As a student, I wish someone would've helped me write more effectively BEFORE I turned it in. Instead, most of the learned I did about writing came as a result of pounding my head against a grader's pen and learning "that's not the way to do things!" As an instructor, I'm constantly seeking to help students avoid the same pitfalls I found. I found a list of several helpful suggestions from a law / theology student in California that I thought I'd rip off. 1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. 2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. 5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous Or, in the words of the bumper sticker -- Eschew obfusc...
As you know, this has been a year of firsts in our home. Most importantly, our son Joshua was born on April 11th this year so this has been a year of the first smile, the first laugh, the first roll-over, the first tooth and now, his first Christmas. He's brought light into our home that I simply couldn't have imagined before he got here. It's funny. . . . we adopted Joshua, but I honestly don't know how on earth I could love him anymore if he were biologically mine. It's almost as if the Lord orchestrated things and people, placing him in just the right family at just the right time (ya think??!??!). Here's a sample of what I mean. Not long ago, Julie, Josh and I were at Wal-Mart. Nothing unusual there! We were in the produce section with me pushing the cart, Josh seat in it and Julie gathering. A stranger walked up to Josh and I, looked Josh hard in the face then looked me hard in the face then back at Josh. Then Julie walked over and the stranger st...
Darwinism - the theory that all species of life have evolved from a simple organism to a more complex organism to a more complex organism until we've reached the pinnacle on which we now stand as humans through a process he called "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest." Created by Charles Darwin and published in his 1859 work On the Origin of Species , Darwin's thought has permeated our thinking in the U.S. that it is now regarded as fact, not theory, despite it being incapable of being replicated or the clear facts (such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics) that lead directly against Darwin's thought. We teach it to our school children and quash all other voices. Anyone who disagrees with Darwin's "LAWS" is either a "flat earth" thinker or a religious fundamentalist, both of whom should be regarded as academically inferior. In recent years, another movement has arisen. Known as Intelligent Design, it holds that c...
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