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:All the Classroom’s a StageSome good observations in this essay. As…AcademiaSlow flyby of a scout shop. Starfield backdrop; particle-based engine exhaust; hull uses a…More progress as I continue to level up …AestheticsThe girl has gotten progressively more dedicated over the past few days.When you’re a homeschool parent, you go …AestheticsI just bought Diamond City.GamesSet…
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:My buddy JTK helps me make a key point in my slideshow. #4c18 #b29Putting speaker notes on an iPad is alwa…AcademiaOwner…
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:Stuffed planet Venus, made for me by my dear mother, around 1974.AestheticsTopics in Am Lit: August Wilson — Online J-Term course starts Dec 16.PersonalIf I don’t hang my own artwork on the walls of my #steampunk fantasy ship-of-the-line, who…AestheticsYou may move your tassels from right to left. #classof2017 PersonalHad a rough day. Designing another 10 sq…
Similar:On my fantasy #steampunk cruiser, every uniform is a parade dress uniform. #Blender3D #ble… The first few weeks of Jun…AestheticsRecording my lines for a student escape room project.PersonalVery interesting adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. #pptlaytime @thepublicpghCultureEmpathy in a Downtown Sub ShopSitting in a downtown sub shop. A half d…CultureThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s…
Similar:My Kids Are Shatner Than MostI passed along to my geeklings an apprec…DramaNASA prepares a Mercury probe for orbitNASA’s Messenger probe is about 10 days …Current_EventsWhat Borges Learned from CervantesBorges reinvented Don Quixote as a playf…BooksThe boy approved of the WWII historical fiction Dunkirk. CultureDelightfully geeky news story about a legal kerfuffle over typefacesI’m very amused…
Similar:Enjoying an ice cream cake, apple pie, and the classic Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Mac…PersonalWhat would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? @shu_hog… AmusingTom Jones, librettist for "The Fantasticks," dies at 95I was so glad to see my daughter in this…AestheticsSeven reasons why blogging can make…
[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:ThinkGeek :: Star Trek Enterprise PlushSet phasers to “Squeee!” ThinkGee…AestheticsMale Supporting Characters in Recent Disney Princess Films Dominate the DialogueThe silly click-baity headline in the Wa…BusinessTook the whole day off and spent…
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 Offspring (StarTrek:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 16)…
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…