Category: Blah Blah Posting Post
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PDF Version of El Portal Spring 2015 Available!
The spring 2015 issue of El Portal is now available as a PDF!
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Call for Submissions (El Portal, Fall 2015)
El Portal is currently seeking submissions for its Fall 2015 issue. If you have any questions about submitting to El Portal, please feel free to drop us a line at el.portal@enmu.edu. For submission guidelines and official rules, please visit our official Guidelines and Terms of Submission pages for more information. Also, be sure to check…
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Thinking West: UFOs
According to a recent tweet posted by the CIA, the UFOs seen in the Southwest, among other places, were piloted by human beings and not extraterrestrials (a.k.a. little green men). What was the CIA up to? Apparently UFO sitings were really sitings of U-2 spy planes. Check out the CIA’s official history on the U-2…
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Breakdown of the Writing Process (via Writer’s Circle)
Be sure to check out the Writer’s Circle on Facebook.
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Thinking West: Alexander Bain and the Great (Western) Migration of the 1840s
Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor and clockmaker, invented the precursor to the modern facsimile (fax) machine. The fax machine, as it is now known, developed from Morse’s telegraph technology and clock machinery available to Bain. Bain’s ingenious machine received a patent in 1843. Today, the fax machine is a symbol of modern business and ultra…
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Thinking West: The Pineapple Express (Weather)
In December 2014, many Americans watched news coverage of torrential downpours in California. The torrential downpours, still occurring when this post was written, came at a time when California had been in the midst of the worst drought in its history. (Ironically NOAA claimed that California’s drought was not man-made but naturally caused…
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Thinking West: Oregon Founded as Racist Utopia (Gizmodo)
Gizmodo recently featured an interesting article concerning Oregon’s racist past. According to Matt Novak (and historical fact), Oregon was founded as a whites only, racist utopia. Check out the excerpt below: When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from…
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Thinking West: The West in Pictures
Check out the National Archives’ collection of pictures from the American West.
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When Superintelligent AI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It? (Gizmodo)
Zoltan Istvan (Gizmodo) examines how the world’s religions might handle the creation of superintelligent artificial intelligences. It appears that, much like American corporations in a recent Supreme Court case, superintelligent AIs may find God, too, with a little help, of course…. Like it or not, we are nearing the age of humans creating autonomous, self-aware…
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Never Mind E-Books: Why Print Books Are Here to Stay (WSJ)
Print books are here to stay. E-books haven’t surpassed print book sales. Instead, it seems that E-books are fading fast as print book sales see increased demand…. Ever since Amazon introduced its popular Kindle e-reader five years ago, pundits have assumed that the future of book publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the…
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Thinking West: Hunting West
In the mythic West, game the size of dinosaurs and mastodons roams the sun-parched land. This makes it incredibly difficult for those (new) western settlers from Eastern shores to obtain fresh meat. Thus, new settlers have needed to adapt their hunting techniques by seeking weapons only meant for the likes of Goliath.
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What’s Wrong with Only Reading Half a Book? (Electric Literature)
Last month, the e-reading company Kobo revealed which books its users read to completion. Much was made of the fact that Donna Tartt’s prize-winning bestseller The Goldfinch was only finished by 44% of Kobo readers, and that, in general, the bestseller list didn’t match up at all with the most completed list. It also spurned…
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Portugal
According to the CIA World Factbook, Portugal is slightly smaller in size than Indiana. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized drug possession, which precipitated in fewer drug crimes and even fewer drug abuse cases amongst Portugal’s youth. Portugal was one of the world’s leading maritime powers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the early years of…
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