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.