Rewatching ST:TNG The Enterprise is en route to Earth so that Picard can give the commencement address at Starfleet Academy, when word arrives that Cadet Crusher has survived an accident that killed another student. When we last saw Wesley (s5e6 “The Game“), he was cheerful and well-adjusted; however, Picard and Dr. Crusher are surprised he…
After returning to Earth in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin private spacecraft, Shatner is delivering an extemporaneous monologue about viewing Mother Earth and reflecting on death. “I hope I never recover from this,” he says, of the emotions he experienced. Much better than Kirk’s death scene in Star Trek: Generations. Someone (I was listening, not watching……
“If you’ve got a gunshot wound or stab wound, or you’re having a heart attack, you want to see me in the emergency department,” Coffman says. “But as soon as we start talking about a vaccine, all of a sudden I’ve lost all credibility.”
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most frequently banned books in America. I regularly teach it in my American Lit class. I never use “the n-word” in lectures, and I remind my (mostly white) students of the power of the word, but the version of the text I assign doesn’t edit that word…
My family tells me I’m starting to speak louder than I need to around the house. On my campus, all students are required to be vaccinated or masked. I can hear my students much better now that most students aren’t masked, rather than last term, when everyone was masked and practicing social distance. Today I…
Rewatching ST:TNG When a Space Thing threatens a genetically perfect colony, the wary inhabitants resist Picard’s offer to evacuate. Humans on Moab IV have for two centuries enjoyed a carefully designed society. The charismatic leader Conor speaks glowingly of fulfilling the role he was genetically engineered to hold, while the rigid traditionalist Martin undiplomatically scoffs…
Rewatching ST:TNG A small group of aliens (with bumps on the *sides* of their heads) demonstrate their ability to collect memories telepathically. The leader, Tarmin, helps Keiko recover a pleasant memory of her grandmother. After Tarmin offers to help Beverly remember more about her first kiss that she’s currently thinking about, his son Jev scolds…
I hadn’t seen her in person since we were both teenagers, over 30 years ago, but about 15 years ago we re-connected on social media and kept up our friendship, talking about what we were reading, who we were parenting, and who we were becoming. In my dream I knew she was dead and that…
Rewatching ST:TNG The Enterprise-D encounters the missing research vessel Vico, which was severely damaged while exploring a Space Thing. Various plot contrivances prevents all our favorite treknology from working the way they usually do, because life form sensors would take away the surprise of finding a young survivor; transporters would take away Data’s need to…
Rewatching ST:TNG As LaForge nerds out over the Space Thing of the Week (a test of a new faster-than-light propulsion method), Worf receives word his mother and young son are coming on board for a visit from Earth. The big reveal is that tiny little angry Alexander thinks he’s not going back. Worf’s mother says…
Here’s a great NYT “interactive” story that points out, if there’s an outbreak of the virus in a community where most of the people are vaccinated, most of the people who catch the disease will be vaccinated, simply because most of the people have been vaccinated. (I remind my students that if there are more…
Between difficult breaths of supplemental oxygen, Travis Campbell is fighting to relay a message about his battle with Covid-19 in a Virginia hospital. He really regrets not getting vaccinated. And while he hopes he’s turned a corner, for a very scary stretch, he thought he needed to make arrangements to die. —CNN
@ItsEmilyKaty supplies another excellent thread. It is often said that autistic people lack empathy. Some autistic people are told that they can't be autistic because they are too empathetic. Let's explore what this means and why. – a thread. /1 — Emily♡ (@ItsEmilyKaty) August 2, 2021
A valuable thread that explains many of the differences that make autistic people seem “rude” to neurotypicals (who are more comfortable with unspoken rules, fuzzy categories & eye contact, and who get annoyed by unfiltered honesty, stimming & requests for clarification). Am I being rude or is my autism not being understood and accommodated for?…
It is 50 years since I first collected those caterpillars in the school playground, and every year that has passed there have been slightly fewer butterflies, fewer bumblebees – fewer of almost all the myriad little beasts that make the world go round. These fascinating and beautiful creatures are disappearing, ant by ant, bee by…
Remember that meme that shows two cops smirking while the text describes a (not-pictured) man having a mental breakdown? The idea is that a man having a difficult public mental health episode requires the attention of law enforcement officers (who are trained to use violence). Here’s what really happened when NYC tested out deploying trained…
Negative comments engage avoidance motivation. When you’re motivated to avoid something bad, then an important strategy is to be vigilant for more bad things in the environment to make sure that you’re aware of problems as soon as they happen. This may have been an adaptive strategy when there were people or animals out there…