Chimpanzees in Arnhem’s Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands had learned zookeepers’ rule that meals wouldn’t be served until all had assembled. But one day, as reported by Time magazine in 2007, two teenage chimps were more interested in staying out to play than coming in to eat. The others had to wait for hours,…
My classes are generally small enough that I have time to get to know each student’s writing. When a student who confuses “bias” and “biased” in a hand-written response later that day sends me an email later that day that uses “whom” and “betwixt,” I notice. I can’t prove a student is abusing AI, but…
My auditory processing disorder makes it hard for me to process speech when I can’t see the speaker’s lips. My wife is being treated for an ear infection. We are asking each other “What?” after somebody coughs, after we ask each other “What did you say?” and after we answer each other “Never mind.” In…
I recall being very moved by the 1980s Gregory Peck / Christopher Plummer made-for-TV movie “The Scarlet and the Black,” which dramatized this story. From the late summer of 1943, O’Flaherty worked with “The Organisation”, a massive partisan network, to save more than 6,000 Allied prisoners of war, anti-Fascists, and Jews from Nazi concentration and…
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art Similar:Ignorance Meets an Invisible DisabilityI’m sure my young, healthy-looking frien…CultureWe Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down.Shortly before I got married, my sister …CultureA familiar performer choreographed and dances the "Canaan Days" tango in Stage Right's Jos…AestheticsYou're not going to read thisI ask my students to contextualize links…BusinessIt not only went VROOM,…
I miss the convention in movies and TV shows in which the main characters visit a music hall or club, and we watch them watching an entire number. Maybe they exchange a few lines during a musical bridge, but mostly they’re just in character, sitting through a performance. I have only fragmentary memories of H.R.…
Rewatching ST:DS9 At dinner with the Siskos, Cadet Nog reluctantly reveals that the B-plot will involve his difficulty getting respect from Klingons. Because this is TV, General Martok shows up at that very moment with this week’s plot-starter: an intercepted message for “Michael” about a terrorist missile launch which threatens to trigger a devastating war.…
Essays like this remind me why I picked my English major. There are other ways to get facts. Newspapers are full of them, as are podcasts and documentaries. Travel shows proliferate, take your pick. But even then, there is nothing like the view of the world via a novel. Novels can go beyond merely being…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In the Defiant mess hall, Kira and Dax chat about Kira being single again, and don’t notice Odo’s reaction. Sisko reluctantly lets Dax talk him into a detour to study a random planet’s plot contrivance particle field, and of course things Go Wrong. Instead of staying on the ship to unflabbergast the Defiant’s…
AI has transformed my experience of education. I am a senior at a public high school in New York, and these tools are everywhere. I do not want to use them in the way I see other kids my age using them—I generally choose not to—but they are inescapable. During a lesson on the Narrative of…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Bashir scolds Martok for injuring himself (again) during a holosuite training program. (He’s being reckless and self-destructive, even for a Klingon.) On the Defiant, Nog stealthily pantomimes strangling Worf for ordering him to download an operating system “one file at a time.” (The intended comedy in this scene is a bit awkward; Nog’s…
Hey! Want me to take her for a bit? In a few hours we’ll be heading to the airport to send the girl to her MFA program at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art. Similar:Looking forward to this! @thepublicpghLooking forward to this! @thepublicpghDramaMcCain's 2008 Concession Speech: Republicans interrupt their candidate's concession speech…That…
Students say they appreciate AI’s ability to organize ideas and improve flow, but many also recognize that what comes out often feels “robotic,” emotionally flat, or uncanny in tone. Still, convenience almost always wins. Reflection is hard, and AI makes things easy. I don’t fault students for wanting help. Writing about your life, especially the…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Much pew is pewing inside the bar, which is closed due to a vole infestation. Quark is not in the mood for Rom cheerfully announcing his engagement to Leeta, but he does accept his suggestion to visit their mother on Ferenginar. Trying to be supportive of Rom’s interest in pleasing Leeta with a…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is excited to welcome Tekeny Ghemor, the sympathetic Cardassian who was tricked into believing a surgically-altered Kira was his daughter (s3e5 “Second Skin”). Now that Dukat and the Dominion have displaced the legitimate government on Cardassia, Kira has high hopes that Ghemor will inspire a resistance, but before the opening credits roll,…
From an article in the Houston Chronicle: It’s still unclear who started a widely shared rumor over the weekend that raised false hopes of desperate parents that two girls had been found alive clinging to a tree around Comfort or Center Point. I first saw the rumor spread on Facebook where a user mentioned it…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Playing tongo at the bar, Dax is annoyed that Quark is distracted by bad financial news. He’s put the bar up as collateral to three different debtors and he’s wiped out. At this very moment, because the opening credits are gonna roll soon, Quark’s cousin Gaila the weapons dealer shows up with a…
A cast of hundreds participated in a public medieval re-enactment dramatizing the Christian story from Creation through Final Judgement at the University of Toronto a few weeks ago. I attended as the event videographer. I had at least three cameras running at all times — sometimes five — while a roving camera also caught the…
No Democratic president should send in troops trained for lethal combat into a pro-life rally, a worship service, a gun show, or any other peaceful gathering expressing solidarity on an an issue that rubs Democrats the wrong way, at least not in a land where people have first amendment freedoms (no establishment or prohibition of…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Odo walks stiffly into the infirmary, where Bashir scolds him for not taking better care of his recently-acquired humanoid body. Quark presents a bottle with what he says is a dead changeling. Odo, entranced, says it’s alive. Bashir manages to mostly unflabbergast the creature’s cellular jimberjams, and there is certainly no plot significance…