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)

Similar:Paradise Lost #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 12) Sisko Uncovers a Conspiracy on…Rewatching ST:DS9 Continuing from P…EthicsFacebook Ad Refreshes Interrupt the Composition ProcessSo I’m trying to edit a Facebook status,…BusinessA comic about Seagulls. If you feel like this…  A comic about Seagulls. If…CultureIf Google+ Heads to the Grave, at Least It’ll Have DirectionForced Google+…

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…

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:Almost Flat DesignApple, Google and Microsoft have very di…AestheticsLet's face it, it's time to give up on those Portal and Half-Life sequelsReserving judgments is a matter of infin…BusinessUrsula K. Le Guin: A Personal…

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:Carolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating use of social media. To be c…Current_EventsHello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s restore you fr…TweetsIn Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureHabits for happiness: tips for looking…

@MichaelSimsBook @mkonnikova “When a blogger uses…

@MichaelSimsBook @mkonnikova “When a blogger uses hyperbole while recommending an article on viral media, you won’t believe what happens!” Similar:My Minecraft-obsessed tween made this blocky foam pig at art camp. Next up: Stage Right summer musical th…AestheticsProto iPads and Paper Coexist in Classic Star TrekRewatching the classic Trek episode “The…CybercultureHello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s…

The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You

Overblown Headline of New Yorker Article on Memes Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You In 350 B.C., Aristotle was already wondering what could make content—in his case, a speech—persuasive and memorable, so that its ideas would pass from person to person. The answer, he argued, was three principles: ethos, pathos, and logos. Content should have…