An important but small detail in a Blender3D project I just finished is this trench-coated character. I started with a clip-art silhouette, but it looked pretty drab. Thanks to a little pixel-doctoring in The GIMP, I touched up the center image. The schlubby pant cuffs on this guy don’t fit the character, so I smoothed…
As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they targeted fields they pejoratively dub “grievance studies” — “gender studies, masculinities studies, queer studies, sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, critical whiteness theory, fat studies, sociology, and educational philosophy” — which they consider peculiarly susceptible to fashionable nonsense. Does the hoax identify something uniquely rotten in gender and sexuality studies, or could…
The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences… The trio say they’ve proved that higher ed’s fixation on identity politics enables “absurd and horrific” scholarship. Their submissions were outlandish—but no more so, they insist, than others written in earnest and published by these journals.
Gender, Place & Culture, for instance, published a 2017 paper that wasn’t a hoax analyzing the “feminist posthumanist politics” of what squirrels eat. This year Hypatia, a journal of feminist philosophy, published an analysis of a one-woman show featuring “the onstage cooking of hot chocolate and the presence of a dead rat.” The performance supposedly offers “a synthaesthetic portrait of poverty and its psychological fallout.”
More than half of the hostile responses to The Last Jedi, episode eight of the Star Wars saga, were politically motivated trolling or the result of non-human bot activity, according to an academic paper published by a US digital media expert. Morten Bay, a research fellow at the University of Southern California (USC), analysed Twitter activity about the…
Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gig. I had to explain to the girl why the 9/11/2001 newspaper in the exhibit didn’t mention the attacks (it had been printed overnight). She was especially moved by the recorded messages left by some…
The girl performed musical commercials for a fund-raiser in the Laurel Highlands. On the way back we stopped at a Denny’s, and after I paid the bill the waitress said she was impressed to see a teenaged girl enjoying an outing with her father without having a phone glued to her hand. (Carolyn had just…
Who, I thought, besides a multidisciplinary team in search of research funding, could possibly imagine that a digital account of the impact of reading digital print on human cognition would be effective? For such an account rests on the supremacy of the very thing it seeks to counteract, which can be summarized as a view of the human mind/brain that is itself computational in form.
There are ways to raise a child’s test scores that have nothing to with helping that child learn. In the past 10 years I have seen far more students — even the most capable, most brilliant students — paralyzed with fear about grades. In high school, you got good grades if you followed instructions and…
I am not particularly into anime, though when I was about 12 I was entranced to run across episodes of Star Blazers that aired on my local TV station one summer at about 7am. Having said that, I found this trailer for a (theoretical) anime reworking of Star Wars very appealing. Similar:The Strangest, Most Spectacular…
Similar:My precious is fifteen. PersonalSteampunk flag for the United States of Britannia (from the alternate history my kids and …In the steampunk world my kids and I mad…AestheticsMy 13yo and 18yo enthralled by WarGames.Wife likes movies. Son likes military th…CultureThe girl is rehearsing for Hello DollyPersonalStage Right offers four versions of its musical 'Annie' | TribLIVELeapin‘…
The New York Public Library has a program that lets youths check out briefcases, handbags, and neckties for job interviews or other formal occasions.
Transcript: Me: (Starts writing a routine email for textbook adoption committee.) Me: (Accidentally paraphrases part of Roy Batty’s “Tears in rain” monologue.) Me: (Checks IMDB to refresh my memory of the full quote.) Me: (Checks Blade Runner Wiki to confirm umlaut in Tannhäuser Gate.) Me: (Looks up Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser.) Me: What, what was…
As circulation has declined, local newspapers have had to adjust for the loss in revenue, sometimes by shrinking the size of their staffs, sometimes by selling out or closing up shop all together.
It’s a myth that humanities majors don’t care about post-graduation employment. What changed was the safety valve of subsequent law school enrollment.
Law school was long the default post-graduation plan for majors in qualitative fields. As long as you had the prospect of a lucrative legal career after college, you could safely major in English or poli sci. Those students didn’t ignore the vocational imperative; they just postponed it. And for a long time, that worked pretty well.
But the Great Recession, combined with AI and offshoring, did a number on law as a career option.
The Cask of Amotillado (read by Dennis Jerz, for WAOB Audio Theatre) Similar:Video-Game Violence Is Now a Partisan IssueScholar and essayist Ian Bogost traces t…CultureThe case for puns as the most elevated display of wit Geary admits that he often makes pun i…CultureUnpopular grammar rulesLanguage is a fluid, living social const…CultureRUN. HIDE. FIGHT. Surviving an…
This is an important time to teach people what journalists do and why it matters. “The media” is much larger than “journalists devoted to the objective coverage of the news.” If you don’t like the slant, or the shallowness, or the opportunism of the media you run across, then check out several different sources, including…
Similar:Surprised and delighted to find that Scratch 3.0 runs on an iPad.PersonalClassic. So good! #startrek #tosPersonalThe daughter (giving the piggyback ride in pic 2) doing a thing that starts tomorrow. Tribune ReviewAmusingMy current Zoom backdrop. #blender3d #partylikeaprofAestheticsT-Shirts for student journalists who recently leveled up to “staff writer”(with bear signe…PersonalCreating textures for background buildings in a…
Similar:Medea at Seton Hill University.CultureCelebration of Writing Fall 2025. Students present their research for their upcoming term …PersonalHelping students find my office (St. Joseph 403)PersonalYes, this is my 11yo daughter yodeling on stage.http://youtu.be/reyclH7zuHIAmusingBreakfast Battle from "The Miracle Worker" (Pamela Lee as Annie Sullivan and Carolyn Jerz …Update: Here’s a clip of the whole break…CultureIt's Friday…
Similar:Last event of a busy day downtown. #AgathieChristie #murderontheorientexpressAestheticsAlike (2015)This short film reminds us why art matte…AestheticsAscending the path to High Hrothgar? No, just the snow-covered steps from the parking lot… Ascending the path to High Hrothgar?…PersonalBehind the bar in the officers' pub, from the #steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell my…AestheticsNature walks 2012…
If you are writing a poem because you want to capture a feeling that you experienced, then you don’t need these tips. Just write whatever feels right. Only you experienced the feeling that you want to express, so only you will know whether your poem succeeds. If, however, your goal is to communicate with a reader — drawing…