Among today’s major professional accomplishments: installing this hook. #springbreak

My office door feels more complete now. Similar:Took the whole day off and spent part of it making #greebles with #Blender3D because reaso…AestheticsI had a singular time voicing Sherlock Holmes in The Mystery of Dr. Watson (WAOB Audio The… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azja…CulturePope Francis calls for "news communicated with serenity, precision and completeness"Pope Francis recently addressed Italian …CultureOn…

Chilling analysis of organized, anonymous disinformation campaign against Parkland survivors (impressive journalism from The Washington Post)

Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.” The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan…

Thesis Critique Activity: Another Use of a Class-edited Google Doc

A few weeks ago, I had students in my upper-level media class collaborate on a Google Docs study guide for The Name of the Rose. In my freshman writing class yesterday, I did something else with Google Docs… I created a page with three columns, and asked students to type their preliminary thesis statements on…

CNN Profiles Former White House “Chief Calligrapher”

Today was the last day of the manuscript unit in my “History and Future of the Book” course. I wish I had come across this article a little sooner! “As calligraphers, we feel like we’re playing an integral role. The invitation sets the stage for the whole event. Calligraphers are helping, simply, to set the…

Affect (v. “to change”) vs. Effect (n. “the result”)

I ran into this problem several times in the last set of student papers, so it’s time for another illustration. When you’re talking about making a change, you mean the verb “affect,” and when you’re talking about something that results from a cause, you mean the noun “effect.” It’s rare to encounter “effect” as a…

If You Check the Source of an Inspirational Prayer You Shared on Social Media, You Might Be Embarrassed. Check the Source Anyway.

I needed this prayer yesterday. I checked the source today. Quote Investigator The frequent ascription to Mother Teresa stems from the misreading of a book about the famous Catholic charity worker called “A Simple Path” that was compiled by Lucinda Vardey and released in 1995. The page preceding the appendices was titled “ANYWAY”, and it…

Children struggle to hold pencils due to too much tech, doctors say

When I was in middle school, I developed a permanent red bump on my right middle finger, usually stained with the blue ink from a PaperMate erasable pen. Though I shifted to typing when I was in high school, I still wrote with a pen enough to turn that bump into a permanent feature on…

Carolyn had fun playing a street urchin this weekend in Stage Right’s production of Little Shop of Horrors.

Another fun show! Great job, cast and crew. Similar:Replaying Childhood: On Gifting my Video Games to the Library of CongressTevor Owens writes: Giving up my games…CultureAlas for You (Godspell, Stage Right)Three weeks ago tonight, I got an email …DramaTwitter and the "Two Minutes Hate"Another of the many, many reflections on…CultureNature walks 2012 and 2018.AestheticsEpic Game…

Weak: Personal Intro. Strong: Blueprint, introducing supporting points. Weak: string of stand-alone paragraphs. Strong: Transitions develop complex conclusions. Weak: Last sentence introduces synthesis for the first time; no room to develop it. Strong: Conclusion synthesizes original ideas that have been part of the paper all along.

New handout: “The Shape of an Academic Paper”

I’ve given an in-class presentation on “The Shape of an Academic Paper” enough times that I’m ready to turn it into a stand-alone web page, which I’ll ask my students to read for homework, in order to save more class time for writing workshops. Musical friends, I’d welcome your feedback on point #5, “Think of…

Impact of One-size-fits-all Web Design

I don’t particularly miss the splash landing pages, rotating animated logos, and “click here” web design of the 1990s. But one of the great things about it was that people experimented, sometimes doing crazy things. Rob LoCascio, who in 1995 “came up with the technology for those chat windows that pop up on websites,” notes…

This is fine. Really.

Thanks(?) to social media, it’s very easy for us to learn, in a personal context, all about bad things happening far away from us. And the impressions left by people grieving and pointing fingers at each other leaves a toll. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always…

Interface changes make it a little harder to work with Google’s image search

When I’m looking for a picture I’m going to use in an academic project, I typically search Creative Commons; however, Google’s image search is quite useful. The interface is changing to make it easier to view a picture in context (and a little harder to download an image without visiting the source page). The the…

One Teacher’s Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings

Every Friday since Columbine, one schoolteacher has asked her students to to submit a list. Who would they like to sit next to next week? Who has been an exceptional classroom citizen this week? Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s…

Don’t use that “18 school shootings since Jan 1” claim. It’s Inaccurate.

Don’t use that “18 school shootings since Jan 1” meme. It’s misleading. I’ve lost track of how many times this image has popped up on my social media feeds. The 18 “school shootings” marked on that map include an instance in which a third-grader accidentally pulled the trigger of a police officer’s holstered gun (nobody…

An Hour of Monastic Silence in Media Studies Class (plus an awesome drum solo)

I announced that my 300-level Media and Culture class would spend an hour in monastic silence, collaborating on a Google Doc. I expected the students would understand I was helping them get into the mood to appreciate the 14th century setting of The Name of the Rose. What I didn’t expect was an awesome drum…

Thank you, anonymous donor of Mardi Gras candy.

Okay, on closer inspection I see the red hearts, but the sentiment is clear. Similar:Shall we dance? The girl tries on her ball gown for The King and I. Her featured show is …DanceSet Phasers to Teach!Fans of Star Trek have thus already been…AcademiaMoon for the MisbehottenEven though I wrote about some of Eugene…CultureWhat’s Up With That:…

Yesterday my wife took this last known picture of our two teenagers. The boy is 20 today.

Similar:We'll Always Have Paris (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 24)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…MediaOne deck below the bridge, the chief engineer coordinates with his technical heads here at…AestheticsThe geekling is 14 today.PersonalAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk #neovictorian control panel. Not the end product. Just prac…AestheticsYesterday we took advantage of a rare free day.At…

Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self

Those who remember Jane Eyre solely as required reading in high-school English class likely recall most vividly its over-the-top Gothic tropes: a childhood banishment to a death-haunted room, a mysterious presence in the attic, a Byronic hero, and a cold mansion going up in flames. It’s more seemingly the stuff of Lifetime television, not revolutions. But as…

Google Autocomplete Still Makes Hateful Autocorrect Suggestions

The top suggestion for a Holocaust search no longer points to a denier’s website, but Google’s search algorithm still makes some truly awful suggestions. (I’ve turned off the suggested search feature on my browser.) The top result for “Black lives matter is a hate group,” for instance, leads to a link by the Southern Poverty…

Clicking, collaborating, and talking in the library

Our local paper did a story on how libraries are changing to meet the needs of students. I’m teaching a course on the history and future of the book, so we’ll be talking quite a bit about the physical medium; however, printed material is no longer central to a college education, so the print collection is not central to our library.