What Khan Academy’s Fun, Free Learning Empire Has to Do with Dystopian Social Control

Over the Christmas break, I’ve been churning through Khan Academy math drills, so that I can be a more effective homeschool parent. It’s actually kind of fun watching my score go up, and earning badges. In the way that birds who are trained to peck buttons for food think it’s fun to peck their little beaks bloody. As a grad student ploughing through…

A Thursday throwback to end 2015.

Similar:Sherlock Holmes and The Woman (daughter and I rehearsing for a live recording Friday after…CultureProgress over 11 years of Blender3D practiceOver the past few years I have created l…AestheticsAnother random background control panel for a #blender3d #steampunk project. I wish all us…AestheticsMy parents doing their daily crossword. I’m spending a few days visiting my …PersonalCarolyn,…

Daughter made a Rainbow Loom Marty McFly. Note vest jacket and hover board.

Similar:The daughter is doing another thing, this time in Galway, Ireland. AestheticsKinetic Theatre's "Hound of the Baskervilles" was hilarious. Kinetic Theatre’s production was ful…BooksAnnie 2012 with Annie 2017. Annie 2012 with her Warbucks. "Together at last. Together …PersonalVulcan mind-melds from Star Trek: The Original Series, in the order that I can think of th… With Dr.…

And so it begins.

Similar:Faculty assembling in launch tube beneath Salvitti Gym. #classof2017 @setonhilluniversityPersonalFaceTime Fun: iPod Touch Rides in Jedi FighterThrough the magic of FaceTime and the ve…AmusingBecause Internet: the new linguistics of informal EnglishI’m planning to begin my online Shakespe…CultureAquiel (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 13) LaForge adopts a murder victim's dog…Rewatching ST:TNG LaForge gets a litt…EmpathyI…

Is There a Santa Claus?

Update, Dec 2020:   We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun: Dear Editor— I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If…

NASA Releases New Earthrise Image

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon. “The image is simply stunning,” said Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by Astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo…

Cookies. That is all.

Similar:The End of Headphone Jacks, the Rise of DRMWhen you plug an audio cable into a smar…BusinessAnother #steampunk interior. High tech garden gazebo or away team dropship? Why not both? … AestheticsSteampunk flag for the United States of Britannia (from the alternate history my kids and …In the steampunk world my kids and I mad…AestheticsUVA…

Final week of Pict Classic Theatre’s Oliver Twist (NEXTpittsburgh)

Today is Carolyn’s day off from Oliver Twist… the show’s final week starts tomorrow, and ends with two shows on Saturday Dec 19. Now, the iconic story of Oliver Twist makes its U.S. premiere in a production with local ties and significance for one Pittsburgh-based theater company. If you have yet to catch PICT Classic Theatre‘s Oliver Twist—which opened on…

The Complete Deaths: all of the Bard’s 74 scripted deaths in one new play.

Over the past four centuries, the brutality of Shakespeare’s plays has become the subject of endless academic study, but his contemporary critics didn’t approve of the on-stage gore. Michael Dobson,  director of the Shakespeare Institute, said that Elizabethan drama was known for being gruesome: “The English drama was notorious for on-stage deaths; they were thought crass.…

A student who had often been frustrated during my class used this poem in her final reflection.

  Similar:MoonBot is back. This time he fights a new adversary. #Blender3D physics practice.I submitted midterm grades at about 11 l…AestheticsThe ballroom of my #steampunk fantasy space cruiser is now a less lonely place. Thanks to watching many, many YouTub…AestheticsRossum's Universal Robots (Act 1) Artistic ProsperityThe first act of Artistic Prosperity’s v…CultureThe boy tied for…

Recording Christmas Stories for WAOB Audio Theatre

For WAOB Audio Theater, my family spent an afternoon recording “The Little Match Girl,” “Papa Panov’s Special Day,” and a new story, “The Executioner.”  Already online — Ozma and the Little Wizard, and The Monkey’s Paw. Similar:Beam me up, Chewie!AwesomeFoggy April morning on the hill.PersonalI Love Books: A Campus Library EvolvesI love books. I love…

CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day

Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day.  —The Onion Similar:Planet of the Blind: Oprah, If Only You Had Read the…