My culture has taught me that eye contact is a sign of respect and empathy. As a teacher, I value eye contact because it’s a way students can assure me they are paying attention. (Lack of eye contact is also useful feedback; when I see too many students smiling vacantly while staring at something they…
Similar:Beatrix Potter-pinching and Žižekian swipes: the strange world of book theftsWe caught a gent last Christmas with £40…BooksIf you win the very first time you play a game, that means you are skilled and brilliant, …AwesomeHamlet. #tobePersonalThe Falling Man — 9/11 Suicide PhotographPowerful, painful essay. Worth revisitin…CultureOne of my undergrad lit papers. Dot-matrix printed, with…
The conservative National Review offers an interesting take on what happens when a reporter relies on poetry to make a point. During a White House press conference yesterday, CNN Reporter Jim Acosta prefaced a question by reading “The New Colossus,” then asked White House aide Stephen Miller how he could support a policy that goes…
Fortune’s fool, I wagered I would be spared and forsook my ad blocker, and now a pitiless gloom that will abide for 30 seconds has descended. No X in the corner will succor me. No five-second opt-out will rekindle the embers beneath this wicked mist. Lo, the Mazda Summer Sales Event nears. Stop my ears with wax! Forgive me! Forgive me! –The Onion
Google’s internal study of work groups found that successful teams are made of reliable, engaged workers who feel psychologically safe to take risks. Keeping this in mind the next time I introduce a group project. We learned that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from other teams at Google: Psychological safety:…
It’s frustrating and terrifying that the current cultural climate makes this website necessary. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is a project that aims to comprehensively document press freedom incidents in the United States — such as the arrests of journalists, seizures of their equipment, interrogations and searches at the U.S. border, subpoenas to testify about…
Fascinating contemplation of color perception, as mediated by language. The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just…
I don’t ban technology in my classroom, even though I know some students can’t manage the potential distraction. (An early assignment in my freshman writing class demonstrates that multitasking is a lie — we can only pay attention to one thing at a time,,and though we can do something routine like fold laundry while also…
Similar:The Problems of Real-Time Feedback in Teaching WritingSometimes my students get nervous becaus…AcademiaWhy scientists should care about artMy artsy daughter loves stories about sc…ArtSiblings gotta sib.PersonalStunning picture of my daughterAestheticsThe Scarlet Letter (Prime Stage)PersonalThe daughter is home from London.Personal
Similar:I just discovered what will grind up a significant portion of my free time over the break.So Khan Academy now has a grammar unit. …PersonalToday's 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel went pretty fast. At this stage I'm mostly re…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsThe Measure of a Man (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season…
The ability to serve content faster than where it originated is the privilege of the platform on which people find it. Facebook, Google, and Apple have all been exploiting this privilege, which, while it does lower load times, is not conducive to a single, standardized web. And it deepens content providers’ dependence on those platforms…
The last book I read to her was Wuthering Heights; next on the docket had been The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, and I had chosen it specifically because it features a daughter who benefits unknowingly from, and then grows beyond the need for, her father’s storytelling endeavors. (Alas, that reading was not to be.)
Similar:Commonly Misused Words: THAN and THEN AmusingThe Case Against Reading EverythingRight now, I’m teaching “American Lit 19…BooksI just learned I only have months to live. This is what I want to say. – The Boston GlobeWhat a storyteller. Boston Globe jour…AwesomeRIP Flash: Why HTML5 Will Finally Take Over Video and Web in 2014I am…
I’ve been contacted by editors who would just love for me to publish in international relations journals (I’m trained as an American literature specialist), or write a textbook on pretty much any topic I suggest. I’ve also seen my own web pages reproduced word-for-word, except for the removal of my name, in books other people…
We caught a gent last Christmas with £400-worth of stolen books in his trousers and elsewhere. We grabbed all of the bags back, but he returned about half an hour later to reclaim a half-bottle of whisky and his dream journal, which had been at the bottom of one of the bags of stolen books.…
Similar:I haven't seen this show since freshman year at Bishop Denis J O'Connell High Sc…PersonalJust in case you can’t find the tweet that Trump, who got trolled for making a rookie erro…This is how the President of the United …PersonalReading a Classic American Play to My Daughter BooksMy 13yo homeschooler had no idea how to…
The dean sends me an email at 9:07pm. Instead of answering, I post about it on social media. Oh yeah, #partylikeaprofessor Similar:Talkback session after the matinee and my brother and faculty colleagues after the evening…Talkback session after the matinee and m…AwesomeEven in the U.S., Chinese Students May Have Tiananmen ‘Amnesia’But now that he was at…
Similar:Blade Runner | Typeset In The FutureThis is nerd heaven — a deep analysis o…AestheticsClose Reading of Sonnet 130: Form, Theme, and Cultural Context (and a Rage Comic)I’m preparing to teach Shakespeare again…AcademiaGoogle Favors Good Reporting, Not Liberal Views: StudyIt’s a logical fallacy to suggest that w…CulturePict Classic Theatre Romeo and Juliet. PersonalIf I am not…
The Onion reminds us not to normalize Spicer’s behavior. Similar:Rules for Civility: 14-Year-Old George Washington's 110 Commandments for Cultivating Chara… Every Action done in Company, ought…CultureJury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentSparklecleaver the PonyswordCorrections – December 30 – NYTimes.com….AmusingUnvaccinated dad records days of regret in hospital — and makes heartbreaking request for…Between difficult breaths…
The only reason Facebook is paying attention to fake news is because it wants to monetize real news. (Monetize = control.) After initially dismissing the idea that Facebook plays a role in disseminating fake news, the company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been working to remedy the problem. Facebook partnered with third-party fact-checkers such as…