A colleague bakes Irish soda bread to share on the Humanities floor every St Patrick’s Day

Similar:Thank you, anonymous donor of Mardi Gras candy.Okay, on closer inspection I see the red…AestheticsMy son (black) has captured better pieces, but my brother (white) has a better position. C… PersonalUnmarked papers today. How it started, how it's going.PersonalWaiting for the sound of bagpipes. #setonhillgrad 2016PersonalThe girl as Mrs Lovett with Ben Federico as Sweeney Todd.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITqwfTCk…CultureEnjoying…

Stupid Puns For the Win

My daughter just trounced me in a pun war. In high school, I often tried masking my social awkwardness by making puns. Not just random puns, but stupid chains of rapid-fire puns, all on the same general subject. I had these mental lists of puns related to bland subjects like photography (“Lens be serious.” “That…

When you need to record footsteps on a sidewalk, and the carpeted studio has a brick wall.

Similar:All the Classroom’s a StageSome good observations in this essay. As…AcademiaSpent a half hour taming this tangle of cables (left) with a little tiny six-inch-wide car…AestheticsSeeing Lyle Kessler's "Orphans" with the girl.Personal"The threat is no longer simply from government censorship."After using examples from Warsaw and Pra…CultureElon Musk has officially killed Twitter. The zombie platform lives…

“People are much more frightened than they are bigoted,” making his economic message resonate with “fed up” blue-collar voters, says Trump observer

No actor says “My character does this and says that because he is evil.” How many voters wake up in the morning saying, “I support this candidate because I am evil, stupid, and/or racist”? Nobody votes “against women’s reproductive rights” or “against unborn babies.” Those are labels provided by the opposition, not the identity claimed…

Police raid best-selling Turkish newspaper hours after government takes it over

Turkish authorities seized control of the media company that owns the country’s best-selling Zaman newspaper, a one-time supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that became one of his fiercest critics. —Chicago Tribune Similar:NASA finally makes contact with Voyager 2 after longest radio silence in 30 yearsI was thrilled as a middle-schooler to s…Current_EventsWhy Are Babies…

Rubric for the Rubric Concerning Students’ Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books and Writing About Them.

Sadly, this only barely counts as satire. The Core Educational Competency In Reading Things In Books and Writing About Them requires that students demonstrate “critical thinking” and “critical reading” skills, but please note that this kind of cleverness should only be encouraged with regards to literary books. Aspects of life to which “critical thinking” and…

Simon Newman Resigns as President of Mount St. Mary’s

Simon P. Newman resigned on Monday evening as president of Mount St. Mary’s University, capping a weeks-long furor over a controversial freshman-retention plan that focused national attention on the Roman Catholic college in rural Maryland. Mr. Newman, a former private-equity chief executive, incited a backlash by using a clumsy “drown the bunnies” analogy in reference…

Your Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years Of Guilt

On Jan. 27, 1986, the former engineer for shuttle contractor Morton Thiokol had joined four colleagues in trying to keep Challenger grounded. They argued for hours that the launch the next morning would be the coldest ever. Freezing temperatures, their data showed, stiffened rubber O-rings that keep burning rocket fuel from leaking out of the…

Mizzou professor who pushed reporter away from protesters is fired

“The board believes that Dr. Click’s conduct was not compatible with university policies and did not meet expectations for a university faculty member,” Henrickson wrote. “The circumstances surrounding Dr. Click’s behavior, both at a protest in October when she tried to interfere with police officers who were carrying out their duties, and at a rally…