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:Confuse Students to Help…
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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.Â
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.
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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…
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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…
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I don’t want to make light of a little girl’s fear, but she wasn’t seriously hurt, and this is a damn fine lead: When they heard the screams, no one suspected the rooster. (Tampa Bay Times, 2002) And from a little farther into the story: The rooster struck around noon as Dechardonae ventured from her…
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I was surprised to see how closely happiness maps to non-phone activities, and unhappiness maps to phone-related activities. The author notes that this is a study of correlation, not causation. When I went through moody phases as a teen, I wrote, or worked, or did theater, or church youth group activities. When I was busy,…