research. Now LifeScript has posted an article: “Ten Reasons Not to Sleep with Him.” Number one is very interesting.1. You’re not as detached as you think.
Call it the curse (and blessing) [...]
July 23, 2008
• Prostate update
Today is day 21 in the 42-day radiation treatment for prostate cancer—half way through—so let me take a break from large issues and give you an update on that little situation.
The side-effects have been pretty minor since I’m getting only 60 rads of radiation each morning. According to the folks at the Department of Civil [...]
July 22, 2008
• Key to publication . . .
Networking is the key to getting published. Like many businesses, it’s not what you know, but who you know. (Obviously, you’ve got to know the what’s of writing, but who you know is extremely important.)
Case in point: An editor at a large magazine introduced himself and said to me—at a writers conference—”I like [...]
July 19, 2008
• ‘Dark Knight’ of the soul
In the latest Batman film, the villan’s green clown wig and make-up are gone! Instead, The Dark Knight’s “Joker” is the very face of evil. And yet, in his madness, he forces the citizens of Gotham to examine their own good and evil—and the shadows that lie between.
Bruce (Batman) Wayne pleads to his butler, “People [...]
July 18, 2008
• ‘Reality’ TV is not real
I have in my right hand, direct from my home office, tonight’s top ten list: Top ten signs you’ve been watching too much reality TV.
10. At the last family reunion, you voted off your brother-in-law.
9. You’ve installed a video camera in every room of your house.
8. For chocolate and peanut butter, you’ll [...]
July 17, 2008
• Anglican Church could split—again
Splits in the Anglican Church have given the world the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, as well as many others. And we could soon see more.
Over 600 bishops from around the world have come together for a once-a-decade summit of the Anglican Church. The two weeks of meetings at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, [...]
