Big Sole Blog (BSB)

According to this CNN report, your television may be watching you, sort of, through your cable box: what you watch on TV can give advertisers insight into who you are and what you're likely to buy. Armed with the data collected from viewers' cable boxes about their viewing tastes, an advertiser can send commercials to a television screen customized to the interests of viewers in a specific home

Just something to think about.

In some ways this blog is a commonplace book for me, and so, as I am researching closet dramas and their relationship to Plato and the dialectic or dialogue, I'm storing this definition or summary of closet dramas from The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Volume 1. Wikipedia is good starting point, too.

Isaiah Doyle, a 28 year-old who confessed to killing a conveneience store clerk in Jefferson Parish, La., during a robbery in 2005, has been sentenced to death. His attorneys argued that he was mentally handicapped in order to save him from the death penalty. According to WWL, "a psychologist for the defense said, 'Without a doubt, he has mental retardation.'” The prosecution offered its own

I awoke this morning to the news that screen legend Elizabeth Taylor had died. According to NPR, "A publicist told The Associated Press that Taylor died of congestive heart failure at a Los Angeles hospital. She was 79."As someone born in 1960, I grew up seeing Taylor's movies on television. I remember Lassie Go Home and National Velvet, and also her adult movies. The latter were often presented

Stefano Langone won me over a few weeks ago on American Idol when he sang Smokie Norful's "I Need You Now." And when I say "he sang it" that's an understatement. He slayed it! So, I wasn't surprised at all when he won a wild card slot. He committed to this Norful gospel song like he grew up in a black Baptist church. According to Idol's site, Stefano admires Stevie Wonder.

In the video below, Jay Smooth recites excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" on the topic of extremism. You can read Jay's post at Illdoctrine.com. I listened and thought that we have Talk Like a Pirate day and Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Perhaps we should also have a Speak the Words of MLK Day.

Let me say at the outset that the verses that follow are by Paulo Freire, but in their original form they are presented as prose not poetry in his last book Pedagogy of Freedom, Chapter 3, "Teaching is Not Just Transferring Knoweldge." (The video at the end of this post is one of his last interviews before his death in 1997)As I read this book, I am struck increasingly by how his philosphy had

Below is an effective montage of video footage from CNN of the earthquake hitting Japan, the tsunami destruction, and the aftermath of these two catastrophic events. In the shadow of loss of life--"more than 1,000 feared dead"--and property, the Japanese face another potential catastrophe with unstable nuclear power plants shaken by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake. The area around one of the plants

I got up at 5:50 a.m., again complying with my dearest cousin (yes, the same cousin with whom I went to the Zulu Ball) but also with pressure from my son, and went to one Mardi Gras parade, the first of Mardi Gras Day, which is the Zulu Parade. We stood somewhere on St. Charles Avenue between Jackson and Felicity Streets. Scenes from the morning are in the video above.We didn't stay until the end

I have to thank my cousin for encouraging me to go to Zulu Ball 2011, which was held at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Friday, March 4. It started around 8:00, I think, but we skipped the coronation and debutante/Zulu maid and court introductions. We didn't arrive until about 11:00 p.m., and got home around 5:00 a.m.My cousin is a Frankie Beverly and Maze fan to the death, and both