POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Each year, “Shark Week” marks the persistently popular, binge recycling of the films in the Jaws franchise and several dozen documentaries about how sharks mercilessly hunt seals and other prey. (As if to balance out the carnage inflicted upon the seals, in one documentary a Great White is ambushed and killed…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This headline is from today’s Wonkette newsletter: Michael Cohen’s Tell-All Book Has Been Cancelled. Sorry, Pulitzer Committee! Wonkette is available at: https://wonkette.com/. It is in the same vein as The Onion but much nastier and unrestrained: that is, I sometimes cringe or flinch right before I laugh out loud—that is, at…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The title of this post is the title of a book by E. L. Kersten. Here is the jacket summary: Motivation has become a multi-billion dollar industry, courtesy of the patronage of corporations and the noble intentions of Executives who lead them. At the heart of this colossal confederation of inspirational…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Getty, Matt Cardy This explanatory caption was provided by Atlantic’s Photos of the Week for May 11, 2018, compiled by Alan Taylor: Artist Michael Pendry adds a white origami dove to his art installation “Les Colombes,” which is being installed at Salisbury Cathedral on May 10, 2018, in Wiltshire, England. The…
BY HANK REICHMAN A little less than a year ago, in the wake of the 2016 election, I posted to this blog “A Playlist for the Trump Presidency,” a collection of 30 songs/videos of political relevance. It generated considerable traffic. In February I followed up with “Another Trump Playlist,” with 40 songs/videos, but that post…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Several weeks ago, I posted a current political parody of a Simon and Garfunkel song [https://academeblog.org/2017/08/27/if-simon-and-garfunkel-were-troubadours-of-the-age-of-trump/]. Quite coincidentally, I came across this list of words coined fifty years ago, in 1967. (The Merriam-Webster website has a feature that allows you to get a list of the neologisms from any given year.)…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In this series, I have highlighted headlines that are cleverly expressed, making use of puns, irony, figurative language, or unexpected word choices to grab a reader’s attention. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has so unabashedly flouted all sorts of political conventions that headline writers have felt freer to write headlines that…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH It’s 2017, and the last classified documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy are due to be released on October 26. In fact, about a quarter of those documents were already released several weeks ahead of time, as if to prime the pump. As if it needs any priming.…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On this past Friday, LiveScience’s entire daily newsletter was devoted to Friday the 13th and the concepts of good and bad luck. The linked articles included “Why Do We Fear Friday the 13th?, ”Statistically Speaking, Is Friday the 13th Really Unlucky?,” What is the Origin of Friday the 13th?,” “Why Are…