If your writing teacher lets you revise your first draft, don’t just submit a cleaner, less-beat-up version of the same beat-up sedan. Instead, take it apart, hold each piece in your hand, and make your second draft a pink monster truck, a time-traveling DeLorean, or a solar-powered jetpack. That’s revision.
My new hero is NPR’s Michael Oreskes. Scott Detrow had a terrific story today about Donald Trump’s appearance at a Black church. The pastor called Trump on the carpet for attacking Hillary Clinton when he had promised not to be partisan. Trump later attacked the pastor and misstated key facts about what actually happened. Why…
I begin a class on “Bartleby the Scrivener”: “Maybe I should do what Bartleby does. Maybe instead of teaching this class, I should protest an impersonal environment, and calmly decline to do what society expects of me. But I don’t have the guts to do that. Okay, who’d like to start the discussion?”
Scene: I am driving my teenagers to an audition.
Girl: Peter, did you leave your sideburns?
Boy: I didn’t shave at all.
Me: Good. A beard is appropriate for this play.
Girl: Fiddler on the Roof is a *musical*.
Similar:"All for the Best" RehearsalHere’s a brief clip of a rehearsal of “A…AmusingEditorial: Video Games and The Great Train Robbery Through the development of crosscuttin…AestheticsDetails from the author's life are not the magic ticket to "correct" interpretations in li…Students who are new to college literatu…AcademiaThe Ensigns of Command (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 2) Data…
Every year I rewatch Taylor Mali’s passionate defense of “What Teachers Make.” As part of a sequence of assignments designed to help students write a more engaging personal literacy narrative, I use Mali’s speech. Yes, it’s my job to teach composition, but composition is a term that applies to music, photography, choreography, athletics, etc. Students…
I don’t follow sports, so I don’t feel fully equipped to comment on the issue, but when a friend raised it via an email I thought I’d share my thoughts about the rhetorical and dramatic nature of patriotism and protest. I have often wished I could attend a concert/literary discussion where singers performed the national…
Not knowing what else to do, in the numb hours after the towers fell, I made a web page that explored the World Trade Center in literature and culture, as well as urban technology in general. I updated it a bit over the next few weeks or months, but have mostly left it as an…
Facebook makes editorial decisions that affect its presentation of news through its “news” (?) feed. But Facebook is in the business to make money for Facebook, and the trending topics feed is just a tool to keep people on Facebook. Someone needs to assign Facebook a faculty adviser. In the space of a single day,…
Similar:Help! I may be running out of excuses for not wearing…Help! I may be running out of excuses fo…CultureNASA sends humans back to the moon for an orbital visit. I was *such* a space nerd as a ki…I remember being SO excited for the laun…AwesomeHow the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive The ink used in a…
Number of times one of my $9.99 headphones fell out of my ears while I was mowing the lawn this morning: 3. Likelihood I might spend $159 on AirPods: 0%. Likelihood I might spend $15.90 on AirPods: 0%. Similar:New utility chair and appliances from the service areas of my fantasy #steampunk #blender3…AestheticsWood pile stacking animation…
When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works. It doesn’t matter whether the headphones were made by the same manufacturer as the phone. It doesn’t even matter what you’re trying to do with the audio signal—it works whether the cable is going into a speaker, a mixing board, or a recording…
Fascinating theory. The hard work of raising helpless babies is part of the natural selection process that made us as a species so intelligent. Natural selection favors humans with large brains, because those humans tend to be smarter. This may create evolutionary incentives for babies that are born at an even earlier developmental stage, which…
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:NASA reconnects with Voyager 1 (after months of confusion) NASA says it is once again abl…AwesomePicking a rubric in Canvas should not be so frustrating that it makes me want to blog abou…In general, I find Canvas a fairly…
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:He couldn’t get over his fiancee’s death. So…
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:Writing Effective E-MailTop 10 Tips: …
Similar:Brother Stuck in the BathroomThe girl posted this story on Instagram …AmusingVolunteering at our local food bankEthicsI'm not showing you my email inbox, or my laundry pile, or the state of my soul. Just…PersonalThose emails can wait.PersonalAnother square of #steampunk control panel eye candy. #blender3d #blender3dart #design #a…AestheticsChess tournament in Monroeville. Two losses, two wins.The…
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…