Vienna State Opera, funny ballet. Слава Украине! – YouTube. Similar:Google's Super Bowl Ad: A Romance in SearchI didn’t watch the game, but I did catch…AestheticsOn the Hatred of LiteratureGoing back to Plato—perhaps the first ha…AcademiaOn Night, Darkness & the PastWhen we banish the dark, what do we lose…AestheticsLet’s Make the Academic Job Market More HumaneIt’s…
Words that defined Ronald Reagan’s presidency, as remembered by the White House speechwriter. As a speechwriter you spent your working life watching Reagan, talking about Reagan, reading about Reagan, attempting to inhabit the very mind of Reagan. When you joined him in the Oval Office, you didn’t want to hear him say simply that he…
I gave my class a Poem to read. The author’s Name — I hid. I said, “How would you recognize A poet — edited? “What if each Dash I have removed — And lowercased each Quirk?” The students said, “Well, Dr. Jerz, Then you would be a jerk.” The prose version: The poem I showed…
After last night’s first rehearsal for “Fiddler on the Roof,” things that have made me start singing “Tradition!” in my head so far today: 1) Reading the name “Alyssa.” (Alyssa!) 2) Thinking about textbooks for next semester. (Edition!) 3) Thinking about hell. (Perdition!) 4) Turning on my car engine. (Ignition!) 5) Thinking about my upcoming…
This year I have seen an uptick in the percentage of users who are visiting my website with a mobile device. About a year ago, I introduced a responsive web design on my site, with the idea of making it more friendly to narrow screens. I’m glad that design was already in place before I…
Yes, the article is interesting, but I’m blogging it for the Jane Austen reference. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a journalist in possession of a negative statistic must find a way to blame Millennials for it. In 2012, Jordan Weissmann and I observed that young people were turning away from homes and cars,…
The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared. Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged…
The FBI fabricated a story to look like a news piece with an Associated Press byline about bomb threats against Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and revealed by the ACLU on Monday. The FBI also created a fake email link “in the style of…
A comic about Seagulls. If you feel like this…. #FriesGate Similar:In December 2000, I was blogging about typeface snobbery, freedom in video game spaces, th…In December 2000, I was blogging about …AestheticsWhen Perception Trumps Reality: Republicans aren't nearly as rich as Democrats estimate. D…Democrats wildly over-estimate the perce…AcademiaMoon for the MisbehottenEven though I wrote about…
Although the IF community first formed around Inform, a tool for creating parser-based games of the popular sort released by Infocom (Zork, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game, and A Mind Forever Voyaging), tools today are numerous, and many of them bypass the compelling but fricative parser language entirely. For example, in recent years,…
I used to wear a suit and tie when I taught technical writing at my previous job. In part I was sending a message that technical writing is a profession, and in part I was playing dress-up to enjoy the first full-time job I’d ever held (at age 29, after 11 or so years doing…
Victorians had to stay still for 3 seconds for formal portraits, which makes them seem stiffer than they really were.
I did enjoy the opportunity to play with Google Glass briefly, and can imagine certain instances (for instance, while crawling through the real Colossal Cave in Kentucky) when having a hands-free recording device would have been really handy. The social questions raised by Google Glass won’t go away; in the near future, when this sort…
“I don’t see why we are fixated on the single category of income as a measure of success,” James R. Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “If humanities majors tend to become teachers, social workers, clergy, does that mean they are less successful than money managers or engineers?…
NCTE, the National Writing Project, and The New York Times Learning Network invite you to celebrate writing in all its forms: through photos, film, and graphics; with pens, pencils, and computers; in graphs, etchings, and murals; on sidewalks, screens, and paper. This year we encourage you to focus your writing on your community in any way you…
I should probably not grant a student superadmingoddessomgwhathaveidone access to a network at 11:59 on Friday night, but I just did. #trust Similar:Happy Father’s Day One of my favorite pictures of my fa…Current_EventsNASA Communicates with Ailing Voyager 1 SpacecraftI remember staying up well past my bedti…Current_EventsOpen Source College Math BookOne day last year, David Lippman got…
I tried hard to frown disapprovingly when my beautiful daughter demonstrated that she can burp the alphabet, but she did *such* a good job… Similar:Infinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface IndignityAmusingComputers and Writing Conference 2013Where a nerd can be a nerd. (Thanks f…HomeYour Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer…
BABY: read dog book again ME: okay fine show me where the yellow doggie is on this page BABY: [points] ME: good now show me where the brown doggie is on this page BABY: [points] ME: now show me where the author is BABY: [stares blankly] ME: that’s right the author is dead via Mallory…
I’ve been following the frustrating slow burn that is #Gamergate for some time. I’m planning to introduce it in my online Video Game Culture and Theory class this January. This ground-level introduction will help add context to the mayhem. Until recently, you might have lived a life blissfully unaware of the online #Gamergate movement. But…
So, who else is taking advantage of current events and assigning “The Masque of the Red Death”? Are we thoughtful educators? Shameless opportunists? Both? (The disease Poe describes is more sudden than that caused by the ebola virus.) No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the…