BillHeise | March 21, 2009
Most of my students are between the ages of 18 and 22. This is a critical age, for it is between the ages of 18 and 22 that children grow out of adolescence and into adulthood. As an adolescent, you don’t even have control over your body, which leads to many embarrassing situations, (at least [...]
BillHeise | March 20, 2009
Salman Rushdie has it rough, there’s no doubt about that. After writing the magical realism novel The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie. He went into hiding for a decade. But now, his patience has been tested by, of all things, Slumdog Millionaire. In a speech at Atlanta’s Emory University, Rushdie [...]
BillHeise | March 20, 2009
What I am Listening to This Week: Bollywood has become the most visited page on this site, replacing the previous most viewed page, What I am Listening to This Week: The Sound of Cornbread. Also, the initial lead by the Netherlands for the battle for second place (the US is first) has petered out, while [...]
BillHeise | March 18, 2009
This is a followup on a previous post “Books I have not read, and why.” I want to make it clear that I don’t put much faith in the GRE as a measure of success in gratuate school. I agree with what Michel Berube posted here after he had taken the GRE 25 years applying [...]
BillHeise | March 18, 2009
Larry and I used to sneak into the old (and now gone) Edens Movie Theater in Northbrook, IL, where we would watch movies over and over. No, we didn’t pay to see the movies if we could help it. As respectable hippies, we snuck in! One of my favorite movies at that time was Hair. [...]
BillHeise | March 17, 2009
I recently filled out one of those Facebook surveys that asks you to tell how many novels you have read. It began by announcing that the BBC has determined that most people have only read 6 of 100 “great books.” That’s a cynical thing to say; all of my friends who read far more than [...]
BillHeise | March 16, 2009
Everyone is excited about Bollywood lately on account of Slumdog Millionaire. In my attempt to broaden my audience’s horizons and bring Americans into the world of Bollywood, I wanted to start out gradually. Say what you will about Snoop Dogg, he’s a groundbreaker. Here, he sings/raps to Singh is Kinng. Snoop Dogg’s performance has been [...]
BillHeise | March 13, 2009
At least in China it is (Really!) Read the New York Times article here. A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese intellectuals [...]
BillHeise | March 11, 2009
Is that Jesus who’s cropping up everywhere these days? It could be Jesus, of course, but it looks suspiciously like Che Guevara. I only hope that people aren’t mistaking the one for other. I leave it up to you to decide. Jesus/Che on a cod Jesus/Che on a t-shirt Read the full article on the [...]
BillHeise | March 11, 2009
