A former student of mine who often wore a Star Trek VI T-shirt was trying to make an annoying person go away, so when he spoke to her, she said “Servant, attention!” in Goa’uld. When I paraphrased this story to my son, he immediately said, “Jaffa, kree!” Then he said something in Goa’uld that he…
Students whom I haven’t met yet, I’ll have you know I left a party early so I could be ready for you tomorrow. You’re welcome. And they were still serving cake and ice cream. Similar:Reliving memories and saying goodbye to my late colleague Sr. Ann Infanger.Reliving memories and saying goodbye to …PersonalGreensburg Holiday ParadePersonalWriting Tips…
TWEEN GIRL: “What’s a tribble?” MY GEEKLING DAUGHTER: (Gasp!) ME: Don’t worry, dear. If everyone was a geek, geeks wouldn’t be so awesome. Similar:Saints and Poets, Maybe They Do SomeI wrote the following in 2004, when my s…DramaI just installed the "Old Layout for Facebook" plugin for Chrome.I just installed the “Old Layout for Fac…Cyberculture"I…
#geekgirlproblems Similar:Before and after making a meme of myself as Oberon, King of the FaeriesCultureWhy I Was Wrong About Liberal-Arts MajorsIt’s a little bit shallow and solipsisti…AcademiaThe stair railings on my #blender3d #neovictorian #steampunk cruiser need some realigning….AestheticsDrinking milk and using the #WaybackMachine to fix broken links in a 10-year-old blog post…Personal The Expensive Education of…
“Every good lesson plan has a culminating activity,” says Dr. Audrey Quinlan. “Sondra, it took six months, but here’s your culminating activity.” Similar:Adventure | T.M. CampGreat story of nerdiness and discovery a…CybercultureEducators approve national campaign to halt high stakes, “toxic tests”Not a news item, but an announcement fro…CultureMy brother, in town to see The Nutcracker,…
A blessing before the butterfly release at #sondrasgarden #setonhill http://t.co/z8rKzgc49B Similar:I'm no longer surprised, but still want to document.This is really noteworthy. Today the Pre…Current_EventsTweet: Came around the corner and saw my kids huddled on…Came around the corner and saw my kids h…TweetsParallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue well….HumanitiesRT @DDeClaudio:…
While I’d rather see a reminder that we need to know the rules of formal writing, so that we can choose to ignore them deliberately, otherwise this author makes a good case for the value of poetry. (Great training for the art of writing engaging headlines and story leads.) (See also “Poetry Writing Tips.”) Poetry…
Similarly, “dived” is the traditional past tense of “dive”, but “dove” has overtaken it, as speakers have drawn an analogy with “drove” and “wove”. At some stage, like “stopt” – the old past tense of “stop”, common as recently as the 1940s – “dived” may be obsolete. When will we start to dock points for…
Here is the entry on it from The Times’s “Manual of Style and Usage,” a guidebook used by reporters and editors throughout the newsroom: transgender (adj.) is an overall term for people whose current identity differs from their sex at birth, whether or not they have changed their biological characteristics. Cite a person’s transgender status…
“There was a lot of writing involved. The one that stands out the most is, we were asked to compose a tweet, a limerick, or a haiku. I believe I did a limerick, and it goes: ‘Eyes fixed, gazing off into space My mind in awe of the human race This is all dizzying to…
As the recent death toll in Egypt surpasses 500, news of Muslim Brotherhood supporters being slaughtered in Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square has been an especially tragic manifestation of the powder-keg that is “post-revolutionary” Egypt. Just days before, our photographer found himself embroiled in an MB protest near to that now-tragic location. While this story does not…
With water already obscuring his vision, he had to turn upside down in order to release his safety cable. “Two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see — already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose — a really…
Because you know you have the chance to tell stories for a living. Which is pretty cool. via 31 Undeniable Truths That Journalism Majors Can All Agree On. Similar:Did Google just kill PR agencies? Lots of links, lots of repeated key wo…BusinessIn March 2000, I was blogging about Palm V computers for the Navy,…
My daughter, having just received a hand-me-down paperback, is annotating it and consulting it as she cannibalizes multiple generic Lego sets for what looks to be an epic DIY “Lego Hobbit” video. (We did buy her a small “Riddles in the Dark” set so she could have a Gollum, Bilbo, and ring, but everything else…
Death is universal, so one day I’ll face these decisions. I just asked my tween to put down her Legos and my teen to put down his algebra, so I could tell them that when I’m dead, I don’t want them to pay for a fancy coffin, or cushions, or an open casket. I told…
For years, Shakespeare has been thought to deploy greater linguistic variety than contemporaries like Marlowe, Kyd, and Jonson; scholars have estimated that he coined as many as 1,700 words, and that he employed a uniquely large vocabulary of at least 20,000 words. As professor Alfred Hart, long the authority on Shakespeare’s vocabulary, wrote in 1943,…
“It’s not really fair to say, ‘Look at this guy who died 400 years before I was born. He certainly had different opinions than me about the value of women.’” North says. “There’s stuff that doesn’t age as well, and what you do is you either adapt it so it works better now, or you…
Being a word-oriented thinker, I don’t have much interest in emoji icons. I dislike it when an autocorrect turns a traditional sideways smiley into an icon. My daughter, who at age 11 is too young for a Facebook account, sometimes uses my Facebook account to chat with her slightly-older teen friends, which means that when…
RT @pewresearch: Teens Haven’t Abandoned Facebook (Yet) — @mary_madden says reports of Facebook’s demise among teens are premature http://… Similar:Parallel Structure vs. Faulty ParallelismI just touched up a handout on Parallel …HumanitiesTweet: For an anatomy project, my #geekling made a Vulcan…For an anatomy project, my #geekling mad…TweetsDesert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever CreatedPenn and…
The name “Bottom” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is already funny, but I expect my students will likely snigger at it, thinking of the “Silas Ramsbottom” gag from Despicable Me 2. I read The Tempest before I saw Disney’s Little Mermaid, so when I think of Prospero’s spirit Ariel, I do not think of a…