Since I first saw the ads on TV, I have wondered: “what is Meta?” The commercials show ordinary people putting on large glasses and working out in some sort of intense virtual reality. First and foremost, Meta is a company owned by Facebook which tries to bring the “metaverse” to…

And I’m not sorry I did. — I completed my PhD program in the spring of 2011 — a little over a decade ago. I assumed that I would find a position as an Assistant Professor at some point in the not-so-distant future. …

Why College Education Will Never Be the Same Again — According to current data from Insidehighered.com, if you were to ask a decent number of randomly-chosen professors on any college campus whether they believe that in-person learning is superior to online learning, over half of them would say “yes.” If you asked me that same question, I would answer: “I’m…

A confession to my readers — The thoughts that I will share with you, my dear reader, may shock and upset you. They may cause you to dislike me. But I am willing to accept that risk because I need to to confess. Writing allows me to exit my own thoughts for a while. Judge me…

I asked him to break my heart — It seems odd to me that life is, in many ways, so predictable; that certain actions are almost never positive. It is never a good idea to dwell for too long on unrequited love, for example. Why? Because it is better for us to live in the real world, to…

My brother’s oldie-but-goodie deserves a close reading — Storybookland Plastic castles six feet tall. The animatronic band playing music in the hall. Reality crept up oh so suddenly It was enough to startle me In the mirror house At the carnival. I took a photo from nowhere I tried to see from no perspective. I took two steps…

The angst is palpable in my brother’s latest single — Starved of everything you needed, The sacrificial lamb was in your bed. Those sounds I hear from your apartment, You can tune it out but you can’t replace your head. I did not forget the name I lost the number. But you wrote it out into the ledge. You thought…