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A Problem With the Problem With Apu
By Sean McCormick The Simpsons and I have had a near-daily relationship for decades now — it was the only therapy I could afford during my turbulent 20s. The show is both a celebration and an occasionally savage indictment of the times we live in. I owe it my fealty. Sadly, my beloved show —…
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Some Big Fish in a Small Lago
By Sean McCormick 04/19/2019 In 1999, Milton Wright, a now-79-year-old retired African American man and his wife, Helen, moved to Lago Vista, Texas. At that time there were fewer than 40 black people in the entire city. Wright’s reason for moving to Lago Vista was simple: he wanted to retire out in the hills by…
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Lago Vista High School chooses to coexist with smartphones despite hurdles
By Sean McCormick Jim Ed Baugh, who teaches the Lago Vista High School audiovisual program, recently noticed one of his students taking a picture of his math homework with an app on his smartphone. The app then solved the math problem, based on the image. At Lago Vista High School, despite the no-cell phone flyers…
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Culture Clubs
By Sean McCormick My biggest takeaway from this class regarding culture is that cultures are dynamic. No matter how remote the village, so long as humans are involved, societies are going to inevitably change. Also, no one person can possess their own individual culture. It’s a group effort. In the late 1990’s, during the height…
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NYT Memo Assignment
By Sean McCormick September 19th, 1963 Dear President Kennedy, We are nearly finished preparing your speech to the United Nations. I apologize for the delay, but there have been ongoing developments this past week that have required some eleventh-hour additions (and a couple of corrections). The nuclear test ban treaty, which the Senate will hopefully…
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Digital Winter is Coming
By Sean McCormick Many industries experienced a golden age prior to the internet, but the sudden capability to turn once-tangible products and services into a series of 1’s and 0’s, rendered many companies obsolete, or at least ill-equipped to remain competitive. I had a front row seat during one such transition. This paper provides an…
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Projection
By Sean McCormick Until I was about 26, I was a pretty lousy student. I had zero ability to fake an interest in that which didn’t strike my fancy, which led to many appearances of “I” and “W” on my transcript. That being said, every so often a class would come up that did float…
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The Moving Target of Advertising
By Sean McCormick Advertising tactics and techniques have evolved just a tad from the days when Greek prostitutes (Pornai) in ancient Mesopotamia would lure potential clients with imprints of “follow me” in the dirt, made by special sandals they wore (Smithfield, 2016). Today, advertisers are able to get their wares in front of eyeballs far…
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What a Fool Believes – The Actual Impact of Fake News
By Sean McCormick Before 1990, if you wanted to create a widely read fake news story, you would go broke attempting to share it with everyone. That is, unless your last name was Hearst or Pulitzer. Newspapers and broadcast networks were cumbersome and expensive to establish and maintain. Spreading disinformation is hardly new. Some accounts…
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A Digital Immigrant’s Tale
By Sean McCormick Analog Origin Story All 10 lbs of me arrived in 1967 in an analog, yet enhanced (c-section) fashion. This was the year the occupants of Apollo I burned to death during a routine launch pad test, Star Trek was in production, and the floppy disk was invented. The Internet aka ARPANET, consisted…