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Recent Posts
- On Randall K. Wilson’s “A Place Called Yellowstone”: Award-Winning History of Yellowstone National Park
- On Candice Millard’s “River of Doubt” and “River of the Gods”: Bugs, Snakes, and Disease Aplenty
- More Alone than “Alone”: On Adam Shoalts’s “Vanished Beyond the Map: The Mystery of Lost Explorer Hubert Darrell” (2025)
- Rachel McAdams film “Send Help” (2026) Makes Comic Gold Out of “Survivor” and “Alone” Audition Videos
- “The Wiggle Room”: A Short Story
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Author Archives: williamjcobb
Reading Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" Offline, amidst a White Christmas
So between wrapping zebra puppets and trees with colored lights, I’ve been reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows while living offline, which is an interesting contrast. He basically argues that our internet use is changing the way our brains work, and … Continue reading
Posted in books, Social Networking, Weird Science
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On Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains"
So in between dressing up stuffed animal rabbits as Rapunzel and noticing that leopard-skin tights, boots, and earmuffs seem to be popular among mallrats, I’m reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010). It’s … Continue reading
Posted in books, Education, Weird Science, writing
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"The Descendants" & Kardashian Wannabes
So like all good (and not-so-good) Americans I ended up at a mall (in St. Louis) today, amused by the Kardashian/Jersey Shore wannabes with their alien-life-form hair and Cleopatra-on-meth eye makeup, getting a Teddy bear made from scratch, which was … Continue reading
Posted in books/film
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For Weather Freaks & Geeks: the NOAA El Nino Page
So if there’s one positive spinoff outcome of our collective Climate Change fears, it’s a greater understanding and respect for the science behind understanding climate and weather. {All Republican presidential candidates can now leave the room (like they’d be here … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, The West
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On the Climate Change Front, a Good News/Bad News Day
So the latest hubbub on the Climate Change front is that global emissions spiked last year to a record high increase, while obviously we should be making those numbers go down (and they did, briefly, from the effects of the … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Politics, The West
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On Stuart Dybek's "Saint Stuart" and Kent Haruf's "Benediction": Books to Come From Two of Our Best Writers
So last week I had the good fortune of overseeing the visit to our campus and fiction reading by Stuart Dybek, one of the finest contemporary American fiction writers of all. Dybek is known as something of a “writer’s writer,” but … Continue reading
Posted in books
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My Short Story, "The Lives of Gofers," in The Superstition Review
So I have a short story titled “The Lives of Gofers” out today in an online literary magazine, The Superstition Review, set in a hardscrabble Colorado. It’s available for all to read at this url: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/n8/ This fall I also … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West, writing
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"The Muppets Movie" Meets "The Human Centipede": Now That Ain't Right
So the title for this post should be “The Muppets Movie cleanses the horror of The Human Centipede,” but oh well. These two happened to be the films I saw this weekend: The Muppets Movie at a local cineplex, where … Continue reading
Posted in Film
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On HBO's "Enlightened": Or The Resurrection of Laura Dern
So Monday night has become one of those rarities: the premier night of must-see TV. I mostly ignore network TV these days, because the many commercial breaks get so tedious that once you get used to programs without them, they … Continue reading
Posted in Good TV
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"The Blood People": On Horror Creeping in Netflix, With Nods to "Night of the Demons," "Primal," and the Awful "The Awakening"
So the other morning my five-year-old daughter wakes up and the first thing she says to me is, “People are made of blood.” She’s right, actually. And I kind of like the poetry of the line, although the way her … Continue reading
Posted in Film
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