Under my academic robes… photographer vest with 3 frozen ice packs. #heatwave #HonorsConvo @setonhilluniversity

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Poetry Writing: 10 Tips for Writing Poems

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…

A little board-gaming for Labor Day.

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Beautiful News Writing: “Rampaging rooster attacks girl.”

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…

Hi, I’m the St Joe’s basement doorstop. Let me start your three-day weekend by wrapping my chain around your ankle, tossing you into the mud, and breaking your phone.

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Jean M. Twenge: "Nearly all phone activities are linked to less happiness, and nearly all non-phone activities are linked to more happiness."

What Do Happy Teens Do? Hint: It doesn’t involve their phones.

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,…

Anonymous comment cards from student journalists at the end of the second week.

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Full Bloom opens tonight.

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This weekend… Would YOU trade a Hank Aaron rookie card for Roberto Clemente… for her? FULL BLOOM

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Social Media Companies Aren’t Liberal or Conservative. They’re capitalist.

Facebook cares more about scalability—that is, the ability to serve billions of users with a minimum of human labor—than it does about making the right call in every case. It would rather get lots of things wrong, but do it with a veneer of consistency and neutrality, than entertain nuance or exercise human judgment. (It…

Digital literacy is different from print literacy. How do we balance the trade-off?

My job includes teaching students to read long, complex texts (novels, play scripts, and academic texts.) My job also includes asking students to write researched essays that are longer documents than many of them at first seem comfortable reading. Years after they graduate, students often thank me for what I’ve taught them, and say the…

The other day I did a socialize with some of my Humanities colleagues. (I am proud of myself.)

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Russian trolls ‘spreading discord’ over vaccine safety online

The good news is that there are fewer Americans think vaccination is a government conspiracy than your social media stream makes it appear that there are. The bad news is that somewhere out there is an organization that believes it will benefit from you believing that more people doubt vaccinations than really do. “The vast…

Full Bloom opens next weekend. Tickets 724-527-5777.

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Pioneering Harvard Blog Site Wrapping It Up

I still use blogs.setonhill.edu, which I started in 2003. Not for every class, but for most of my discussion-heavy in-person classes. Weblogs@Harvard, as it was then known, was considered pioneering. Facebook didn’t yet exist. Social media was in its infancy. And starting a blog usually required some knowledge of code. Harvard’s blogging platform, now known…

14% of Americans [say that they] have changed their mind about an issue because of something they saw on social media

Young men are more than twice as likely than the general public to say they changed their mind on an issue because of social media. Americans who identify as Democrats, black, or Hispanic are also more likely than the general public to report change their minds because of social media. The survey seems to have…

FULL BLOOM at Latrobe’s Olde Main, Aug 30-Sep 2.

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“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Very glad I got my son interested in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now he wants to read the book.

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Starting my “Writing about Literature” class by having students react to a John Donne sonnet.

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Picture of an actor posing as Shakespeare.

The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit

Geary admits that he often makes pun in his head—but he mostly keeps them to himself. He can’t explain why the wordplay’s not appreciated. “In poetry, words rhyme; in puns, ideas rhyme,” he writes. “This is the ultimate test of wittiness, keeping your balance even when you’re of two minds. To Geary, puns represent wisdom. …