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:Chess again with my son.Games''Uh…''And yes, Liz’s face registers the shift …AestheticsFirst steps towards reconstructing a 30-year-old simulation. Marking the locations of the …First steps towards reconstructing a 30-…AestheticsLecturing is So Much Easier than Leading a DiscussionLecturing is So Much Easier than Leading…AcademiaNot bad for a couple…

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:Lonely Among Us (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) Crew-posessing spark roams and a droid …Conflict between two species who petitio…AestheticsHad a great time with AmLit students at the August Wilson block party AcademiaRussia is relying on unwitting Americans to spread…

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

Similar:More modeling in #blender3d. Very happy with reflections and lighting. (The teacup is a po…DesignTalk with us about books! English as a minor or second major @setonhilluniversityAcademiaLovely #greebles give attractive details to the the flat surfaces of this little bot (from…AestheticsGame night at our local library.Games"Orphans" was amazing. Powerul, funny, cruel, humane, empathetic. I…

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.

My understanding of biased polls is… (choose one)

Similar:I don't usually post animal videos on my blog… But when I do, it’s because they are…AmusingA Time magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake. #fakenewsDonald Trump has a lot to say about “fak…BusinessAstaire Unwound (Ceiling Dance from "Royal Wedding")My high school physics teacher, Admiral …AestheticsInteresting use of…

Beowimp (spoof I wrote for my high school lit magazine c. 1985)

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…

Teen girl standing in front of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" poster (with cartoon Romans)

I played Pseudolus freshman year in college. Haven’t seen the show in a while.

Similar:Set design for a virtual production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Post-apocalypti… AestheticsWhere There's a Whip, There's a WayThe girl was singing lyrics she learned …AmusingMask up.PersonalYes, Duolingo is free and I’ve learned a lot. No, I don’t like the psychological manipulat…Yes, Duolingo is free and I’ve learned a…EthicsMy big brother and my son facing…

‘A slow-motion disaster’: Journalism museum in talks about possible building sale

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…

Research Before Google Books (from 2006)

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…

How Facebook is killing comedy (and other indie content creators)

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…

Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read

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…