Melissa Terras’ Blog: Male, Mad and Muddleheaded: Academics in Children’s Picture Books

Labcoats, suits (but not if you are female!) or safari suits (but not if you are female!) are the academic uniform du jour. The names given to the academics are telling, with the majority being less than complimentary: Professor Dinglebat, Professor P. Brain, Professor Blabbermouth, Professor Bumblebrain, Professor Muddlehead, Professor Hogwash, Professor Bumble, Professor Dumkopf,…

Email (finding the right tone as a writer)

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The Out-of-Control Author

When you’re writing just for yourself, you’re in control. Of everything. You control what your characters do, what they say and think and wear, what happens to them, where their story begins and ends. Every aspect of the story is completely in your hands. It’s your book. All yours. When you work with a publisher,…

TSA Agent Confession

It was May 2007. I was living with a bohemian set on Chicago’s north side, a crowd ranging from Foucault-fixated college kids to middle-aged Bukowski-bred alcoholics. We drank and talked politics on the balcony in the evenings, pausing only to sneer at hipsters strumming back-porch Beatles sing-a-longs. By night, I took part in barbed criticism…

Alice in Quantumland: A Charming Illustrated Allegory of Quantum Mechanics by a CERN Physicist

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics is absolutely fantastic in its entirety, certain to engage the simultaneous states of entertainment and education with unequaled grace. Complement it with scientists’ answers to little kids’ questions about how the world works, then bend your mind by considering what it’s like to live in a universe…

International Studies Association proposes to bar editors from blogging

“I think it’s a really strange proposal in 2014,” said Stephen M. Saideman, a professor at Carleton University in Canada and one of many political science scholars who assailed the policy on social media. “I would have expected it in 2006.” Faculty members, several outside the field of international studies, said the proposal is simultaneously…

Facebook, really? More people liked the picture in my post than saw the post that includes the picture?

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I sometimes snark at the @Turnitin interface, but…

I sometimes snark at the @Turnitin interface, but I love the new ability to tie comments to rubric items. Well done! http://t.co/InHGMWpDkZ Similar:Richard Halloran / Owns Home Computer.“Engineers now predict the day will come…AmusingMultimodal Composition: Every time a student submits a narrated PowerPoint, a puppy cries.AcademiaDCNF, TV Upfront Presenters Need to Understand That Content's Kingdom…

Should the AP Really Have Fired This Pulitzer-Prize War Photographer?

The original shot caught a Syrian rebel fighter moving from his position, his AK-47 in hand. It also showed something else: “a colleague’s video camera” in “the lower left corner of the frame,” according to the AP’s investigation. Before filing the image to his editors, Contreras used digital software to take the camera out of…

RT @PhilKomarny: A floppy disc… In #context htt…

RT @PhilKomarny: A floppy disc… In #context http://t.co/5HjNls404X Similar:What kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not being selfish… this is …EducationIt's been nice knowing you, iPad3 It’s been nice knowing you, iPad3, but…Tweets10 Rules of Internet – Anil DashA very useful, concise summary of web-en…BusinessHow hate and misinformation go viral:…

@MichaelSimsBook @mkonnikova “When a blogger uses…

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