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:A #neovictorian master status display board for a #steampunk #blender3d project. Inspired …AestheticsAcademic Writing BluesTwo days ago my problem was that I had n…AcademiaChess tournament final pairing. (He’s currently tied for 2nd.)PersonalThe lighting doesn't really convey that this is supposed to be a slightly curved scroll of…AestheticsA brief respite from grading. A brief respite from…

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

Similar:On the Virtues of a Dadsplained Literary ChildhoodThe last book I read to her was Wutherin…BooksMy daughter was five or six when she created the character “Moonbot” for the #steampunk be…https://youtu.be/GoWiNB_tlJ8  AestheticsThe Toulmin model for analyzing arguments came up at a faculty pedagogy workshop today. I … AcademiaI think I’ve mentioned I have a daughter…

And so it begins.

Similar:700-year-old picture of 'Mickey Mouse' found in Austrian church”Walt Disney first sketched his characte…Art'Island of the Blue Dolphins' woman's cave believed foundFor more than 20 years, Navy archaeologi…BooksWinners Chosen in Annual Shakespeare Monologue and Scene ContestMichael Henninger took this wonderful ph…BooksAll Good Things… (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 25) Picard faces a timey-wim… Rewatching…

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:I touched up an intro to hypertext essays from 2000.When I initially wrote this introduction…CybercultureA question I find myself thinking all the time.PersonalUshering for a school matinee. Love seeing the kids excited about @prime_stage Frankenstei… CultureAbove the ready-room desk is the captain's power-napping loft, because self-care is i…AestheticsCliffhanger from ST:TNG Best of Both Worlds. I…

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:Ginger Christ Superstar!AestheticsA performance, two auditions and a cast party. #busyweekendPersonalLast night I dreamed I was a stagehand during a metatheatrical number called “Butts in Sea…I saw Seton Hill’s production of The Dro…DramaUgh. Unmarked items waiting for me as I start to recover from an illness.PersonalJust a random side corridor in the #neovictorian #steampunk…

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:The girl's modern dance choreography workshopAestheticsI love my students enough to teach them the difference between passive voice and…

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:Two Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots Talk and Argue with Each OtherSounds…