The Pope’s Prayer for Countering “Fake News”

Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists. We are sharing a famous prayer that #PopeFrancis has adapted: a prayer to fight #fakenews. If you know a journalist, give them some love today, and feel free to share this prayer. (CNS illustration/Joanna Korhorst) —Catholic News Service Similar:Asteroid 2012 DA14 brushes by EarthAn asteroid…

Details from the author’s life are not the magic ticket to “correct” interpretations in literature class

Students who are new to college literature classes often value literary biography very highly, expecting that one of their tasks is to spot one-to-one relationships between the literary texts and the personal lives of the authors. For instance, from the two Sylvia Plath poems that use Nazi imagery to describe troubled relationships with paternal figures,…

AmLit Rescue — Scratch Game

A student in my “American Literature: 1915-Present” class used the medium of a 2D graphic adventure game to deliver her multimodal final project. (Students also wrote a traditional term paper.) You are the cameraman of a new TV show based on Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.” But things quickly go downhill when a…

Updating a handout I originally wrote in 1998. #tech #writing

A mechanism description analyzes (that is, subdivides into components for further scrutiny) an object in space. When you try to organize your major subsections, if no other obvious pattern seems appropriate, you can always fall back on the more-important-to-less-important strategy. Don’t sell the object. A technical writer is not required to persuade the reader that the object is wonderful,…

Getting to the Point in Academic Writing

Don’t spend three pages establishing that some people burn to death, some people freeze to death, and some people drown. Start by saying what we need to do now that the iceberg we are stranded on has caught fire.   Similar:I touched up an intro to hypertext essays from 2000.When I initially wrote this introduction…CybercultureCreate…

Playing a well-dressed bad guy.

  Similar:Synergistic Synthesis XVII Sub B1 Chair by Kenneth SmytheAfter my daughter’s theater workshop, I …AestheticsPrepare to lower the personnel deployment gondola from the forward eployment bay, two deck… AestheticsSymbiosis (TNG Rewatch, Season 1 Episode 22)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…CultureStar Wars, Star Trek And V Author Ann Crispin Passes AwayAs a high school student,…

Father-daughter bonding between takes.

That’s a prop knife in my right hand. Similar:The Enemy (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 7) — LaForge and a Romulan Cooperate to …Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EthicsA Book Itself Is a Little Machine: Emily Short's Interactive FictionWords do some things much better than pi…DesignThis Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games…

Younger friends, can you write or read cursive? I’m curious.

Similar:Day of Dennis Jerz » Today, a Hand-written Letter about a Stack of Books Trumped a Databas…My first contribution to the Day of Digi…Academia#blender3d is teaching me more than I ever thought I’d need to know about roof geometry. E…#blender3d is teaching me more than I ev…PersonalIt's a thing to do.PersonalSparkle unicorn "Winston" lends ethos…

When we play Star Trek Monopoly, I am the Captain’s chair.

  Similar:Professoring. With an(other) apple pie cupcake.I touched up and board-ified a presentat…AcademiaAnd if my point of view is somewhat misty-eyed…And if my point of view is somewhat mist…AestheticsFaculty Senate meet & greet. With food. In the parlors till 6. AcademiaThe YouTube "Blender3D to Unity UMA" tutorials blow through all the steps in a h…PersonalMy…

Tonight’s Supermoon.

Similar:I'm just getting around to watching this speech from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Impressive!I really never paid much attention to Sc…AestheticsThings That Will Freak out Every OCD PersonA good collection. I’m only linking to i…AestheticsWoodward dismisses CNN's lawsuit against the White House; Fox sides with CNNBob Woodward, half of the Washington Pos…CultureAt the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May…

Using a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media History

Working on the syllabus for my “Media and Culture” class on the history and future of the book. Similar:Alex and Carolyn rehearse for “The King and I” Saturday nightPersonalProgramming as Magic Spells in Erica Sandbothe's New NovelIn her new novel, Codecrafter, Sandbothe…BooksThank you, frog and friends, for reminding us all what the Internet is supposed…

My parents doing their daily crossword.

I’m spending a few days visiting my parents in Northern Virginia. Similar:Pict Free Summer Webinar: Shakespeare’s HeroesCultureThank you, anonymous donor of Mardi Gras candy.Okay, on closer inspection I see the red…AestheticsWatching a National Guard helicopter lift off after an EMS displayJust spending an August evening with the…PersonalUnmarked assignments in my queue: 0This app, which sports…

Consciousness: Where Are Words?

Words, words, words. With the advent of the stream of consciousness in twentieth-century literature, it has come to seem that the self is very much a thing made of words, a verbal construction forever narrating itself and reconstituting itself in language. In line with the dominant, internalist view of consciousness, it is assumed that this…

Merry Christmas 2017

  Similar:Fall 2022 Grades: SUBMITTED AcademiaThe Course of True Fun Never Did Run Smooth: A Midsummer Night's Dwarf Fortress ReflectionI am in rehearsals to play Oberon in a c…CultureLittle Women (Thurs-Sun)PersonalYou may move your tassels from right to left. #classof2017 PersonalI've missed doing this! Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel goodness. #blender3d …AestheticsMoonBot (from…