Samaritan Snare (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 17)

(Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break.) Picard, who resolved last week’s plot by proving he was not too closed-minded and stubbornly prideful to admit he needs help from Q, sets this week’s plot in motion by demonstrating he is too closed-minded and stubbornly prideful to admit he needs help from his…

The Rivals at Seton Hill University

Similar:Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Minecraft Stylehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…AestheticsMy undergraduate connects the Leontes/Polixenes conflict in The Winter's Tale to a pro wre…Today’s class on The Winter’s Tale was v…DramaDarkest Hour (2017)I’m not a huge fan of war movies, but my…CultureWhy are we so bored?On average we spend six to seven hours i…CultureThe intelligence coup of the century: For decades,…

Refreshing my memory of working with reel-to-reel tape as a radio news intern (c. 1989).

Similar:I’m really enjoying the embossed labels. #Blender3D (Making props for my fantasy #steampun…AestheticsNow you can fact-check Trump’s tweets — in the tweets themselvesThe Washington Post, which was one of ab…Current_EventsDigital Storytelling: an Efficient and Engaging Learning ActivityA digital story is essentially any combi…CybercultureA news site used AI to write articles. It was a journalistic disaster.…

Q Who? (ST: TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 16)

Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. The unpredictable entity Q introduces the Enterprise to the Borg, a collective of hybrid biological and technological drones. We learn that Q and Guinan have some unspecified backstory that, based on their hand gestures, seems to involve a community theater production of Cats. In this…

Seton Hill University advertises for “Social & Digital Content Manager”

The Social & Digital Content Manager provides strategic support to marketing and admissions for the creation and maintenance of undergraduate content on the university’s website, social media, and email recruitment efforts to support enrollment. This position works in a collaborative/supportive relationship with admissions and faculty for all undergrad recruitment-related initiatives to ensure a cohesive and…

Brother Stuck in the Bathroom

The girl posted this story on Instagram while I was at work. Similar:Infinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface IndignityAmusingSet design for a virtual production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Post-apocalypti… AestheticsVibing to a park saxophonist as I code for an upcoming conference presentation, and wait t…Vibing to a park saxophonist as I…

“You work for the @CollegeBoard?” the bright-eyed teen behind the fast food counter asks. I tell her I sometimes mark #APEnglish tests. “I’m taking three AP classes now!” she says. “After I go to college, I want to be the #POTUS!”

“Unsweetened tea. And can you use this cup?” “You work for the College Board?” the bright-eyed teen behind the fast food counter asks, spying my branded mug. I tell her I sometimes mark #APEnglish tests. “I’m taking three AP classes now!” she says. “After I go to college, I want to be the president!” I…

Valentines for Journalists

Mark S. Luckie, Medium Similar:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reducing print edition to 2 days a week; cites plan to go all digi… The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is scaling …BusinessWhat happens if you hide everything on Facebook? I tried it for a day.Spoiler: not much really happened. Telli…AmusingAre we spreading fake news about fake news?In a new research paper…

Those Were the Days: On ‘Nostalgia’ When missing home was a disease

Although we now associate nostalgia with fond memory, the word was coined to refer to an unwanted medical condition. The –algia in nostalgia means “pain”; a product of New Latin, it can be found in more clinical-sounding words such as glossalgia (pain in the tongue), cranialgia (a fancy word for headache), and proctalgia (a literal pain in the behind). Johannes Hofer (1669–1752) was a Swiss…

Computers and Writing 2020 Funding Request: Submitted

My contributions this year are a workshop on #Inform7 and “Fixed It For You: Modding Memes, Maps and Minds”. Similar:Advising incoming majors.AcademiaPortraits of my 11yo: Pretty, Goofy, and Pretty GoofyAmusingEthics (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 16) Leaky cargo barrel-1, Worf-0.Rewatching ST:TNG Worf is paralyzed i…CultureKTVU Buries News of Asiana Airlines Lawsuit over Fake Pilot…

Pop song lyrics use more negative words (“hate”, “sorrow”) than 50 years ago

The use of words related to negative emotions has increased by more than one third…. If we assume an average of 300 words per song, every year there are 30,000 words in the lyrics of the [Billboard] top-100 hits. In 1965, around 450 of these words were associated with negative emotions, whereas in 2015 their number was above 700. Meanwhile, words associated with positive emotions decreased in the same time period.

These Fake Local News Sites Have Confused People For Years. (Buzzfeed) Found Out Who Created Them.

People who caught the sites plagiarizing began speculating about the motivations of whoever was running them. One person noticed that their Google Alerts for Julian Assange were flooded with results from the sites, leading them to warn that “cyber marketing tools are being used in the propaganda war against #WikiLeaks.” One researcher labeled the network of sites…

My students seem increasingly confused by the difference between journal title vs. article title

Sometimes students will submit bibliography entries that repeat a title — either the journal or the article.  I assume they are using an online citation generator and I assume they’re not bothering to check its output. What I had previously thought of as a random careless error now seems evidence of a paradigm shift. I’ve…