Michael Dirda offers a thoughtful assessment of Poe’s career. My initial puzzlement about Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was hardly surprising. His fiction can seem too rhetorical, too thickly textured, too literary for most young people. Still, Basil Rathbone’s recording did persuade me to give the writer another try—sometime. The opportunity finally arose in high school…
Similar:#4C18 snack still life.PersonalI’m still teaching journalism and my usual courses, but after 21 years I’ve stepped aside …I’m still teaching journalism and my usu…AcademiaMy college writing students are out making short videos responding to a prompt.While my students are out of the room ma…AcademiaIs this stripe appearing or disappearing? FULL BLOOM (Aug 30…
The brain-as-computer is a powerful meme. It’s no more accurate than metaphors inspired by fluid dynamics or automata, which were cutting-edge technology in their time, says Robert Epstein. The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of…
I think I must be doing something right if the professionals I see each year at Computers and Writing are as likely to mention seeing Facebook pictures of my kids’ achievements as they are to bring up topics about, you know, computers and writing.
I can’t really get myself that worked up over prescriptive grammar issues, but I do enjoy reading the arguments. The adverb is an incoherent lexical category, a catchall. How are “there,” “yesterday,” “quite,” “assiduously,” and “indeed” all members of the same family? As we learn in school — in a definition that dates from Dionysius…
I have not had much luck with Zagg keyboard cases before (I think this will the fifth time I’ve asked for a replacement, across three different products), but Zagg itself has followed through every time. Similar:Stuffed planet Venus, made for me by my dear mother, around 1974.AestheticsA snifter of brandy helps a supporting character deliver exposition…
Creating n00b-friendly interactive fiction by deliberately reducing the number of available verbs? Intersting… Though I rather liked the results when I experimented with diegetic (in-game) hints delivered by an NPC who gets more and more specific to help the player accomplish some orientation tasks. Parser IF is fundamentally driven by player action, by game verbs, in…
This app, which sports a little red notification bubble showing the number of unmarked assignments on my to-do list, controls much of my life during the school year. This app doesn’t show the number of committee meetings I have to attend, the minutes from committee meetings I have to post, the assigned tasks I have…
Defeat clickbaiters with this one weird trick! You won’t believe how punctuation can save you time. Will you regret clicking that headline phrased as a question? (You can safely avoid clicking any headline phrased as a question, promises an emotional reaction, or hedges a claim with “may” or “could be”. You won’t miss anything important if you don’t click that bait.)
Similar:Identity Crisis (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4 Episode 18) The Case of LaForge’s Disapp… Rewatching ST:TNG An enjoyable …MediaThis is the first time during the pandemic that we’ve brought this game out. Very topical.PersonalZooming into the abyss: Black squares don’t contribute much to the learning environment.PersonalI came of age playing too many CD-ROM point-and-click adventure…
Similar:"Godspell" is sure to entertain audiences of all ages and faithsThat’s me in the white shirt, with a tie…CultureSetting up high, medium and low levels of detail for this element of a city wall. #medieva…PersonalFULL BLOOM (Aug 31-Sep 2)PersonalKinetic Theatre's "Hound of the Baskervilles" was hilarious. Kinetic Theatre’s production was ful…BooksMy meme about the distracted boyfriend…
Similar:Lighting really makes a difference! A glimpse into the captain's ready room, off the offic… AestheticsA Robotic Dog’s MortalityFascinating video journalism from the Ne…CultureNo, this Jeopardy! contestant was not making a white supremacist hand gestureConspiracy theories, knee-jerk tribal th…Current_EventsPut up the Hoop Sooner: 10 lessons of parenting from one wise guy who's done doing the…
Similar:Enjoying more live theater.CultureMaking movie magic with my dueling gut-shot daughterAestheticsUdacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes CourseSuddenly, something that had been unthin…AcademiaProper commenting is an important part of coding any project, especially in an educational…Proper commenting is an important part o…PersonalAnniePersonal#blender3d is teaching me more than I ever thought I’d need to…
[G]ames is a bit more financially brutal than either theatre or poetry, which is funny, because poetry is already financially brutal. It is harder to get people to pay for games than for any other artform I work in. I could make more money for less work elsewhere. That said, in both theatre and poetry…
I was in no rush to finish the beautiful mind-puzzler game Monument Valley. Minimal story, but an engaging world and a satisfying ending. Similar:The News from Ferguson – Live, on Twitter[I]t turns out that Twitter is not just …AcademiaSlow flyby of a scout shop. Starfield backdrop; particle-based engine exhaust; hull uses a…More progress as I…
You don’t want to use Courier New and 1.25 inch margins on your term paper. You want to go home and rethink your life. A true Jedi uses the power of the Font for emphasis and visual rhetoric, never for stretching a 6-page paper to 10 pages. Similar:The Scapegoat by Richard Maples (1957 Sci-Fi Short…
This sounds like the plot of a Young Indiana Jones episode, or maybe Johnny Quest. William Gadoury is a 15-year-old student from Saint-Jean-de-Matha in Lanaudière, Quebec. The precocious teen has been fascinated by all things Mayan for several years, devouring any information he could find on the topic. During his research, Gadoury examined 22 Mayan…
One day when I was an undergraduate working for one of two competing student papers, two rallies were held on opposite sides of the downtown mall. One group held signs like “Keep your laws off my body,” and “Keep abortion safe and legal,” and the other group held signs like “It’s a child, not a choice”…
There can be no true distinction drawn between the effect of word processing on the literary imagination and its intervention in the working lives of the women employed as noncreative automata…. How can we know who was working where, what relationship each female amanuensis had with each new device that came to take her work away?
Interesting essay challenging the notion that medical difference equals pathology. With Children of a Lesser God, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, “Flowers for Algernon,” “Cathedral,” The Glass Menagerie, The Miracle Worker, and The Sound and the Fury, I can see putting together a special topics literature course on pathology and pathos…