The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)
I always enjoy my visits to the studio. This recording was a quick one!
The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)
As a grad student at the University of Toronto, I picked up a bit about Marshall McLuhan here, a bit of Harold Innis there… Blogging this so I keep this in mind the next time I teach a course like The History and Future of the Book. (There’s so much out there!) [S]ome media are…
The Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 11) A serial killer targets Kira’s former resistance colleagues
Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves), a pleasant-looking Bajoran monk welcomes guests to a “days of atonement” retreat, and is zapped by a beam of light. In the infirmary, the very pregnant Kira, griping comically that the herbs she’s been prescribed mean sedatives don’t work, learns that Latha, formerly a violent member…
Is AI making us less intelligent?
This morning, after students submitted a homework assignment (a 200-word evidence-based argument paragraph), I asked them to annotate a printout of the instructions (including a rubric), had them peer-review their own submission, and then had them write additional annotations on the assignment sheet, in which they stated what changes they now realized they needed to…
The press lobby is going feral—ignore it
Given that they need to write multiple stories a day, while also appearing on podcasts and 24-hour news channels, lobby journalists cannot plausibly understand policy detail or how financial markets work. It’s also not what they’re good at. Their skillset is to nose around and cause trouble. If you want a scandal covered or to…
January 6th … the board game?
About 20 of us are here in Brooklyn to play a large-scale war game — think Risk — but we’re also each assigned a character, which is a bit like Dungeons & Dragons. We’re told it’s Jan. 6, 2021. We’re given rows and rows of hand-painted mini-figures, a bowl of dice, and a measuring stick showing how far…
Rapture #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 10) Sisko’s “visions” complicate politics, faith and family
Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is moved by the interest Sisko shows in an artifact recently recovered from the Cardassians. After a classic “zoom in and enhance” scene where Sisko uses a reflection to unlock an archaeological mystery, a technobabble accident flabbergasts Sisko’s neural jimberjams, which Bashir says will likely give him heightened sensory experiences for a…
Selling Point (Audio Drama)
I had fun recording this in the studio — with live foley artists! Similar:The Begotten #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 12) Kira and Odo face surrogacyThe Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 11) A serial killer t…Rapture #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 10) Sisko's "visions" complicate politic…Hey there,…
Letter to the editor: Setting record straight on Seton Hill newspaper
Here’s my letter responding to an recent article about the future of the student newspaper I advised for over two decades. A pause. The Seton Hill University student paper is on what my English department colleagues described in a recent email as “indefinite hiatus.” At the time, we didn’t know for how long. I was…
Don’t Be a Sucker (antifascist film from 1945)
Full version Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)The Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5,…
Hey there, chaotic world in academia and beyond, could you settle down just a bit so I can mark these papers on August Wilson? Thanks!
Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityThe Begotten #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 12) Kira and Odo face surrogacyMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold…
I ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.
I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk on the cheap and selling individual books for $2 (about a 20-cent profit, per book, but I’m really rounding up so I don’t have to deal with change). Students will spend time in class annotating printouts and writing in their copybooks. They’ll still do online activities but…
I have for some reason reached another #duolingo milestone.
Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)Is AI making us less intelligent?
The Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pager
In the halls of power at Amazon, busy executives have no time for PowerPoints. At the start of a meeting, everyone gets a printed 6-page memo, and spends 20-25 minutes reading it silently and marking it up. After the discussion, the printouts (typically with detailed hand-written comments) are handed back to the person who called…
For some reason, I saw a bump in traffic to a page that linked to a “make-your-own-Trump-executive order” page
This sort of thing was funnier back in 2017. Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)The Begotten #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 12) Kira and Odo face surrogacyMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of…
How I Learned What I Learned (featuring Wali Jamal)
Carving out some time to enjoy this show as I prep to teach the Pittsburgh Cycle @SetonHill Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)The Begotten #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 12) Kira and Odo face surrogacyMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during…
It Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is Losing Money on $200 ChatGPT Pro Subscriptions
I’m also thinking of the cost to the students who have to repeat a course or fail out of a demanding program because they couldn’t AI their way to a passing grade. “People use it much more than we expected,” the cofounder wrote, later adding in response to another user that he “personally chose the price and…
It will be harder to leave Facebook than it was to leave Twitter
It was not that hard to leave Twitter. I removed the app from my phone and followed a lot of journalists and professionals on Bluesky. I still checked Twitter on my laptop, but not every day. Then one day when X asked me for my password to log back in, I decided not to bother.…
Today I didn’t save the world, but I did help a student while power-walking at the mall.
I’m far from perfect, and injustice and suffering and tragedy in the world won’t be much affected by the story I’m about to narrate, but as I was walking in the mall with my son, I dictated a 500-word email response to a student whose paper topic didn’t work out and who asked for my…
The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up a mountain
Rewatching ST:DS9 Space Dad fusses hoveringly as Jake packs to move in with Nog. Cadet Nog, who has been placed on DS9 for a sophomore internship, is all about duty and cleanliness and exercise, setting up comic tension with Jake, who wants to play computer games and have fun. Odo smugly collects Quark, who’s wanted…
Visiting the #scienceofpixar exhibit @kaminsciencecenter
Similar:The Begotten #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 12) Kira and Odo face surrogacyThe Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 11) A serial killer t…Rapture #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 10) Sisko's "visions" complicate politic…The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up…