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…
Full version Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…Unemployment rates for recent college grads: Overall, 5.8%; Computer science, 6.1%; Comput…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programVoiceover artist Gayanne…
Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programVoiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…Why Even Try if…
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…
Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…Unemployment rates for recent college grads: Overall, 5.8%; Computer science, 6.1%; Comput…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programVoiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail…
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…
Carving out some time to enjoy this show as I prep to teach the Pittsburgh Cycle @SetonHill Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo…
“If you and your partner regularly use these phrases, it’s a sign that you’re already a mentally strong couple,” (psychotherapist Amy Morin) says. “And if you don’t yet, you can start implementing them and find that you’ll grow stronger both individually and as a unit.” —MSN “I’m going to tell you something that may be…
The technology will continue to improve so that that simulated gymnastics videos will look less and less bizarre, but people who can use AI to create flawless gymnastics videos aren’t actually learning gymnastics. No human being will become a better gymnast thanks to a better AI simulation of a gymnastics routine. More convincing AI-generated…
When I went off to college to be an English major, my father (who passed last December at 90) told me a story about how his respected professor at Northwestern University spent a whole lecture on the seven levels of symbolism in Melville’s Moby-Dick. Being of an analytical mind and precise mind, my father copied…
Two years after the release of ChatGPT, it may not be surprising that creative work is used without permission to power AI products. Yet the notion remains disturbing to many artists and professionals who feel that their craft and livelihoods are threatened by programs. Transparency is generally low: Tech companies tend not to advertise whose…
My older siblings say they remember our mother sitting them down to watch a new TV show called Sesame Street. A running gag was that Big Bird’s friend, the huge, gentle wooly-mammoth-like Snuffleupagus somehow always disappeared before anyone else on Sesame Street could see him, leading the adults on the show to believe “Snuffy” was…
I played hooky to go see Wild Robot this afternoon, so I went back to the office to mark more papers. Plenty more to go, but I put a good dent in things. The story and characters of Wild Robot were not as engaging as those of Wall-E, and the problem of “how do predators…
I first started teaching with this handout in 1999 and posted it on my blog in 2000. Like the Ship of Theseus, I’ve made gradual changes so it’s not really the same document, but just now I spotted hilariously out of date references to bringing along transparencies with you as a backup. Similar:How to be…
Back in 2003, shortly after I moved with my wife and two young children to take my current job, I was eager to make new friends and rebuild my social network. One evening, my wife agreed to watch the kids so I could drop by the local branch of a national service organization in which…
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programVoiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail…
Journalism is not a crime. It’s not a crime if it offends the powerful. It’s not a crime if it doesn’t offend them enough to suit you. Yes, journalists make mistakes. Yes, you should take a break from doomscrolling for your mental health. But the First Amendment freedom of the press is crucial to democracy.…
As part of an ongoing bid to get his hands on Vantablack, the super dark, light-absorbing material to which Anish Kapoor controversially has the exclusive license, artist Stuart Semple has legally changed his name to… Anish Kapoor. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Semple told me. “I like the idea of being able to try a name…
Predatory publications are not concerned with writing quality (or even coherence), and thus also do not care about writing tools (although we could, perhaps, include generative AI as a tool that replaces those used by human authors). The rules change pretty radically as the predatory version does away with nearly all of the rules in…
Our family has seen David Whalen in the persona of Sherlock in five or six different shows. So happy Carolyn will be on stage with him this time. Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex…York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto,…