Update: Here’s a clip of the whole breakfast scene (recorded during a performance). A few weeks ago, my 14yo played Helen Keller in the Latrobe Cabaret Theatre’s production of The Miracle Worker. This clip is from a rehearsal of the epic breakfast scene, a wordless battle of wills between young Helen (who has been blind…
All ITT Tech campuses will be shut down, its parent company announced today. — Inside Higher Ed Similar:Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Mas…Yesterday, I performed in a school matin…AcademiaTeachers finding games give a leg up on learningThanks for the link, Dana. Experts sa…CultureLiberals and conservatives dislike reading opposing…
Will Crowther, an RPG-er, created the first text-based adventure game for computers Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975.6 When Don Woods developed it into Adventure in 1976-1977 he added the Tolkienian elements of trolls and elves. —Helen Young, Journal of Tolkien Research Well, yes, but Crowther had already started with the Tolkenian elements of underground dwarves,…
I just saw the following clickbait for an ongoing non-story in the technology world: “All the latest speculation about [topic X] in one place.” That’s less like a news headline and more like the punchline to a New Yorker cartoon. No, I did not click the link. Similar:Facebook Hired Journalists to Train Its Trending Topics…
Great reporting from Christopher Goffard of the LA Times. Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name. Source: She was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to harm her? Similar:Kids Today: A Response to…
Similar:What a great time everyone had at the "Cabbies."CultureEaster 2022PersonalBetween static hand-coded HTML pages and modern content-management systems, there used to …When I started my blog in 1999 (by addin…CyberculturePater Noster Passenger ElevatorsSome 50 years ago, my father took me to …AmusingI just caught myself thinking, “This doesn’t suck.” #medievalyork #mysteryplay #blender3d …I just caught…
In situations of change, it is natural for human beings to look for touchstones. As a human being, I had always sought a center to my life, an example to follow. What I hadn’t realized was that I was already following a path into the future. It was pointed out to me at a business…
Don’t trust your Facebook feed. All Facebook wants is for you to spend time on Facebook, so that they can sell your attention to the highest bidder. Facebook recently fired 18 employees whose job was to write headlines for and monitor the “Trending Topics” list. When that list fell under scrutiny for an alleged…
Saving this for the next time I teach Shakespeare. All well and good, you say, but my parents are worried about what I’m going to do after I graduate. There, too, Shakespeare can be a model. When he was born, there wasn’t yet a professional theater in London. In other words, his education had prepared him…
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children…
Today, Facebook announced that human curators will no longer write short descriptions that accompany trending topics on the site. Instead, the company will rely on an algorithmic process to “pull excerpts directly from stories.” The company also said it will stop using human curators to sort through the news…. It’s important to note that Facebook originally…
Our future robot overlords never looked so squishy. A team of Harvard University scientists has built an entirely soft robot — one that’s inspired by an octopus. The octobot, described this week in the journal Nature, could pave the way toward more effective soft robots that could be used in search and rescue, exploration and…
Similar:Trump Fires Senior Adviser’s Son From Transition for Sharing Fake NewsTrump senior adviser’s son, who used a t…Current_EventsNovel defined: a term used by some students to mean “any text we study in English class”AcademiaMeet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureOn this date in 1999 I…
This short film documents an early attempt to use hypertext to help students study poetry. A fascinating early collaboration between computer science and the humanities. Similar:The Rise of "Synthespians"”Mr. Serkis is the human actor behind th…ArtMy View: What will you do with an English degree? PlentyI just found my first reading assignment…AcademiaThe girl as Mrs…
Similar:Parents Dedicate New College Safe Space In Honor Of Daughter Who Felt Weird In Class Once“When our Alexis felt weird after hearin…AcademiaI Don’t Know Why Everyone’s in Denial About College Students Who Can’t Do the ReadingIn my lit classes, I’m definitely teachi…AcademiaMy student journos are meming it like bosses.PersonalQuidditch Comes to Seton HillwartsVisitors often remark…
If movies about space have taught us anything, it’s that no one can hear you scream. If you get lost in space, nobody’s going to find you. Unless you’re a spacecraft with a direct link to NASA. Then, there is hope for you yet. STEREO-B, from the Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission, went missing on…
Today my son asked me to take him shopping for his favorite foods. He’s tired of fast-food take-out. I told him I was busy today running the spotlight for and videotaping yet another one of Carolyn’s performances (this time her voice teacher’s summer revue).
The poor boy has been left at home a lot while the rest of us did so much theater over the summer. He competed in a chess tournament last week. I fell asleep in the next room. He came in second place. (I have no pictures. I’m a bad father.)
While secondary schools pour their resources into helping students get into a good university, and adults rush to teach teens how to behave well socially, no one’s covering what kids need to know for, you know, the actual classes. I have a clear picture of what’s missing from their preparation. Here’s what to tell your…
AFTER A 14-YEAR run, Gawker.com is shutting down next week. Gawker Media’s new owner, US Spanish-language TV network Univision, made the decision to shut down the site after bidding $135 million for the web publisher’s seven-site portfolio in a bankruptcy auction earlier this week. (A bankruptcy judge is set to approve the final sale later…
Helen Keller, rendered blind and deaf after an infection as a toddler, learned the gift of language from her patient and determined teacher, Annie Sullivan. Their story is told in the play The Miracle Worker (and my daughter plays Helen in three more shows this weekend at Latrobe’s Cabaret Theatre). As a young woman Helen Keller…