Fake news works on our emotions, usually by stoking our fears or confirming our biases. Real news relies on verifiable facts, including emotions only by attributing them to credible sources, and placing those emotions in context. We help spread fake news when we let our emotions guide our reactions, rather than taking a minute to…
This review of a book about early photography offers some thoughtful reflections on how technology has been frequently used to distort the truth rather than reveal it. It’s a quote — I’d never seen it before — from Franz Kafka: “Nothing can be so deceiving as a photograph.” It immediately caught my interest because it…
Here is the transcript the girl provided, of her pun battle with my former student and Stage Right’s resident lyricist & character actor Greg Kerestan.
Similar:Iconic 'West Side Story' still resonates todayCarolyn Jerz of Greensburg will be playi…ArtWhy Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?Not a day goes by without The Girl remin…BooksCrabby 9yo Constructs a Head-mounted Frump-amplification Isolation CubeMy 9yo was ordered not to leave the kitc…DesignJustice (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 7) When Wes trips on a fence,…
Similar:The Princess and the PaintFriday night, my daughter will be playin…AestheticsRandom eye candy for props in my #Blender3D #retrotech project. Turned two circle logos in…PersonalIt's Friday night in July, and I'm jamming with my fall course preps.The dean sends me an email at 9:07pm. In…AcademiaCarolyn made it to the next round of the 2017 PPT…
I recently spoke with the Sarah Sutton, General Manager of the Walmart on Victory Boulevard, and she’d like me to express to you all that while she’s still willing to permit any adjunct faculty members in need of shelter to sleep in the loading bay behind the store, trapping and consuming the seagulls that flock…
Similar:Ties of Blood and Water #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 19) Kira re-evaluates a …Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is excited to …BusinessEric Bentley, Critic Who Preferred Brecht to Broadway, Dies at 103One of the few harsh critics of Arthur M…AcademiaSynchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging StudentsEvery time I have taught an online class…AcademiaWaiting for…
Similar:Bryan A. Louiselle, 1966-2022 (musician, composer, orchestrator, musical director)I was Mayor Shinn to Bryan’s Harold Hill…CultureExperience: I let a baby bird nest in my hair for 84 days He was abandoned by his flock, his nes…EmpathyProper commenting is an important part of coding any project, especially in an educational…Proper commenting is an important part o…PersonalBoy,…
RCA’s console never rivaled the impact of Atari’s VCS, Magnavox’s Odyssey, or Mattel’s Intellivision, and few people remember it today. But the true story behind it is fascinating. Its underlying technology began in 1969 as a personal computer developed at home by one man with a vision, Joseph Weisbecker. His daughter, Joyce, ended up being…
Similar:Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?PersonalI just realized I've been misspelling and mispronouncing "detritus" all my life. I’ve been a college English faculty …AcademiaBooks Come Alive! Catalina Magdalena Cast (Stage Right Greensburg) The cast for “Catalina Mag…BooksThis is about half of the #steampunk control panel details I've…
Today’s class on The Winter’s Tale was very much the kind of class that I hoped for when I was an undergraduate thinking, “Maybe I’d like to be an English professor.” Leontes and Polyxines in “The Winter’s Tale” grew up together, but for no good reason other than it sets the plot in motion, Leontes…
By the time you finish reading this article, the upstart sports news outlet called The Athletic probably will have hired another well-known sportswriter from your local newspaper. In a couple of years, once The Athletic has completed its breakneck expansion, perhaps that newspaper’s sports section will no longer exist. —The New York Times Similar:Because Internet:…
Similar:Keeping things in the proper perspective at 4Cs: Praise for my delivery of a line from Sta…Already met a lot of good people and fou…AcademiaThe ballroom of my #steampunk fantasy space cruiser is now a less lonely place. Thanks to watching many, many YouTub…AestheticsCarolyn's Theater Bio for Prime Stage's The Outsiders (Mar 6-15) Actor…
Similar:Stupid Puns For the WinMy daughter just trounced me in a pun wa…AmusingKids Actually Read the Books That Movies Are Based OnIf the seasonal fluctuation represents t…BooksAbove the ready-room desk is the captain's power-napping loft, because self-care is i…AestheticsAuthor of 80s classic The Hobbit didn't know game was a hit The Hobbit stood out from the…
Saving this for next term’s “History and Future of the Book” course. Students said they preferred and performed better when reading on screens. But their actual performance tended to suffer. For example, from our review of research done since 1992, we found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were…
Updated an older instructional handout with a bunch of new examples and some fancy red/green color coding. To write a news story, you’ll use many of the skills that help you write good personal essays; however, the two kinds of writing have important differences, so what counts as “good writing” is also different. English Essay:…
Dinosaurs evolved into birds. Not all of them, of course. Birds are so much a part of our environment that we barely notice them. I’ve said the same about weblogs. Monetized and platformized and app-ified, the basic functions of blogging live on — a reverse-sorted stream of posts, a mechanism to engage with visitors to…
Similar:Opinion: Time for media to turn up the pressure, Potsdam resident says Sometimes people get the name of my sch…CultureThesis Critique Activity: Another Use of a Class-edited Google DocA few weeks ago, I had students in my up…AcademiaRepresenting the Humanities at Accepted Students Day.Representing the Humanities at Accepted …PersonalTo DoTo Do (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) 5: …AcademiaSeton…
Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the US to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues, according to a new investigation by a respected Russian media outlet. On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during…
I reminded my Shakespeare students that I’m a full-time generalist and a part-time Shakespeare professor, and that I’m constantly comparing my own classroom performance with the brilliant well-planned lectures my professors delivered to classes of 100 or 400 students.