Thexorretor

I do SAR in area with a popular rafting destination -- cold snow runoff water. It's reasonably common to see cardiac events (i.e. heart attacks) from people who fall into the river, usually in in older people. The rafting customers wear wet suits, but that always seemed skimpy to me. I wear a dry suit in these conditions. Is it reasonable and responsible for rafting companies to outfit their clients in wetsuits instead of dry suits?

I've struggled myself. I've gone from B- essays to getting published by the New York Times. Here's my thoughts.

• The best writing comes from having something that you obsess about and constantly think over. It should be like raising your hand in class and waiving it about because there's something you want to say. Admittedly it's difficult to get to this place if you are writing about civilization vs wilderness in Lord of the Flies.

• read/watch a lot of your favorite media. Pull it apart and understand why you like it. Think about the choices the author makes. You can even do this with successful reddit posts. Often the top rated stories are very tightly written.

Now onto the more black & white rules. Rules are meant to be broken, but you got to understand the rule first.

• No passive voice, just use active voice.

• No rhetorical questions.

• Never start with a dictionary definition.

• Basic sentence structures. subject-verb-object. Adverbs are bad. Create meaning with better verbs.

• Dialogue should just use "said" or nothing at all. No blurted, yelled, shouted, etc.

• Write like you speak. Don't ignore the unconscious lessons you've learned since you started to speak. No SAT words. Use the simplest word possible.

• Description is good, but make it add to the emotion you are trying to create.

• No broad statements, keep it specific. You are probably committing this sin if you use "society."

• edit, edit, edit. Rough drafts are often garbage with a nugget of goodness. Delete the garbage and expand on the nugget.

• Editing is not proofreading. First work on the overall structure, rework the structure, then work on improving sentences.

Colorado College has a similar student-run judicial process. In this case, they tend to see a lot of academic dishonesty issues. A curious and disturbing phenomena developed where the the student-judges cared more if you acknowledged that you “done wrong” and apologize to the court than the severity of your crime. This created a weird catch-22 where students who believed they were innocent and tried to defend themselves were hardly punished, but very guilty students who just apologized and got off with a slap on their wrists. The student-judges focused too much on “the authority of the court”, rather than determining innocence/guilt and determining appropriate punishments. I have a friend who was (in my opinion) found wrongly guilty of academic dishonesty and this had a severe consequences for her post-college life— all because she defended her innocence.

Do you seem similar dynamics in the Judicial Court at Sudbury, basically power corrupting?

p.s. The background of my friend’s story: She had written a paper several months previous, and she asked a student who was on the judicial board whether her citations were correct. The student acted helpful, but then turned her into the student judicial board. In no way was she copy-pasting stuff. My friend defended her innocence and even the professor wrote in defend her, but it didn’t work. Her “guilty verdict” stopped her from getting into post-graduate programs. It's been a whilte, so some of the details are fuzzy.

I stopped at jewelry stop on the side of the road outside of the Grand Canyon. The guy said that he had met alot of celebrities on the road on the way to the reservation. He said that there was a celeb retreat there and that it was illegal to take someone's picture without their permission on the reservation. Is this true? If so, did you have any encounters with celebrities?

A normal toilet can hold a single flush of water. So, if it gets clogged and you don't repeatedly flush, it won't overflow. Be brave in the moment and plunge into the rising tide.