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1983: Year of the Big Glasses

Yes, 1983 was the — “Year of the Big Glasses” — as you can see preeminently evidenced below in the 1983 promotional newspaper advertisement for “KFOR, Radio 1240, The One You Turn to For News.” I am in the lower right corner, aged 18, and in my Senior year at Lincoln Northeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was not alone in my Big Glasses accoutrement. Three others were with me, but none of my coworker cohorts also had the keen, brown, tint-a-wheel of The Big Glasses Transitions lenses of 1983!

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Accessing the Digital Public Library of America

Today, May 4, 2013 marks the sixth anniversary of what used to be the “Boles University Blog.”  That fine scholarship and research blog is now folded into this even finer, and richer, and deeper Boles Blogs Blog, and in celebration of promoting online pedagogy and in-person teaching, let’s take a look at the fascinating, and new, “Digital Public Library” of America! Continue reading → Accessing the Digital Public Library of America

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Petting the Mainstream Middling Mind: An Indictment Against Standardized Testing

I have never been a fan of standardized testing in schools.  There’s too big a variable at play — missing the wild mind — and these tests praise and condone only the middle.  If you don’t do well on these tests, you are not moved forward or thought of as a significant thinker.  The system doesn’t mind if your wild view of the world matters.  The only thing the test givers care about is finding, and approving, the mainstream, middling, mind to guarantee, and impress, conformity.

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The Economic Fraud of the American Dream

The quintessential “American Dream” is one of the most pervasive and iconic themes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries — our mentors push us toward it; the media glamorizes it; poor Jay Gatsby died trying to achieve it. However, as young graduates across the nation return to their parents’ homes with diplomas in one hopeful hand, the goal of proud, self-governed homeownership seems to slip further and further away.

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From Barbie to Borrowing: Hanging Out with Dad

I am convinced that my father was born with a newspaper in one tiny hand and a neck tie instead of an umbilical cord. I mean this in the most complimentary way possible; the man has a work ethic that can make any zealous overachiever feel lazy. As a kid, I hardly appreciated or even noticed how tirelessly he worked to support my family and me.

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On Not Giving an A++++++++++ Grade

Grade inflation is a major problem on college campuses, and it is the sworn duty of the faculty to carefully and cautiously grade all student work the same.  Students tend to expect an “A” grade just for showing up to class when, in structured reality, a “C” grade is what a student earns for merely meeting the minimum requirements for any course.  A “C” is a fine grade — but a lot of students seem to feel a “C” grade is the same as an “F” grade when it is not.  A “C” defines the middling ground for a course and that is the honest grade most students earn, even though faculty tend to inflate grading the middle just to keep the peace.

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Artist Conversion

The job of any True Artist is one of conversion.  The Artist takes a notion and transforms it into something else, something greater, than what it was before.  That conversion also plays a direct role in the real life of the True Artist, too.

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