My former student, Bobby Kuechenmeister, uses Ferris Bueller’s lesson on faking out his parents as an example to teach ethos, logos, and paths. https://youtu.be/RdTtZjHIGHc The last time I checked, most of my undergrads said they would probably recognize a Ferris Beuller reference, but in a class today of 9 only 3 raised their hands when…
Thoughtful analysis structured around one man’s personal journey away from QAnon. No single online platform is responsible for QAnon’s rapid rise. YouTube hosted the videos that many members credit with their “red pilling,” the favored term for a supposed enlightenment or exposure to conspiracy theories. Facebook allowed for easy conversation, meme sharing and organizing. Twitter, Justin’s…
Rewatching ST:TNG When Picard is up in the middle of the night amusing himself with his archaeology hobby, he’s annoyed to find that Stellar Cartography has taken communications, library systems, and the replicators offline. When he heads down there, the officer in charge is taking some sensor readings that are so delicate they can be…
Objective news reporting is an ideal. Wherever humans are involved, there will be bias. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with journalism that reports with a particular slant, but informed consumers of news who want to understand a complex issue aren’t served by one-sided media coverage that flatters and amplifies their world view. This chart sorts popular…
If you said hello to me recently and I didn’t seem interested in smalltalk, but just raised my eyebrows, made friendly sounds, and drifted on, I hope I didn’t seem indifferent. I really was glad to see so many familiar upper halves of faces at the Lamp Theatre last night, but it was also kind…
For decades, champions of the video game industry have touted gaming’s cultural impact as the equal of literature, film and music. Traditionally, the classic works from those mediums have been preserved for study by future generations, and amid gaming’s global rise in relevance, a group of video game scholars and advocates is pushing to preserve…
A conspiracy theory featuring a news story that NPR posted early on Jan 6 2021 and then updated after the pro-Trump demonstration turned into an anti-democracy riot was shared widely last year. My meme explaining the concepts of time-stamps and updating a breaking news story didn’t get shared nearly as much. People who already believe…
Similar:At the Stage Right Gala.PersonalDefiant (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 9) Riker visits DS9, and it's he who's …Rewatching ST:DS9 After an overworked…Empathy"I'm a geek. Deal with it." –my 11yo daughter. #geekgirlproblemsAmusingBeautifying the exterior of the fantasy cruiser from the bedtime stories I used to tell my…PersonalThe News from Ferguson – Live, on Twitter[I]t…
Some of my amazing colleagues have collaborated on an amazing NEH-funded summer institute that provides teachers in grades 6-12 with resources for teaching about genocide. The event, scheduled for summer 2022, includes units on the erasure of Native Americans, an empathy-building Narrative 4 storytelling workshop, and more. There’s a stipend for participating in this event,…
WINNIE THE POOH PUBLIC DOMAIN JANUARY FIRST — Jason Scott (@textfiles) December 24, 2021 Thank you to the 500,000 people who have visited this tweet. I'm delighted to see so much interest in the public domain. We take a one day break every year to celebrate the hundreds of thousands of works that become locked…
In December 2001, I was blogging about Changes in Online Culture The End of Free (chronicles services that used to be free but that now cost money) Is the [Technology] Revolution Over? Imagine Silicon Valley Buried Like Pompeii Wil Wheaton While the character of teen wonder Wesley Crusher was annoying because weak scripts had him…
What a headline. The poet John Berryman wrote of “Macbeth” that “no other Shakespearean tragedy is so desolate, and this desolation is conveyed to us through the fantastic imagination of its hero.” The universe of the play — a haunted, violent patch of ground called Scotland — is as dark and scary as any place in…
Identifying her as a “Florida woman,” as I interpret it, suggests that we’re dealing here with what Newfoundlanders would call a come-from-away and New Yorkers would call an out-of-towner. The tantalizing implication is that a local woman would have known that you could give a truck-stop camel an infection requiring antibiotics by biting its genitalia.
While the veterinarian was caring for the camel, was anyone attending to that Florida woman? She had, after all, been sat on by a six-hundred-pound camel, an experience that has to be at least uncomfortable and probably injurious. A reader has to wonder if she had some broken bones or some cracked ribs or at least a nasty taste in her mouth.
And we still have the deaf dog to deal with. –Calvin Trillin, New Yorker
Rewatching ST:TNG Silly Gagh-Western finds Worf trapped on the holodeck with gunslinging copies of Data. When the crew gets a few unexpected days of downtime. Picard practices his flute and Crusher casts a play. After running out of excuses, Worf finds himself wearing a sheriff’s badge and moseying into a holo-saloon, at the request of…
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I had a great time a couple years ago recording the part of the narrator in A Christmas Carol for WAOB Audio Theatre. (Four episodes, about 20m each. The son and daughter are also in the cast.) Similar:Why Fears of Fake News Are OverhypedFacebook seems to have made changes that…CultureResources for combating sexual harassment in…
Rewatching ST:TNG On its way to help an ecologically devastated planet, the Enterprise-D picks up a clever young intern, who reveals for us her secret power of making puppies appear from nowhere. Amanda (played with an impressive mixture of maturity and teenaged vulnerability by Olivia D’Abo) chats with Dr. Crusher about family, and we learn…
In November 2001, I was blogging about Florida recounts would have favored Bush (contentions election famous for a Florida ballot that many voters found confusing) Is this a burger which I see before me, / The soft bun in my hand? Come, et me clutch thee. / I eat thee not, and yet I want…
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I’ve often had dreams about returning to a former home and discovering a hidden room there. When I was a kid, the local TV station trimmed a couple minutes out of every rerun of Star Trek, so as an adult I would occasionally be surprised by a few minutes I had never seen before. …