I used to enjoy buying my kids a $4 set of Legos for no special reason, figuring that some people spend that much for a fancy cup of coffee. My kids would cannibalize their Indiana Jones and Star Wars sets in order to create characters from the steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell them.…
Similar:On this date in 1999 I first added a date to the list of web links I had been curating. (T…On this date in 1999, I first dated an e…CybercultureHearing "Godzilla on My Mind" author Wiliam TsutsuiPersonalDo Cultural Critics Have Any Value Left?[T]he Internet has dramatically changed …AestheticsMy Student Calls Out a Mental Health Stigma…
From Daisy Dunn’s review of Puchner’s The Written World: Socrates envisaged a time when we would forget how to remember. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Indian epic Ramayanahad been preserved through an oral tradition that seemed destined to perish through overreliance on papyrus. Akhmatova remembered because she had to but Socrates simply chose to. He…
I recently came across a box of old writing, including a binder where I had saved some undergraduate papers. When returning a Beowulf paper for a Brit Lit survey, my instructor had stapled a page of hand-written notes that began, “You come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here, much closer than…
Isn’t the news pointless and boring? Haven’t powerful people who have no personal stake in the matter and obviously have nothing whatsoever to hide called the lying fake mainstream news media the enemy of the American people?Why would anyone want to study journalism? Oh, wait… Former sports doctor Larry Nassar likely still would be sexually…
In English grammar, we use the definite article in front of a noun when we believe the listener knows exactly what we are referring to. Further, use of the word “the” suggests singular, as in The Pope. When you meet The Pope, then you’ve met The Pope. When you meet “the elderly” you’ve really only…
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:Standardized-test robo-graders flunk“According to professor of theory…
A multimodal news package simply means “using more than one mode,” typically the written word + some other medium. Exactly what goes into a multimodal news package is negotiable. Editors and journalism instructors will each have their own expectations.
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,…
Similar:There, in my morning snapshot of the kids home-schooling in the kitchen, is the cable I sh…EducationMore modular, swappable building components. I’ve got to work on the sides of these mid-si…More modular, swappable building compone…AestheticsIn August, 2000 I was blogging about poetry, presidential wordplay, home-schooling, online…In August 2000, I was blogging about …CybercultureSkin of…
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…
Reagan recognized that as leader of the free world, his words carried enormous weight, and he used them to inspire the unprecedented spread of democracy around the world. | President Trump does not seem to understand that his rhetoric and actions reverberate in the same way. He has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit…
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,…
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:My son showed me Seven Samurai. I had never seen it before. Amazing!I’m going to…
The car shop wanted to charge over $300. I found the part online for under $40. With the help of a YouTube video, the job took about 45 minutes. (Much of that time I spent wandering around my house looking for tools. Grateful that my father-in-law gave me a ratchet set as a wedding present.)…
Similar:Your second attempt at modeling #medievalyork fortifications in #blender3d will be better …Your second attempt at modeling #medieva…AestheticsProgress (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 15) Kira befriends a stubborn squatterRewatching ST:DS9 Dax and Kira are ch…CultureServing at midnight breakfast.PersonalThe Geekling Worked a Shatner/Nimoy Tribute into GodspellMy geekling daughter, who in Willy Wonka…AmusingEveryone Nov 1AmusingI’m…
That’s a prop knife in my right hand. Similar:This time of year I trust the process. Students are learning why a "yes/no" rese…PersonalTime lapse movie shows exoplanets orbiting star HR8799, 133 light years away. (Published i… AestheticsWoodward dismisses CNN's lawsuit against the White House; Fox sides with CNNBob Woodward, half of the Washington Pos…CultureReleasing a…
I have no reason to trust Facebook to filter my news for me. However, so many people get their news by social media, maybe this will be an easy way for people to check whether a viral meme is a hoax. Maybe an option marked “Look up vetted news reports related to this post.” Yes,…
In general, I avoid clicking on any headline with the weasel words “can” or “might.” However, I did enjoy this reflection on the positive impact of literary reading. I’m teaching a compressed online literature course, so that involves re-reading the literary works I assigned, as well as engaging with what my students write about those…
Similar:Feature: History Lesson: the treasured past of LucasArts point and clicksI played more of the Sierra point-and-c…CultureShakespeare’s Genius Is NonsenseJust as comedians generally don’t laugh …CultureHappy ice cream turkey cake day. AestheticsThe amazing daughter is featured in the ads for this commercial dance event. The amazing daughter is featured in th…PersonalTwo Trains Running ( #AugustWilson…