American History, Race & School

There's a lot being said about teaching racism and slavery and its place in American history in schools.

The primary criticism of that by a lot of parents and right-leaning legislatures ruling on this is that (they believe) it's a form of white guilt. Their argument is that teaching students - especially elementary school-age students - about racism and slavery in America is supposed to make white children feel guilty, and that isn't remotely true at all.

Recaps Disclaimer

My recaps are intended solely for the purpose of summarizing movies and television shows for reference.

They are not intended as substitutes for the actual program, nor should they be used as such.

I encourage readers of this site to watch any programs I review and/or recap themselves on a device or service convenient to them.

Eric Smith, Writer/Editor/Site Manager

Baudrillard and Simulated Reality in 2017

For this, I was assigned to read and analyze an excerpt of postmodernist writer and theorist Jean Baudrillard's writings on simulacra. I then had to summarize his theory and find a relevant argument to make about them.

Admittedly, this was a difficult read, since Baudrillard's points aren't always entirely clear. Still, I found his points about simulations and reality to be fairly relevant in 2017. Below I explain why.

A Short Analysis of Malcom F**king Tucker

To most people, Peter Capaldi is best known for the Twelfth Doctor on BBC's Doctor Who. Before that, he'd starred in handful of other productions, in particular as John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth, Cardinal Richelieu in The Musketeers, and as the ironically named W.H.O. Doctor in World War Z.

Before all of that, though, he was Malcolm Tucker, the profane head of the Department of Social Affairs in The Thick of It, a political satire/drama series. Below is a short analysis I wrote of the man as a leader and a character.

Opinion: Why Attacking Net Neutrality is a Precursor to State-Run News

Updated 8/23/2017

While I’ve been signing a number of petitions to make my opinions known about political matters over the past few months, I very rarely comment on them.

However, with this one, I felt a special connection and an obligation to post my thoughts. Below is what I said and why.

Saw VI: Mixing Political Commentary & Horror

Background

For this assignment - from an American Horror course, I was instructed to pick a horror film and analyze how it approaches a political or social topic. That was the core idea of the assignment, though I was largely limited to analyzing the film according to references in notes and material covered in course discussions.

I lacked a wide array of horror films with an explicit focus in politics. The few films I noted with a subject matter that involved politics or social topics basically consisted of The Omen (original series and remake) and Day of the Dead (original, 1985). However, with healthcare being a major subject in recent months, I decided on Saw VI, which uses healthcare as a plot point

The following is my written analysis, albeit highly edited and, in my mind, improved based on my own feelings and feedback after I submitted it*.

Characterization in Louise Erdrich’s Indian Boarding School – The Runaways

I recently rediscovered a few older assignments from my time at HACC. One of these is an analysis I wrote about characterization for a short story in my Fall 2014 Introduction to Literature course.

I wrote this analysis as the second part of a two-part assignment studying the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The first part involved a slideshow presentation with a partner with information about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

I have little to add beyond the fact that little, if anything, has been added or edited from this posting.

Genres: Few, Many & More

Background

This is an early assignment I wrote while at HACC for a media studies class in 2015. The instruction was very much, "Pick a topic from a list of topics and write about it; include references to conglomeration, convergence and how advances in technology have affected it."

From this list, I selected a topic about genres. I first asked, "What can I write about this that would make it unique or worth reading?" Eventually I narrowed down on an angle: how genres have evolved over time and how they can divide in to sub-genres, and those sub-genres can be divided, and so on.

I wasn't planning to post this at all, but after one of my classes studied genres and narratives, I decided to revisit this and post it.

Painting Critique

Here, I was asked to find and review a painting. For the assignment, rather than search the mass amount of paintings in databases across the internet, I decided to review a print I personally owned. Here is what I wrote.

Keeping an Open Heart – Literally

PinnacleHealth in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania became the first institution to work in a nationwide medical clinical trial.

The trial is set to test transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) treatment. Also known as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), TAVR is slated to be a less invasive and longer lasting treatment for cardiac conditions.

Animal Rescues – What, Why and Who?

Most people are in agreement. Animal abuse is ugly, no matter how much offenders try to “pretty” it up. 62% of people in a Gallup poll believe animals deserve some level of protection from harm and exploitation.