Hum de dum. Not paying any attention to current events at all, just thinking about possibly teaching Richard III in my Shakespeare class this fall. Oh, look, Dwight Goodyear posted commentary on Agnes Heller’s book The Time is Out of Joint: Shakespeare as Philosopher of History. How interesting. You know, to those of us who care about…
My “Media Aesthetics” students worked with students from Elizabeth Jacobs’s “Social Psychology” class, where students wrote editorials and designed infographics about cognitive dissonance. My students helped the psychology students with their drafts, then chose essays they thought had a good chance of going viral, and used WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and Hootsuite to publicize those selections. Similar:Charles Schulz's…
Similar:Life would be so much better if all the interfaces we encountered looked like #Steampunk c…AestheticsMy parents doing their daily brain treasers in a coffee shop.PersonalAnother fun 10 sq cm of a #neovictorian #steampunk control panel. #elegance #design #aesth…AestheticsThe Girl's Obsession with Scottish History ContinuesWife: “What did you do with your bedshee…AestheticsMerry Christmas 2017 PersonalBook geyser.…
I loved listening to her practice the “Money, money, money, money, money” monologue in her mirror. Similar:Journalism, Fake News, and "Clickbait Defamation"Sometimes when my social media contacts …CultureNovel defined: a term used by some students to mean “any text we study in English class”AcademiaWhere are Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, etc. in your "American Literature" syllabus?The…
A Republican Facebook friend posted a link to this article, which acknowledges that there’s plenty to dislike about Trumpcare, but challenges the truth behind some of the statements that are driving online outrage. Remember the Trump administration’s strategy — do something that invokes outrage, pounce and call it “fake news” as soon as someone exaggerates…
Similar:The storage shelves of my fantasy steampunk CGI starship will need props with appropriate … AestheticsMy Minecraft-obsessed tween made this blocky foam pig at art camp. Next up: Stage Right summer musical th…AestheticsParadise Blue (so glad to be seeing more live theater lately)PersonalThe problem I just learned about calls for tea in the big mug.CultureThe…
An interesting piece. Easy-to-learn hypertext authoring tools like Twine and TextureWriter have encouraged many of my students to give this kind of storytelling a try. As longtime experimenters and scholars in interactive narrative who are now building a new academic discipline we call “computational media,” we are working to create new forms of interactive storytelling,…
In the early 20th century, print journalists often identified with the working class. Small newspapers were created by and read by people who live and often grew up in the same area. Online jobs tend to clump around big cities, meaning that reporters increasingly live in a media bubble that isolates them from the life…
Similar:Another random background control panel for a #blender3d #steampunk project. I wish all us…AestheticsFurnished a random nook in the #neovictorian #steampunk cruiser I'm building. Not ha…PersonalThe Girl at rehearsal (where else?).PersonalNew CarWednesday morning my resourceful brother…BusinessThe spoils.PersonalWest Side Story Maria MontagePersonal
Members of the Herald’s editorial guild are boycotting Twitter this week after reporter Chris Villani was suspended without pay for three days for violating the company’s social media policy. Villani’s misstep? An April 20 tweet stating, “The notes found in #AaronHernandez cell were letters to his daughter & fiancee, saying he loved them & would see…
Similar:There was a hand, too. Did you bring the hand?AmusingMy college writing students are out making short videos responding to a prompt.While my students are out of the room ma…AcademiaMy 13yo homeschooler had no idea how to open a little milk carton. I had to show her.CultureThe girl is the Dew Drop Fairy in @laurelballetperformingco…
Adolescence took a long time to be invented at all, and it took an even longer time to become a somewhat stable archetype. It’s only in recent human history that people a) live long enough for adolescence to be a different physical experience than adulthood; and b) live in a society that indulges an extended…
I’m not saying that the Upward Bound kids deserved to be punished because application writers didn’t follow formatting instructions. I am saying that formatting matters. When your professors put “formatting” on the rubric, they aren’t simply trying to make your life difficult. For the want of double spacing in a small section of a 65-page…
My daughter will be playing Dolly Levi Friday night. Similar:NASA! Mars!! Panorama!!! Video!!!! Audio!!!!!New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Persever…AwesomeTook the whole day off and spent part of it making #greebles with #Blender3D because reaso…AestheticsI Set A Trap To Catch Students Cheating With AI. The Result Was DeflatingMy classes are generally small enough th…AcademiaProgress.PersonalCarolyn is…
Mix the paranoia of 1984, the absurdity of Brazil, the pathos of Chekhov, the social commentary of Moliere, and a healthy dose of “When Mike and Carol swap jobs, the Bradys are on a collision course for wackiness.” Quantum Theatre’s “Collaborators” is a fascinating study of power, integrity, and compromise. (Sound designer Joe Pino directed…
Similar:Sherlock Holmes and The Woman (daughter and I rehearsing for a live recording Friday after…CultureFolger Shakespeare Library on "The Fate of Ophelia"On my ride into work yesterday, my mothe…AcademiaThe girl around the house casually dressed "as a Jacobite."AmusingMy meme about the distracted boyfriend memeAmusingDaughter is in 2 theatrical productions opening this weekendThe daughter plays Laertes…
A good exploration, in the light of current interest in “fake news,” of the troubled relationship between conservative Christianity’s understanding of truth and secular experts’ understanding of facts. (Mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism have negotiated this difference much more smoothly.) But it wasn’t Christianity, or religious faith itself in general, that helped make Republican voters more likely…
Analyzing humor, as E.B. White famously said, is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies of it. Nonetheless, writing humor is a highly logical exercise — fit idea X into form Y for humorous result Z — and can therefore be broken down in ways that more slippery kinds of…
Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…AestheticsThe Bremen Town Musicians (WAOB Audio Theatre) My daughter plays the narrator, my…HumanitiesThe Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 ( #StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 26) We Hav…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break …PersonalCarolyn as Cosette in the wedding…
Art conveys significance; however, much of that significance is constructed by the receiver. That’s why I care less about what a work of art “means” and more about what it “does.” Understanding what a work of art does requires interpretation. The context of a work of art can contribute to the significance of the artwork in surprising…