Frakking & Fracking: Best Homophones Ever!

Growing up in a house with four brothers and then teaching at an all-boys high school, the crass culture of cussing has been with me all my life, but now that I am a teacher I have to watch my language. Enter Battlestar Galactica to save the day. By substituting frakking, frakked, or frak in place of that other very familiar four-letter word beginning with the letter f, I have been able to avoid blurting out a word that might jeopardize my job security or taint my character.

In Honor of the Devil...

My Speech students have started working on their Devil’s advocate speeches. For those trivia diehards out there, the popular expression comes from the Advocatus Diaboli, a canon lawyer whose purpose was to seek out evidence and make a case against the canonization of any candidate for elevation. Pope Sixtus V established the office in 1587 and Pope John Paul II abolished it in 1983, paving the way for a dramatic increase in the number of canonizations. At any rate, my students will not be attempting to demonstrate the sanctity or lack thereof of any individual; instead, they will have to articulate a position on a divisive political issue from a vantage point with which they would normally disagree.

LD Debate: Go for the Jugular for God's Sake!

I thought it was about time for an update on the Lincoln-Douglas debates in my Speech classes. The intra-class tournaments are nearly concluded, and I am beginning to make preparations for the inter-class round between my two classes as well as the final championship round pitting my best team versus Mr. Green’s best team. The boys have done reasonably well in presenting cogent arguments affirming and negating the resolution. In case you weren’t here for the first post on this topic, the resolution is as follows—Resolved: In matters of collecting military intelligence, the ends justify the means.

On Lincoln-Douglas Debate

We just began our unit on Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate in Speech class, and I must confess that this is my favorite subject for this course. LD debate is the apex, the acme, the apogee of rhetoric. It demands a full battery of intellectual abilities and rhetorical skills to achieve success. This exercise is the tried and true means of introducing students to dialectical thinking and, God willing, dialectical living.

Three Student Commercials: Focus, iPad, PS3

My students presented their commercial projects today in class. Here are three of the better ones.

Jesse Brackeen and Vincent Campagna's Ford Focus Commercial:


Thomas Peltier, Jaren Murphy, and Nicholas Lyos's iPad Commercial:


TJ Martin and Julio Alleman's PS3 Commercial:

Great Commercial

My wife absolutely loves this De Beers commercial. She actually looks forward to its reappearance each Christmas. Unfortunately for De Beers, that hasn’t translated into a purchase of their diamonds just yet, but that probably has more to do with… well, anyway, umm, yeah.



What my wife likes most about the commercial is Cat Power’s singing, the tender intimacy of the couple, and especially the husband’s knowing smile at the end of the commercial, that gets her every time. The commercial does a great job of creating a memorable ambience around diamonds. Its timing around Christmas and its targeting of middle-class husbands with sufficient disposable income to buy the product are sure to spur sales, too. Well done, De Beers! Whatever you may think about diamonds, they sure created a winning commercial.

Rhetorical Appeals in Commercials

We have all seen so many commercials that they seem as countless as the stars. But why do some stand out while others are lost in the oblivion of time and memory? This is the question that I posed to my students in Speech class yesterday as we embark upon our new syllabus covering the business applications of rhetoric.