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:The Bremen…
Similar:I told them to put their name on both pages.I told them to put their name on both pa…AcademiaPeople with autism spectrum disorder avoid eye contact because it causes anxietyMy culture has taught me that eye contac…CultureThe automatic doors on my fantasy steampunk cruiser do work… kinda TThe automatic doors on my fantasy stea…PersonalOn the…
I loved listening to her practice the “Money, money, money, money, money” monologue in her mirror. Similar:That time three-year-old me spotted a Mary Cassatt painting at the Art Institute of Chicag…My mother had a framed print of Mary Cas…AestheticsI Love Books: A Campus Library EvolvesI love books. I love smelling them, t…AcademiaWhen the Bough Breaks…
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:Oops. I’m going to bed now. I’ll fix it tomorrow.Oops. I’m going to bed now. I’ll fix it …AestheticsBless thee, Carolyn, bless thee! Thou art translated — into a 22 year-old woman. I remember when we got home from SHU’s…PersonalSam Shepard Giggles, Doesn't GoogleI wrote my undergraduate honors thesis o…Cyberculture13: The Musical Promohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40MbeApiX…CultureI dunno what…
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:Tips to Improve HappinessKing says many simple and effective tech…CulturePlaying a well-dressed bad guy. PersonalForward is the officers' wardroom. To the right is an airlock. Left leads to the on-call o… AestheticsThoreau's Cellphone ExperimentWhen I teach “Intro to Literary Study,” …AcademiaMore delightful #steampunk control panels. These are computationally efficient bitmap rect…PersonalI just picked up both Aslan's…
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:The Big Boy GraveyardOn road trips in my youth, watching the …AmusingMaking more retro props for a #blender3d project. The way to get better at a thing is to d…PersonalWhile searching my bag for a cable, I found an unexpected wealth of food-substitute items.AmusingThe coronavirus is today just as contagious and just as serious as…
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:Multiple Choice = GoogleNo big surprises here, but this blog pos…AcademiaAn Hour of Monastic Silence in Media Studies Class (plus an awesome drum solo)I announced that my 300-level Media and …AcademiaDeath Comes for the Microbot — Flash Fiction by Aimee PicchiBee walked on six spindly legs…
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:My Minecraft-obsessed tween made this blocky foam pig at art camp. Next up: Stage Right summer musical th…AestheticsShrek: The Musical (Nov 22-24; Stage Right! Greensburg)Come see me as the Captain of the Guard,…Current_EventsMany things in the world are awful, but my latest #Blender3D work on my #steampunk control…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsWho choked…
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:Three different sized buildings. Still working on variations for the biggest one. #blender…Three different sized buildings. Still w…AestheticsMore #blender3d #steampunk control panel details. #blender3dartAestheticsCreate Joy with Content Management System Hexcodes for Canvas LMSI spent about 30 seconds eyeballing the …AcademiaEnjoyed watching the restored version of the hugely influential 1927 sci-fi movie #Metropo…Enjoyed watching the…
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…