Russell Frank
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Frank: It’s Bye-Bye Bezos for This Consumer
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We’re done, Jeff. For a while, I found you irresistible. Anything I wanted, you’d bring it to my door, sometimes within 24 hours. I needed to send a gift, you’d do it for me: no trip to the mall, no wrapping or packing, no waiting in line at the post office. I wanted to read…
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Frank: And the Award Goes to…Me!
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María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader and last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, presented her prize to President Trump on Thursday during a meeting in the White House. – New York Times Back when I was a no-field, no-hit second baseman for Milk Maid Ice Cream (team motto: “Win or Lose, Our Sponsor Really Should…
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Frank: Greetings From Hellscapes of Immigrants and Couch Monsters
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I’m sitting in a coffeeshop in Portland, Oregon, on the first workday of the new year. My granddaughters have gone back to school, my daughter has gone back to work in her home office and my son-in-law is, like me, prepping for a new semester. Earlier, Nick and I hunkered down at the dining room…
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Ode to the Hungry Eye
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I woke up at 2:30 one morning last week feeling like I was being stabbed in the eye. I wasn’t, of course, so my next thought was that some particle was in my eye, something big and jagged. I pictured a morsel of granola. Here is where I was grateful to live with someone who…
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Frank: The Real Reasons Behind This Season’s Football and Structural Failures
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I know that an informed citizenry counts on us newshounds to get to the bottom of things, so to the bottom of things I herewith get. Many of you remain dismayed that a football season that began with such promise – experienced quarterback, two-headed running back, No. 2 ranking in the polls – has ended…
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Gratitude With a Touch of Attitude
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Last Monday, I chanced upon an e-bike lying on its side on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. Odd, I thought. I looked around, saw no one, continued on my way. The bike was still there that afternoon and the next morning and all the rest of the week. Stolen, then ditched?…
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Subu Vedam’s Status: Still in Custody, But No Longer a Lifer
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The news that Subu Vedam was grabbed by immigration authorities on the very day he was to be released from prison came as a shock to many of us who had supported his decades-long quest to clear his name. We had imagined him walking away from the brick walls and razor wire fences of the…
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We Had to Destroy the Universities to Save Them
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“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Reagan Skim most any document wordsmithed by President Trump’s courtiers and it can almost sound reasonable. Take the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a letter sent to nine universities that sets conditions…
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A Black Panther, a Softball Injury, Artificial Intelligence and Me
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Was it only last year that we profs were policing artificial intelligence as a newfangled form of plagiarism and buying blue books like it was 1975? Now we’re Tokyo train pushers, shoving our classes onto the AI Express lest it leave the station without them. The technology, we’re told, is improving by leaps and bounds,…
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A State College Tradition: 50 Years of Indian Epics
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As members of State College’s robust Indian community well know, yajna is a Hindi word which, according to one definition, can refer to “any selfless action performed with integrity, such as offering food, paying respects, or contributing to others’ well-being.” I heard the word for the first time at the home of Manisha and Nilesh…