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Casey Anthony and Nadya Suleman: A Tale of Two Moms

A Tale of Two Bizarre Moms On the West Coast we have Nadya Suleiman, the 33-year-old single mom who, in addition to already having six children, recently gave birth to octuplets at the Kaiser Permamente Hospital in Bellflower, Calfornia,. Meanwhile, in an Orlando jail cell another ...

Writing 101: A Few Pointers on Movie Review Writing

Although I've written literally over a thousand reviews about many different products, it's a fair bet to say that my favorite subject to write about is movies, both theatrical and made-for-TV ones. It all started when I was struggling to find out which "beat" or section of my high school student ...

Nadya Suleiman and the Octuplets: Six Wasn’t Enough?

"All I ever wanted was children." - Nadya Suleiman. What was she thinking? It's been a bit over 10 days since the world woke up to the news that a woman in California had given birth to the second of only two successful deliveries of eight babies, but after ...

Writing 101: Positive Reviews - A Few Tips

All right. Recently we covered how to write about products or services we don't like; let's discuss the equally important topic of reviewing things we do like. Though this might sound strange, it's sometimes harder to write a good review about, say, a favorite movie or book objectively. Two things can ...

Writing 101: Negative Reviews - A Few Tips from an Online Reviewer

One of the first questions most reviewers ask when they either join a school newspaper staff or an online review site is "Do we have to only write positive reviews about (books, movies, or whatever), or can we write negative ones as well?" The answer, of course, is no, of course ...

DUI driver, Gabriel Delrisco, kills three kids in fatal crash, had 26 traffic infractions on his record

Gabriel Delrisco is a menace to society. One week ago, a south Miami-Dade County family was destroyed because Delrisco, who has had 26 traffic violations over the past eight years, rammed his SUV into their Ford Windstar minivan at a stoplight on South Dixie Highway and SW 211th Street. In less than ...

Rush Limbaugh’s World View is Harmful to America

“I hope he fails.” – Rush Limbaugh, January 16, 2009 One of the most important lessons that I learned as a journalism student back in the 1980s is one that I have always tried to live by, “Never say or write anything incendiary just to get the audience’s attention.” It might seem ...

Writing 101: The Benefits of Broadening Your Writing Horizons

Back in the 1980s, when I was starting out as a journalism student at Miami-Dade Community College (now Miami Dade College), I learned a valuable lesson about the benefits of avoiding overspecialization. While it's true that focusing on one particular interest gives a writer a certain depth of knowledge, ‘tis folly ...

Sex, Looks and the Modern Female Singer: Music in the Age of Britney

In the 1930s and ‘40s, one of America's most popular singers was a young woman from Greenville, Virginia named Kate Smith, who not only popularized Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" - considered by many to be the nation's second national ...

Old PC Games DO Die, or Why CD-ROM Disks Make Attractive Coasters

I'm not, by definition, a gamer, i.e., someone who buys a computer with all the bells and whistles that make it optimal for playing the latest computer games and then spends a king's ransom on every possible game at the local GameStop or Electronic Boutique. Once upon a time, though, I was ...