by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. This year’s world series and all the attention paid to Shohei Ohtani reminded me of the way students used to get by when writing papers. They used CliffsNotes instead of doing research. Can AI be far behind? I had a bright student who wrote a paper on Plato’s “Crito” as explained by every student’s former cheat sheet, i.e., CliffsNotes. Conner discovered that CliffsNotes was woefully deficient. In its analysis of that Platonic dialogue, it never addressed history’s…

Grades: All Rhinestones Now “Personally, I liked working for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there. I’ve worked in the private sector — they expect results.” — Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) in the 1984 movie “Ghostbusters.” A UNIVERSITY, as any institution, is justified by its product and function, that is, the service it provides society. You might…

by Mark Franke One hears the word democracy so often these days — and in so many contexts  — that it has lost its meaning. There is the tiresome charge that anything Donald Trump does is a threat to democracy on one hand and on the other hand a rather pedantic academic argument that we are not and never were a democracy, being a republic instead. One is tempted to just tune it all out if…

by Nathanael Snow, Ph.D. People respond to incentives. Governor Mike Braun has called a special session of Indiana’s legislature for the purpose of redrawing Congressional District lines. Indiana voters ask Braun why he cares so much. What’s in it for him? And then let the legislators ask the same question. A legislature is supposed to be the arena of political compromise. A state representative from the Indianapolis region may desire to see an increase in infrastructure…

The Municipally Privileged “All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt HAS YOUR CITY worked out its new budget with the cuts and adjustments made necessary by property-tax reform? Mine has done so, and in a long, torturous process inscrutable to the common man. But we do know one thing for certain: No city employee was inconvenienced. We know that…

DST: It’s that #$%&! Time Again (Oct. 29) — Most of Indiana will be setting clocks back one hour this Sunday as the state leaves Daylight Saving Time, an insane contraption of the legislative mind and a chrono-biological insult to the citizenry. When Indiana approved Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 2005 it opted for Eastern instead of Central time at the urging of the newly elected Gov. Mitch Daniels and the state Chamber of Commerce, which said it…

Editor’s note:  Opposition to data centers was voiced at this year’s state conference of the NAACP in Fort Wayne. The director of its Center for Environmental and Climate Justice has stated that black and brown communities bear the cost of the new technology.  By Shashank Chandrakumara One midwest rust-belt state thinks it can put old energy to work attracting new technology. For decades, coal has served as the backbone of Indiana’s energy system. In 2023, the state ranked as…

The Role of Citizenship by Mark Franke What is a citizen? What defines citizenship? Is it a set of rights and privileges? Or is it a set of duties and obligations? Or perhaps some of both? More philosophically, is citizenship something bestowed by the government or does it inhere naturally within those who reside under the jurisdiction of a democratic government? The on-going contretemps over birthright citizenship as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. I grew up reading sports writers like Grantland Rice, Art Dailey and Red Smith.  Their writing caught the nuances of whatever sport they covered and, if anything, they understated the achievements of the competitors and the teams.  The writing hewed closer to reporting.  That meant that theirs readers had to form their own judgments about an event.   Further, the writing was crisp and clear.  They knew how to write!  A friend who…

by Mark Franke One important rule of writing, one I too often break, is to choose words carefully with the intended audience in mind. For example, don’t use a lot of technical jargon if you are not writing for a technical audience. The same goes for using college-level words if your readers do not hold college degrees. A good friend, a self-appointed critic of my op-ed columns, lets me know if I use too many…