As the authors depressingly note, “the UK is one of the most economically unequal of the rich countries, and closing many of the gaps we describe will require systemic change beyond the scope of this report”. Well, quite. And herein lies the problem with teaching young people that through sheer vim and vigour they can…
I’m definitely seeing students in my freshman writing class and intro lit classes struggling with complex texts. I have more freedom to address the problem in my lit classes, where the focus is on reading. In the freshman writing class, where the goal is to produce a 10-page research paper by the end of term,…
In 1915, Parker, aged twenty-two, went to work at Vogue (for ten dollars a week), writing captions, proofreading, fact-checking, etc., and after a while moved over to the very young Vanity Fair; her first poem to be published had recently appeared there. She happily functioned as a kind of scribe-of-all-work until three years later she…
On average we spend six to seven hours in front of our phone, tablet, computer and TV screens every day. All this is simply becoming boring. Instead of performing varied activities that engage different neural systems (sport, knitting, painting, cooking, etc) to relieve our tedium, we fall back on the same screen-tapping schema for much…
On this date — April 23, 1616 — the creator of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet” left the beauty of this world. To us, he bequeathed his tragedies and comedies, his sonnets and verse, which would survive 400 years. —NYTimes Similar:The "Monsters, Inc" company play helped me teach ShakespeareToday the awkward but delightful “Monste…AcademiaWe…
Borges reinvented Don Quixote as a playful novel, full of surprises and unexpected anticipations of the way we read today. Across genres and over decades, his varied meditations opened new paths for readers. The following conversation took place during January 2016 between Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College,…
My freshman writing students are among the scores presenting their research in preparation for drafting their big term paper. Similar:Scientists thought only male birds sang – until women joined the researchFor more than 150 years, scientists have…AcademiaWhat Can You Do With a Humanities Ph.D., Anyway?Victoria Blodgett, director of Graduate …AcademiaLove This Headline: "He took a…
This is why I still blog. While commercial platforms like Facebook and Twitter are designed to keep you churning out new content that attracts shallow attention, a weblog encourages reflection, the exploration of lateral thinking and deep linking, and the accumulation of ideas (your chronologically sorted, taggable history of posts) over time. Mark C. Marino…
Similar:Seeing the Barebones production of The Sound Inside. (Support the arts in your community!)PersonalThe Skin of Our Teeth Panel Discussion (Seton Hill University, October 2021; Carolyn Jerz,…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k03kQ7Ot…AcademiaDid you put enough donuts in the elevator shaft of your #steampunk #neovictorian cruiser t…https://youtu.be/lSgv5L0sXtc &nbs…Aesthetics“The Cowherd Who Became a Poet,” by James Baldwin. (Read by Dennis Jerz)Inspiration can…
A third alum in the last few weeks has contacted me to thank me for challenging her while a student: When I look back on my time at SHU, I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, but yet again, this is proof that the skills you taught us so a few years ago…
Think of journalism as falling into three basic baskets: The “what” basket, the “so what” basket and the “now what” basket. The “what” basket is filled with reporting in a straightforward manner on things that happened. “There was a fire at 8th and Elm Street today. No one was injured,” and all that. The “so…
Fair use is a concept baked into US copyright law, and it’s a defense to copyright infringement if certain elements are met. The US Copyright Office says the defense is decided on a case-by-case basis. “The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear…
Hundreds of thousands of people on Facebook followed BuzzFeed’s live video of two people putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it burst. We should all reflect on how journalism can make the news that is truly important interesting enough to compete with exploding fruit. Traditional media companies face the increasingly daunting task of hooking…
The boy’s personal best in terms of win-loss. Trophy for performance at his level. A fun Satuday. Similar:Behold this stack of August Wilson library booksYay, libraries. I’m delighted that my co…AcademiaMeet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureThe last submissions of this o'er ripe term, Ungraded,…
Was browsing YouTube for a few of my favorite movie swordfights. Yes, the left-handed thing from Princess Bride was clever, and sure, the upgrading from foils to sabres in The Great Race added tension. You might be cool with the quips, but you’ll never be “Cryano de Bregerac dueling Valvert while simultaneously composing a ballad…
I learned a lot while reading this enjoyable essay by Jimmy Maher. Looked at today, however, Sherlock certainly wasn’t a bad note to go out on. Being built on the sturdy foundation of everything Infocom had learned about making text adventures to date, it’s not notably, obviously innovative, but, impressively given that it is a…
It’s a world of trial and error and constant discovery, stuffed with byzantine secrets, obscure text commands and hidden recipes. And it runs completely counter to most modern computing trends. Where companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google want our computers to be easy to manipulate — designing point-and-click interfaces under the assumption that it’s…
A couple weeks ago I posted about a recent graduate and former Setonian editor-in-chief who said that skills she wasn’t at the time exactly thrilled I made her learn in the new media journalism program helped her land her first full-time job with benefits. Today I heard from a different former editor-in-chief, who was thrilled…
Similar:Beautiful News Writing: "Rampaging rooster attacks girl."I don’t want to make light of a little g…Aesthetics‘Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: The Thane, Insane, Slays Mainly in DunsinaneWhat a headline. The poet John B…CultureFacebook, Now You Remind Me of a Half-Drunk Cocktail Party SchmoozerLast week, Facebook asked me what sports…BusinessIt Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is…
“We Shall Overcome,” a song that was the “unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement,” was wrongly placed under copyright and should be put in the public domain, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court. The complaint (PDF) was filed by the same group of lawyers who succeeded at putting the world’s most famous song, Happy Birthday, into…