Another fun show! Great job, cast and crew. Similar:#AugustWilson #CenturyCycle Three week intensive course (whew!) All the students did very …PersonalIf I don’t design the sign for the pub on my #steampunk space cruiser, who will? #prioriti… AestheticsHow Facebook and Twitter control what you see about FergusonOn Twitter, I see tear-gassed civilians,…CultureI may have mentioned…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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” 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…
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…
Okay, on closer inspection I see the red hearts, but the sentiment is clear. Similar:Kirk's manly, sensitive advice to young CharlieIn popular culture, Captain Kirk from th…CultureCan we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?Fascinating contemplation of color perce…AestheticsUnity Normal Problems (Importing an object from Blender 2.8b)I had a complex model that I…
Similar:Another delightful section of a #steampunk #neovictorian control panel. #design #aesthetic…AestheticsBreakfast Battle from "The Miracle Worker" (Pamela Lee as Annie Sullivan and Carolyn Jerz …Update: Here’s a clip of the whole break…CultureRenata, Carolyn and Alex in a scene from this weekend's Pippin.CultureJust submitted final grades for the compressed course that began the day after…
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…
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…
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.
Similar:The Soldier Formerly Known as Bradley ManningHere is the entry on it from The Times’s…Current_EventsWhen F. Scott Fitzgerald Judged Gatsby By Its Cover With a big Hollywood movie now in th…AestheticsAppreciating the production values and so-stupid-it-might-be-brilliant comedy in Avatar: T…The daughter is showing my wife and me “…AestheticsI am shocked — SHOCKED — to…
I got an email this morning from someone who went to my high school a few years behind me… she is now a high school teacher, and had asked the lit magazine editor to dig up a spoof of Beowulf she remembered reading back in the day. I only barely remember writing it. This excerpt…
Similar:Captain’s Holiday (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 19) Picard’s Archeologica…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingEnjoyed watching "Queen of Katwe" (Ugandan girl chess prodigy movie)I enjoyed watching this chess-themed com…CultureThe ‘Little Free Library’ arrives in the D.C. areaThe “Little Free Library” concept starte…AmusingYes Virginia the Musical coming to ConnellsvilleCarolyn Jerz may be only 11 but…
Last year, SHU did not sponsor a bus trip to Washington D.C., so I did not arrange a field trip to the Newseum. Seeing a chunk of the Berlin Wall, an antenna from the World Trade Center in front of a display of 9/11 front pages from around the world, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski’s cabin, and…
Me: It took a few days for the spool of microfilm to arrive via interlibrary loan. I’d use this steampunk contraption to manually seek the right page in the book. But I found it. Crying stock photo child: (Sniff) Checking sources was scary ‘n’ hard in 2006! Me: Yes it was, crying stock photo child. Yes…
Facebook has monetized access to online content. The mobile apps make it difficult for you to actually leave Facebook to follow a link, which means Facebook is increasingly showing other people’s content, bypassing the creator’s own ads (and their “subscribe” and “comment” and “contact us” and “archive” buttons). As Internet comedy writer Matt Klinman puts…
It was pleasurable to encounter a familiar reference to Plato’s Phaedrus (which I just assigned in my Media & Culture class) in this Atlantic article on memory in the digital information age. With its streaming services and Wikipedia articles, the internet has lowered the stakes on remembering the culture we consume even further. But it’s…