Ibsen 2006

Ibsen.net is the official Internet site for Ibsen year 2006 and is by far the largest website about Henrik Ibsen on the world wide web, as regards both sheer volume of information and number of users. —Ibsen 2006 (Ibsen.net) A portal for world-wide activities recognizing the 100th year of Ibsen’s death. A theatre faculty member just…

Star Trek's a thesis

Among the dark corners where Dr Baker’s thesis – titled Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek – shines light is the changing link between the starship Enterprise’s intergalactic adventures and the real world’s space race. Shatner’s monologues were inspired by the visionary speeches of JFK, advocating greater exploration. Thirty years on, the roles…

Can Your Students Read TV?

Of course, students already know how to read the highly emotional and symbolic language of television. They learned it informally by clocking in an average of 5000 hours in front of the set before they reach school age — the same amount of time it takes to jet around the world 148 times, or orbit…

Dinky Pluto loses its status as planet

“It’s disappointing in a way, and confusing,” said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. “I don’t know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job,” she said from Las Cruces, N.M. “But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes…

Going Solo

The computer was how I wrote! My attachment was dangerous as it now threatened to derail my progress on numerous projects, not the least of which was a manuscript I hoped to finish editing by the end of August. Losing time seemed impossible. I had to push through and figure out a way to adapt,…

3.14159/Pi

Jenny Jenny, you should know better; This is not just another Greek letter. It’s a term that relates two important parameters; If you know the circumference, you can find the diameter. Jenny, you need this number; You should keep it in mind. Jenny, plug in this number: Three point one four one five nine. (Three…

Mindset List for the Class of 2009

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead. 2. They don’t remember when “cut and paste” involved scissors. —Mindset List for the Class of 2009 (Beloit College) Always worth a read.

Elmo Is an Evildoer

When I watched “Sesame Street” in the ’70s, the human cast and the Muppets were quirky adults who didn’t talk down to me with baby voices. Now the human cast gets almost no airtime, and the show is dominated by Elmo, Baby Bear and, now, Abby Cadabby — preschoolers enamored by their own adorable stupidity.…

Games get serious

A euphemism like “decision-based simulation” maybe, but rarely a “game.” To many, video and computer games represent an adolescent diversion, a parental annoyance that thwarts homework, chores, and all things productive. So when FAS and others stump for games as an educational or training tool, they begin by stating the problem: “You oversee a very…

Solar system expands as astronomers redefine planets

Those discovered before 1900 would be called simply “planets” while a new sub-category of “plutons” would be introduced as a compromise between those who want to banish Pluto from the planetary club and those who want its status maintained. The move would result in three new “pluton” planets being created along with Pluto: Pluto’s moon,…

Text Games Get Film Treatment

Once upon time, in a galaxy exactly like this one, hard-core gamers spent hours staring at screens of tiny text and laboriously typing commands to move characters to the next level. That era — approximately 1979 to 1985 — marked the golden age of interactive fiction, when games commonly consisted of text adventures tailored to…

Comments are Back

Comments are Back (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Let the commenting recommence! I had to disable all my comments due to an ongoing attack, which I’m able to manage now, thanks to some expert guidance and unbelievable patience from Will Gayther, my former UWEC student who built this inidie blog software. He designed it in such a way…