I would never have chosen to watch “Cowboys and Al…
I would never have chosen to watch “Cowboys and Aliens” but it was surprisingly enjoyable.
RT @dloehr: 12yr: “Those Muppets are lip-synching….
RT @dloehr: 12yr: “Those Muppets are lip-synching.”
RT @mkirschenbaum: Can’t see them well enough to r…
RT @mkirschenbaum: Can’t see them well enough to read, but guy sitting next to me is typing out short, broken lines of text. Tempted to ask…
The Bill That Could Save College Students $1,200 a Year
Faculty who need to publish for professional reasons can be motivated for reasons other than a royalty check, so this sounds like a good idea. The Affordable College Textbook Act, introduced by Durbin and Franken this month, aims to lower book costs by promoting the use of open-source textbooks. Open books, as defined by the…
Giving Obsolete Books an Afterlife as Theatre Props
Once, someone really cared about these old periodicals. The bound copies have been weeded out of my school library. Post by Dennis G. Jerz.
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get
I expect my English majors not to balk when I ask them to learn new software. One good way to learn is to shadow someone who already knows it well. Even better, work with a classmate who’s just a step or two ahead — that way they can both learn together. In my “News Writing”…
Terrified Obama Trapped Inside Healthcare.gov Website
“Goddammit, I don’t know what to do!” Obama said, banging his hands in frustration against a wall of binary as the entire healthcare.gov mainframe suddenly froze, forcing all previously flowing lines of code to come to a complete standstill. “I can’t fix this! Get me out of this place!” “Please! Just get me out of…
12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes
Descriptive grammarians rejoice. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in…
Gettysburg Address event marks 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s historic speech
On the Civil War battlefield where President Abraham Lincoln gave a speech that symbolized his presidency and the sacrifices made by Union and Confederate forces, thousands gathered Tuesday, historians and everyday Americans alike, to ponder what the Gettysburg Address has meant to the nation. —The Washington Post.
Grr! That “15 Xs who did Y” link looked interestin…
Grr! That “15 Xs who did Y” link looked interesting, but on the first page I saw it was broken up into 63 parts. Bad meme. No link for you.
‘Because’ has become a preposition, because grammar
The construction is more versatile than “because+noun” suggests. Prepositional because can be yoked to verbs (Can’t talk now because cooking), adjectives (making up examples because lazy), interjections (Because yay!), and maybe adverbs too, though in strings like Because honestly., the adverb is functioning more as an exclamation. The resulting phrases are all similarly succinct and…
Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment?
Wow… what a drab, unquoteworthy, unsoundbiteable, graphics-free presentation of findings that will be of tremendous interest to the general public. TV but not electronic games predicted a small increase in conduct problems. Screen time did not predict other aspects of psychosocial adjustment. Further work is required to establish causal mechanisms..
RT @avantgame: 11,000 kids tracked for A DECADE to…
RT @avantgame: 11,000 kids tracked for A DECADE to see if videogames lead to negative attention, behavioral, mood impact. Result: NO http:/…
@JustJoshReardon Excellent work from the whole cas…
@JustJoshReardon Excellent work from the whole cast & crew. A great night of theater @setonhill #biglove
Setting out to take my teen to see #biglove at #se…
Setting out to take my teen to see #biglove at #setonhill
Nerd siblings are awesome siblings
My 15yo wanted to show me Terminator 4, but he opted to watch T3 w/ his little sister (her first time). Nerd siblings are awesome siblings.
Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course
Suddenly, something that had been unthinkable–that the Internet might put a free, Ivy League–caliber education within reach of the world’s poor–seems tantalizingly close. “Imagine,” an investor in the Professor’s company says, “you can hand a kid in Africa a tablet and give him Harvard on a piece of glass!” The wonky term for the Professor’s…
Closing the Door on the Video Store Era (with tweets) · chutry · Storify
Now that Blockbuster Video has officially closed, I welcome Chuck Tyron’s Storify aggregation, which turned up this goodie: When I was a kid, movies like The Wizard of Oz were aired on TV once a year (usually during Thanksgiving weekend). At school the next week, everyone would be singing the songs and quoting the lines.…
Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use (updated)
Update in a legal battle that’s been going on for 8 years. A long-running copyright lawsuit between the Authors’ Guild and Google over its book-scanning project is over, and Google has won on the grounds that its scanning is “fair use.” In other words, the snippets of books that Google shows for free don’t break…
My 15yo son’s Christmas wish list: “An iPod case t…
My 15yo son’s Christmas wish list: “An iPod case that fits, and a letter opener. I hate to tear an envelope.”