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:Jerz Family Tin Can Robot Warshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIBQkobPW…Personal8k trimsheets baked as efficient building blocks for my #fantasy #steampunk #cgi cruiser. …PersonalCarolyn and Alex in “The King and I”PersonalYou aren’t doing it wrong… if no one knows what you are doing.PersonalIt’s that time again.PersonalEye of Sauron, Hobbit Door, Palantir and One Ring Easter Eggs.Aesthetics

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

Similar:Fancy a game of whist with your nemesis? The prospect of ruin adds piquancy to the pleasur…PersonalVisiting Ft Ligonier #sevenyearswar #history #localhistoryPersonalSettling in for a jukebox show (not my favorite genre but the Go-Gos are fun).PersonalThe daughter experiences her birthday cookie AestheticsDear 11yo DaughterYou are growing up smart, talented, dete…PersonalCome see Carolyn and her talented…

And so it begins.

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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.

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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.…

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:Nerdling spots typo in space exploration textbook.PersonalA stranger took this photo of my parents doing their daily crossword together…

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:Long Live the LARPers — My daughter plays the antagonist in…