Yahoo! | AFP: The Greek myth that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly newborns off a cliff was not corroborated by archaeological digs in the area, researchers said Monday. Like the myth about lemmings hurling themselves to their death, this new detail, found from a study of bones found iat the base of the…
The Walls are Closing In  It’s all my fault that now I hear their death – their screams of pain within their final breath. No, we are alive. And thanks to you, we’ll get out. A whole song about such a literal event? Songs in musicals, even if they are showpiece numbers attached closely…
The New York Musical Theater Festival has some tidbits about an upcoming showing of a musical based on The Last Starfighter. Too bad I’m not really within day-trip distance of New York… this one would tempt me. My nine-year-old son would probably enjoy it, but the trip would be hard on my five-year-old daughter. Oh…
A luminous group of anti-Stratfordians write: Not one play, not one poem, not one letter in Mr. Shakspere’s own hand has ever been found. He divided his time between London and Stratford, a situation conducive to correspondence. Early scholars naturally expected that at least some of his correspondence would have survived. Yet the only writings…
A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is “this approach is great for facts, but it wouldn’t work for ‘my subject.’” Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination. In my talks I now include “thought experiments” where I invite professors and teachers to suggest a subject or topic, and I attempt…
—Echochrome – the Escher Game (YouTube, Via Game Girl Advance) What a hypnotically simple interface! This is a PSP game. Since I’m not a platform gamer, I’ll have to admire this one from afar. Similar:Multimodal Composing, Sketchnotes, and Idea GenerationUsing the mixed media of sketch notes, a…AcademiaNarrating "A Christmas Carol" for WAOB Audio Theatre. (The four…
Schwartz is describing how the two main characters in the student film will sit on a couch, simultaneously reach for popcorn and inadvertently touch hands, when Kit Reiner of Silver Spring and Max Simon of Potomac — both 18 — cry out, “Just like in ‘Lady and the Tramp’!” And Schwartz could take it no…
RUR Cats (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My first (and probably only) contribution to the LOLCats meme. In the 1920s, the Czech play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the world to a word that quickly displaced older terms such as “automaton.” As author Karel Capek was working out the plot, he fretted that calling them “labori” would be…
Jorn Barger, a Joyce enthusiast whose many creative electronic endeavors include coining the term “weblog,” offers this animated map of Dublin, showing the progress of Leopold Bloom and other characters from the “Wandering Rocks” chapter of Ulysses. The chapter takes place on June 16, which has of late been celebrated as Bloomsday. Last week was…
With all the gratuitous use of Shakespeare language and imagery in the series (including its four spin-offs, a successful franchise of feature films and a short-lived animated series), is there an underlying reason to the use of the Bard’s works? Does the combination of classic literature and pop-culture sci-fi result in something greater than the…
This activity is set in a research group that is developing an antivenom for spider bites. In the opening scene, Nelson Pogline, a talented graduate student, dies unexpectedly at a university reception. As a detective, you must use chemistry concepts to determine if this was murder and if so, solve the case. You can interview…
When we refuse to “budge an inch,” excoriate “rotten apples,” or admonish slackers to “sink or swim,” we speak in his voice. Although the arts sections of newspapers teem with products from self-anointed “artists” who will not survive their publicity budgets, Shakespeare after roughly four centuries still pleases general audiences, challenges intellectuals, and provokes academics.…
It was six hours before opening night. Sarah Holdren, director of a Yale student production, had just entered the theater for a routine pre-performance errand when the man who runs the hall gave her an update: In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a Yale administrator decided that she didn’t want any weapons used…
“It’s almost always the first play I teach,” she said. “I do that because very often students have only encountered Shakespeare in high school and have a misunderstanding of him as safe, moral, and dull. This one really dislodges the idea that Shakespeare is full of eternal moral truths. It takes place in a different…
Performing a morality play – especially one penned in the Middle Ages – might not seem too appealing to an average college theater student. Dr. Terry Brino-Dean, associate professor of theater and director of the Seton Hill University theater program, has come up with a way to give “Everyman” — a medieval drama that deals…
The BBC televised a 38-minute adaptation in 1938 – probably the first ever example of science fiction television. —My Science Fiction Life: The Story of Science Fiction in Britain (BBC) The excerpt is from the entry on one of my favorite plays, Rossum’s Universal Robots. Similar:Oedipus Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) — Brief IntroductionMy first lecture screencasts for…
I was alone and fueling my own self-destructive spiral. Now, I did have one thing which granted me solace: my MUD. For those of you who don’t know, I have invested several years of my life into an online roleplaying community. Yeah, I’m a geek. I own 20 sided dice, too. Anyway, what offered me…
There are no lithe leaps, perfect pirouettes or pointed toes here. Most girls cannot walk or stand, much less make a shallow curtsy. Their crutches and walkers lie nearby and their customized ballet slippers are stretched over leg braces. —Corey KilGannon —Given a Chance to Be Little Ballerinas, and Smiling Right Down to Their Toes (NY…
I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t seem to connect at all with the average audience. Seriously, folks, what is the problem here? I’ve been doing this a whole lot longer than any of the clowns out on the circuit these days, so I think I know a thing or two about…
The lunch took place just a couple of days after the Democrats crushed the Republicans in the midterm elections, regaining the House and the Senate. Mr. Bérubé, to his credit, kept the gloating to a minimum. It’s worth noting that, even though they’ve been writing about each other for years, the two men had never…