January 23: An example of confirmation bias, and just plain stupidity, among other things

This morning a colleague had a conversation with a student about her upcoming "biography" informative speech assignment.

"You could give your speech about Helen Keller."

"Helen Keller wasn't real."

He was flabbergasted, as was I when he told me. How could anyone think Helen Keller wasn't a real person? So, I of course looked it up.

Apparently this is a trend on Tik-Tok. Either denying she existed (despite piles of evidence) or rejecting that she was deaf and blind. Why? Because she achieved things, including flying an airplane (what? a new one for me) that a deaf and blind person couldn't do.

So much to unpack here. That persons with disabilities have to sit in a corner and not achieve anything because that doesn't fit my worldview. That anything that happened before I was born didn't exist or happen. That science, history, and research are lying. That Tik Tok is reliable as a source of information.

This explains a lot.

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January 26, 2025: Joseph Campbell's view of things

A colleague sent me this quote the other day. He said that it had really helped him through life and as he faced changes and retirement, and it also helped him follow his bliss and find what he really wanted to do. “The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness rejoins consciousn...

Why to Read Fiction, Idea #27: Empathy, anyone?

The Idea #27 is tongue in cheek. But these are some ideas about writing fiction, which I have done in ten novels (and counting), a dozen short stories, and two produced plays (I know, not exactly the same). Background: In 2015 a colleague and I wrote an open educational resource public speaking textbook for a grant provided by our University System. We didn't realize at the time that it would go viral and be used all over the world within a few years. There are two reasons for that: it is good (as good as anything on the market) and it is free, although only in digital form. Check out www.exploringpublicspeaking.com for it. We also didn't know at the time that my co-author would die at 39 in 2016. I still miss him. Back to the point, I receive requests for the test banks every other day, and this morning I received one from Pennsylvania. The writer had a signature line: "Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in t...

Starting Over

We are ridiculously dependent on information technology. I found that out two weeks ago when my MAC of ten years went inoperative. "Crashed." "Died." Fortunately, some smart technicians were able to salvage my files; I should call them my life, my work, my creativity. But I did lose my passwords. Specifically, I lost the password to my two blogs, which I have not posted to since the crash. My first blog, partsofspeaking.blogspot.com had been in operation since 2006. It had almost 3000 posts on it. Fortunately, I can still get to them. The whole world can. The fact that I can't get into edit or post it any longer means I also can't take it down. It is going to be there as long as Google Blogger will be. If anything there would get me in trouble, well, I'll have to live with that. The second one, highereducationobserver.blogspot.com, is where I wrote about my professional expertise as a department chair. It reflected more research. In both blogs, ...

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