Working on the syllabus for my “Media and Culture” class on the history and future of the book. Similar:IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE — Berkeley Rep audio productionSinclair Lewis’s 1935 anti-fascist novel…CultureJohn Oliver Returns to Out-News the News—by Ignoring TrumpI prefer reading and listening to the ne…CultureNature walks 2012 and 2018.AestheticsAnnoyed and Bored by Lazy Anachronisms…
I’m spending a few days visiting my parents in Northern Virginia. Similar:A Grave Tale (a short story I narrated for WAOB Audio Theatre)A Grave Tale (WAOB Audio Theatre) Wri…LiteratureNew home office setup. I was delighted to find those little storage boxes that fit in a ni…PersonalStudents in “A.I. and the Future of Literacy” are presenting…
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…
Similar:Students whom I haven't met yet… Students whom I haven’t met yet, I’l…AcademiaI had a singular time voicing Sherlock Holmes in The Mystery of Dr. Watson (WAOB Audio The… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azja…CultureGinger Christ Superstar!AestheticsAn Unexpecting MinorityTruthfully, I expected my new department…AcademiaMy colleague @crissycp offers warm soda bread and tea every year, as part of her authentic…AcademiaMy…
A Google self-study found that its own most successful employees had soft skills, such as mentoring ability, empathy, and critical thinking and problem-solving. “Those traits sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer,” according to the Washington Post. [A]mong the eight most important qualities of Google’s top…
Instead of flagging links to questionable news items, Facebook will instead hide them. Which is nice, but it still means we have to trust the algorithm Facebook uses. (Don’t trust Facebook to filter your news for you.) False news undermines the unique value that Facebook offers: the ability for you to connect with family and…
“Dammit Mom, I’m a daughter, not a theoretician!” — the girl, responding to a pointed rhetorical question. Know Your Meme Similar:This is what an "umm" looks likeThis image, of the audio waveform from a…MediaI let her tend the rabbits.Great production of a very moving story….BooksNew home office setup. I was delighted to find those little…
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No spoilers here. (I managed to avoid all spoilers, and hadn’t even seen the trailer. I did see still pics of porgs, though, and I knew the name of the character the StarWars Bros were hating on, so thank you to everyone who did their part to keep the secrets.) No intellectual critical distance for…
In the bird-flight simulator at the Pittsburgh Aviary, the girl twists and turns, careening around buildings, dive-bombing alleyways, and comes to a perfect landing in the middle of the street just as her timer runs out. The boy immediately heads up to clear the buildings, then flies toward the horizon to see how far he…
Pope Francis recently addressed Italian journalists: Your voice, free and responsible, is fundamental for the growth of any society that wishes to be called democratic, so that the continuous exchange of ideas and a profitable debate based on real and correctly reported data can be guaranteed. In our time, often dominated by the anxiety of…
If you were this person’s attorney, you’d probably want this social media blurb phrased a little differently. The headline attached to the story is clearer. Yes, the social media blurb is shorter, but I’d rather cut the “Twp” and make room for the unambiguous “and.” Derry man accused of assaulting female witness and attorney jailed…
Right now, I’m teaching “American Lit 1915-Present” for the last time. It’s the companion course to “American Lit 1800-1915,” which I’ll also never teach again. They are required courses for English majors who need to cover American Lit, but they were also designed to serve as electives. My colleagues and I have trouble covering the depth that we know our English majors need, without overwhelming students who are just looking to sample a bit of AmLit to fulfill a course requirement. So we’ve revamped both these courses, starting next fall. One new course will be “American Lit 1776-Present,” which will obviously cover fewer works than we can fit into 2 terms, but the benefit is we can be confident that any student who’s taken the course will have a clearer understanding of the scope of American literature. Another new course will be “Topics in American Literature,” which will allow us to go into some depth, without needing to cover a little bit of everything. I’m thinking of picking the focus “Literature and Government,” which could include “Rip Van Winkle,” All the King’s Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Invisible Man (Ellison, not H.G. Wells) and Farhenheit 451.
“If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press… And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.” — Republican Senator John McCain, in a Feb 2017 interview on…
The euphoria of getting my grades in Friday was short-lived. Similar:#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…PersonalThe Toulmin model for analyzing arguments came up at a faculty pedagogy workshop today. I … AcademiaNutcracker dress rehearsal montage. Carolyn plays…
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Similar:Many familiar faces in this cast but this one is my favorite. Sold out opening of Grand Ho…PersonalThis long-nelected CD-ROM case tucked away behind my monitor holds almost as many portable…PersonalThe Enemy (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 7) — LaForge and a Romulan Cooperate to …Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EthicsLighting really makes a difference!…
Similar:Union siege cannon, printing press, and "From Slavery to Freedom" were the highl…PersonalI can’t fix this broken world but I guess I did okay using #blender3d to model this wedge-… AestheticsA student just booked an appointment to discuss picking up journalism as a second major. E…AcademiaSpring 2024 Grades: SubmittedSpring 2024 Grades: SubmittedPersonalAnother 10sq cm section…