Tag: snark

50 Shades of WTF?

The other day, I saw a link on a Facebook page to yet another scathing, snarky review of the book which shall not be named. I’ve seen a lot of these. This particular reviewer put a lot of time and effort into her piece. There were amusing animated GIFs between each few paragraphs of calumny she poured on this ill-conceived tome.

I love snark as much as anyone. I was all good with it until I got to the end. The reviewer said to stay tuned for her upcoming review of the sequel to this book. WTF???

I have nothing against the author of this book. I have nothing against her book (which shall not be named). But she is pulling down a bazillion dollars a week from her book. WHY ARE YOU HELPING HER if you hate her book? WHY ARE YOU GOING TO READ AND REVIEW HER NEXT ONE? Continue reading “50 Shades of WTF?”

9 Signs Accredited Online Colleges are Out of Control

In case you missed it (and there is a good chance you did), a blog called Accredited Online Colleges ran a little article called 9 Signs Self-Publishing is Out of Control. I am firmly of the belief that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, even when that opinion is stupid and completely wrong.

This article begins with these well-balanced lines: “To paraphrase the immortal words of Truman Capote, there’s a difference between writing and typing. And, to put it gently, we can say with a good amount of confidence that most self-published books were typed, not written. Because communicating with letters assembled into words is a skill most learn by the age of 5, and because written communication has become so ubiquitous in American life, everyone now thinks he’s a writer.”

Why, with such impervious reasoning as that, one might also wonder if anyone with a computer now thinks he’s a blogger. I won’t quote anything further from the article (the link is there if you’d like to have a look). Neither will I conduct a line-by-line vivisection of the deeply flawed reasoning put forth in the article, tempting as that may be.

I do find it fairly dripping with irony. Here the anonymous author takes exception to the technology that has allowed the Philistines to call themselves authors. Presumably, the author is all right with the same technology when put to the purpose of creating accredited online colleges. Yet, the preponderance of the author’s arguments can be applied equally against accredited online colleges. All of this begs the question: Are accredited online colleges out of control? (McNally, did you notice I capitalized after the colon there?) The sad answer to this question is an unqualified yes.

9 Signs Accredited Online Colleges are Out of Control Continue reading “9 Signs Accredited Online Colleges are Out of Control”

The Fountainhead of Creativity

While it is always wrong to make absolute declarations and sweeping generalizations, it is undeniable that there are three types of people in the world:

1. Those who are good at math, and

B. Those of us who aren’t.

The easy conclusion is that people who are good at math are organized, logical thinkers. This may be true—the old left-brain/right-brain thing. I can never remember which is which. That may mean I am the third of the two types. However, I think there is a reason the people who are not good at math tend to be the more creative types—artists, writers, thespians, short-order cooks.

The very simple and obvious explanation is that we had to think up reasons we did not have our math assignments ready to turn in. This forced us to turn on our creative juices to move beyond the old trope of “the dog ate it” to the more entertaining (if no more credible) mitigation of epic singularities such as alien abductions, evil twins, foul play, espionage, talking rabbits who are late for parties, and inter-dimensional portals opened by the magnificent correctness of a formula you calculated (which sadly resulted in its theft by miscreants from another galaxy). Continue reading “The Fountainhead of Creativity”

The Future is Soon!

In an age where yesterday seems like it was only 24 hours ago, it is almost dizzying to realize that at this very moment, scientists are already working on the problems of tomorrow. Clearly they’ve given up on the problems of today. Undaunted by their failure to deliver on the promised Jetsons-style flying car, science now boldly moves beyond teaching monkeys to smoke and putting sleeves on blankets.

Digital technology has changed the way books are written, published, distributed, purchased, rated, and ignored. Thanks to science, it takes less time than ever before for an aspiring author to become disillusioned. The two things we know about people is that 1.) They do not like the way things are, and 2.) They hate change. This is why science stopped listening to people a long time ago.

Continue reading “The Future is Soon!”