Coming of Age (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 18)
Rewatching ST:TNG A character-heavy episode, full of familiar tropes that add up to little. Starfleet seems much darker than we’ve ever seen it before, in two parallel storylines that intersect only thematically. Wesley, who we know full well isn’t leaving the show, applies to Starfleet Academy, and a grumpy admiral friend of Picard brings aboard…
PAC-MAN: The Untold Story of How We Really Played the Game
A fascinating study of the thinginess of a video game. Put in your quarter, hit the one-player button and grab the joystick. All you have to do is move Pac-Man through a series of tight cornered mazes, trying to eat all the dots and fruit on screen while also trying to out-maneuver a group of ghosts…
Controversial Content in YA Literature: A College Professor and Homeschooling Parent Answers an Aspiring Teen Writer’s Questions
I received this comment on my blog: [F]or my Senior Project I am writing a young adult short novel. I found the article on your blog, “Short Story Tips: 10 Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing,” very helpful. However, I was wondering if you had any opinions on the boundaries of what is appropriate content…
What Can Science Tell Us About Dad Jokes?
Beyond making the audience cringe and, hopefully, bring a father a little closer to his son or daughter in a healthy manner, puns have given researchers insight into how the left side of the brain engages with the right side. Researchers showed that the brain’s left hemisphere processes the language of the pun first, while…
Home Soil (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 17)
The concept was good, and the production values were decent (I really liked the main lab on the planet); however, it starts out as a murder mystery and spends some time developing the human suspects, only to drop them abruptly when the “microbrain” starts growing, so this episode ends up lopsided and disappointing. I did like Troi’s speech: “We see and hear you now. We didn’t know you were there. You are beautiful to us. All life is beautiful.” Yes, it’s corny enough that I couldn’t help but think of the reformed Sour Kangaroo at the end of Seussical. But it captures one of the enduring appeals of Star Trek — it lets us envision what it would be like to be part of a society where idealism and selflessness and intellectual curiosity is mainstream culture.
Greensburg student wins Shakespeare contest
A Greensburg student did the Bard proud, winning her category in a Shakespearean competition with more than 1,000 Pittsburgh-area competitors. Carolyn Jerz, a homeschooled student, won best monologue in the 8-12 grade division for her performance as the Duke of York from Shakespeare’s play “King Henry VI, Part 3” —Tribune-Review
The Girl Wins the Upper Division Monologue in the 25th Annual Pittsburgh Public Theatre’s Shakespeare Contest
The U.S. government and Facebook are negotiating a record, multibillion-dollar fine for the company’s privacy lapses
Are you still relying on Facebook to filter your news for you? Zuckerberg will probably apologize — yet again — and then keep on Zucking. The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are negotiating over a multi-billion dollar fine that would settle the agency’s investigation into the social media giant’s privacy practices, according to two people familiar…
A hedge fund’s ‘mercenary’ strategy: Buy newspapers, slash jobs, sell the buildings
For Alden and its subsidiary, the Gannett empire’s newspapers are clearly an attractive feature. But by purchasing the Memphis building and others like it, Alden has already begun coming for what it may consider a bigger prize: Gannett’s real estate. […] The tactics employed by Alden and Digital First Media are well-chronicled: They buy newspapers…
Journalism Isn’t Dying. It’s Returning to Its Roots.
An important reminder that “objective” journalism is a recent innovation. In the past, even a small town would have a liberal paper and a conservative paper. If you wanted to be truly informed, you’d subscribe to both. Out-of-town publishing chains with more interest in profits and less investment in the communities started buying up both…
Enjoying my “Dystopia in American Literature” class.
After a kind of prelude in which we looked at Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” as proto-dystopias, my “Dystopia in American Literature” class looked at Jack London’s post-apocalyptic “The Scarlet Plague” last week. Because it’s an online class that never meets face-to-face, I’ve been posting regular 15-20m context lectures,…
Why Fears of Fake News Are Overhyped
Facebook seems to have made changes that mean it is less involved in the spread of fake news. Overall, and for reasons that extend beyond whatever unknown changes Facebook may have made to its algorithm, fake news seems less prevalent now than it was in 2016. “[T]he role of Facebook in the spread of fake…
Student: “Just wanted to let you know that your class has benefited me outside of just literature studies and thank you.”
In my online class on literary dystopia, I am asking students to post one-minute podcasts to share with each other, so the class doesn’t feel so lonely. About half of the students chose to do audio recordings, and half chose videos. While this isn’t a media production course, I am still giving tips on eye…
Why Student Athletes Continue to Fail
When student athletes were asked how much they care about athletics, they rated their interest a healthy 8.5 on average, on a scale of 1 to 10. But when asked the value they place on academics, the result was higher than 9 on average. If anything, the average student athlete cares more about his studies than his…
When the Bough Breaks (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 16)
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Advanced aliens from a mythical civilization kidnap children from the Enterprise to repopulate their dying world. The premise sounds pretty schlocky, and the script is full of familiar Trek cliches, such as the utopia with a dark secret, arrogant aliens who tsk-tsk at the very weaknesses that make humans…
Wonderfully Detailed Tribute to 1970s British TV Show Space: 1999
“A middle aged geek” puts it well: “Utter nonsense, yes, but very well-made nonsense.” The incredibly detailed miniature effects and feature film production design of Moonbase Alpha make the original Star Trek’s balsa wood & cardboard sets look like a fifth grade play. While the story of ‘unknown magnetic radiation’ causing crewmen at the base…
In 2019, I have a college student who annotates readings like this!
I asked students in my online “Dystopia in American Literature” class to demonstrate “whylighting” — not just highlighting a passage, but adding a note explaining why it’s worth noticing. If this were an in-person classroom, I’d just walk around the room and glance over their shoulders to confirm that they’re dong the work. In this…
Too Short a Season (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 15) When an old admiral youthens, shows bad morale, that’s a facepalm
Rewatching ST:TNG. I was underwhelmed. The Enterprise delivers an elderly Admiral Jameson on a mission to negotiate with terrorists on a planet where he brokered a hostage release decades ago. The regular cast has very little to do because the story follows the visiting admiral, who ends up being rather unlikable. When we meet him,…
This is what happened when a KDKA-TV journalist showed bias
Social media platforms are full of people who complain “the media is biased” against whatever side they support. When my students repeat this claim, I ask them to supply an example. They usually point to a meme that supplies a biased headline to a real news story. The story itself is fine, but the text…