Support the arts in your community! I’m here for the daughter and the rest of the cast. @jerz.carolyn @frontporchtheatricals
Support the arts in your community! I’m here for the daughter and the rest of the cast. @jerz.carolyn @frontporchtheatricals
Moon for the Misbehotten
Even though I wrote about some of Eugene O’Neil’s earlier plays in my dissertation, I had never seen or even read this play before. I knew the basic subject matter but didn’t know the details. All the actors did a great job and the production values were top notch, as I expect from Quantum.
Cry from a Far Planet by Tom Godwin (WAOB Audio Theatre; read by Dennis Jerz)
How can you tell if a space alien is a friend or an enemy? One spaceman has that decision to make in Tom Godwin’s “Cry from a Far Planet.” Listen to Dennis Jerz read the science fiction classic to discover the answer.
Charles Schulz’s Letter About Democracy, Discovered 50 Years Later | KQED
Joel Lipton, 10 years old at the time, wrote to Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. Fast-forward to this past February, when Lipton and his wife were cleaning out their closet. […] “Dear Joel,” the letter reads. “I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen then it has ever been…
That Much-Despised Apple Ad Could Be More Disturbing Than It Looks
Apple has apologized, but like writer Peter C. Baker, I’m not quite ready to let go of that really horrifying ad depicting a roomful of beautifully displayed musical instruments, sound gear, art supplies, and even toys being slowly squashed by a huge hydraulic press (ostensibly to highlight the creative potential of the latest iPad). Picture…
A crushing backlash to Apple’s new iPad ad
Have you seen Apple’s “Crush” ad? It features a huge huge hydraulic press crushing musical instruments, art supplies, google-eyed toys, and other beloved artifacts of imagination and creativity. I remember seeing a video years ago that showed how a smartphone replaced a desktop full of tools like a calculator, notepad, rolodex, and so forth. But…
A.I. ‘Completes’ Keith Haring’s Intentionally Unfinished Painting
After learning of his AIDS diagnosis, artist Keith Haring created the work, “Unfinished Painting” (1989), which is mostly a blank canvas, with streaks that evoke his own interrupted, incomplete life. Someone who thought it was “so sad” that the painting was unfinished used AI to “complete what he couldn’t finish.” Needless to say, the bot…
Dr. David von Schlichten honors the spectrum of motivations (not always financial) featured during Seton Hill‘s “Celebration of Scholarship.”
Dr. David von Schlichten honors the spectrum of motivations (not always financial) featured during Seton Hill‘s “Celebration of Scholarship.”
This is what the techbros are excited about? Really?
Some 2300 years ago in ancient Greece, Plato wrote a dialogue featuring his mentor Socrates, who argued that the ability to churn out the longest written compositions on trivial topics or the shortest compositions on important topics is a shallow skill that has nothing to do with human understanding, much like demonstrating that you can…
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
I’ve felt a bit like this guy the last few times I’ve been to in-person academic conferences. I certainly enjoy the panels and the keynotes and seeing the poster presentations, but in between sessions I just drift around and think about what I would be doing right now if I were at home, and missing…
The Assignment #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 5) Keiko is not herself after a trip to Bajor’s haunted Fire Caves; Rom hopes to impress O’Brien
Rewatching ST:DS9 On a bustling morning in Quark’s, Rom sours his brother’s good mood by ordering human cuisine — O’Brien’s favorite breakfast. Bashir commiserates after he accidentally killed the plants Keiko entrusted to O’Brien. Little Molly tells her daddy, “You’re in trouble.” Keiko seems strangely unmoved by the news. “They’re just plants.” When Keiko tells…
My colleague @crissycp offers warm soda bread and tea every year, as part of her authentic and much appreciated efforts to create and celebrate our togetherness in this world. (And she’s right… nobody needs to be drinking green beer this weekend.)
What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living
This is not only powerful material for thought, it’s also compelling storytelling. At the time, only a handful of published medical studies had documented deathbed visions, and they largely relied on secondhand reports from doctors and other caregivers rather than accounts from patients themselves. On a flight home from a conference, Kerr outlined a study…
Simulated iceberg, preserved artifacts and re-creations at the Titanic installation.
No focus, no fights, and a bad back – 16 ways technology has ruined my life
Insightful, funny list. (This guy is a good writer.) Let’s be fair: technology has improved my life in ways that still surprise and delight me on a daily basis. My phone is also a torch! My TV remembers how far I got in last night’s episode, even if I don’t! The bus stop knows when…
Nor the Battle to the Strong #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 4) Jake Sisko, cub reporter, tests his belief in courage under fire
Rewatching ST:DS9 On an assignment to write a profile on Bashir, budding writer Jake tags along to a medical conference, and nothing really surprising happens. Their casual, character-based banter is not interrupted by a distress call from a colony in desperate need of medical assistance, and no side-quest, custom-tailored to appeal to the people who…
Persuasion: Logos, Pathos, Ethos and Kairos
Persuasion: Logos, Pathos, Ethos and Kairos
Interesting. How to manage the gap between what we need to say, and what the other person needs to hear.
Interesting. I don’t particularly care for the title of this YouTube clip, which seems very self-centered and not at all in tune with the message the speaker (Connor Neill) gives. He focuses on that moment when we realize there’s a difference between what we feel we need to say, and what we know the other…
How the printing press changed “you”: when reading changed, so did writing
This was before the printing press, so books were copied by hand on parchment, which made them expensive and rare. Most people didn’t read much, especially for pleasure. Instead, they listened to books at group readings for entertainment. Pero López de Ayala wrote at the end of the 14th century, “It also pleased me to…
I was ‘raped’ in VR – the effects can ‘mirror’ real sex assaults
This is offensive, deeply troubling, and, sadly, totally predictable. Julian Dibbell documented similar behavior 30 years ago in his article about sexual assault in the text-only virtual world LambaMOO. (Content warning… sexual assault in a multi-user virtual environment.) A woman has revealed she was ‘virtually gang raped’ by four male avatars in Meta‘s Horizon Worlds –…