I just touched up a handout on Parallel Structure vs Faulty Parallelism. Similar:My Freshman Comp Student Didn’t Recognize the Term ‘Word Processor’Most of my students use MS-Word, but may…AcademiaWhy I disagreed with my students who said, "That was easy!" “That was easy!” Today th…AcademiaCertainty vs. uncertainty: "In which are we more likely to be…
These comic panels cover the issue well. (Pennington Publishing) Similar:Coding Bootcamps and the New For-Profit Higher EdThere are actually a number of narrative…AcademiaA friend asks: "Would it be bad form to point out the typos in my class materials?" My ans…After I posted my grades for this term, …AcademiaDelightful interview with a former Setonian…
A thoughtful reflection on religion in Star Trek. While Humans aren’t depicted as participating in any form of organized religion (there is a reference to a Christmas party here, a nod to monotheism there), the series also includes a distrust of science and technology, regularly depicting mad scientists, societies over-dependent on technology, etc.) that insists…
If you’re legally present on a public street or sidewalk, you can legally photograph anything in plain view. (This includes children and crime victims… but just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea.) If law enforcement engages you, ask whether you are free to go; if so, then move out of the…
Standardized testing rewards standardized thinking, while excluding creativity, resilience & other “soft” skills. I have started gong out of my way to remind students in my classes that I am not comparing their papers to a “correct answer” in the back of my book — I want them to learn a habit of mind that…
It’s a good day when one’s nerdiness is an asset to a colleague. Similar:Chess tournament.PersonalPoetry Out Loud : Learning RecitationI’m one of the judges in a “Poetry Out L…Academia The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley Because what he never managed to grok …BusinessOut for a walk during some downtime. Paused to appreciate this…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:More modular, swappable building components. I’ve got to work on the sides of these mid-si…More modular, swappable building compone…AestheticsThe Battle (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 8) A Ferengi plots tricks with Picard's former …A Ferengi set on revenge tricks Picard i…HistoryA student just booked an appointment to discuss…
Keep a local backup of anything important you’ve entrusted to online services. There’s no guarantee that, years from now, those services will honor the terms you agreed to. Backed by new investors, including singer Justin Timberlake, Myspace (after dropping the capital ‘S’) has been rebranded as a music-streaming service, with a new sleek interface, and…
Penn and Teller are involved with this story. Worth a read. The only record of the game’s existence was a handful of review copies that had been sent out to journalists in the weeks before the publisher went bust, in 1995. The game remained a curious rumor until September, 2005, when Frank Cifaldi, a freelance…
Judge: Apple conspired to fix eBook prices. #ethics #books The Federal lawsuit claimed that Apple, led by then-CEO Steve Jobs and senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, conspired with HarperCollins, Hatchett, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster to drive e-book prices up from the $9.99 price point Amazon had established. –readwrite.com Similar:Today's annoying…
RT @spj_tweets: How TV could suffer the fate of newspapers: @alanmutter shares the second installment of his two-part blog – http://t.co/l… Similar:Parallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue well….HumanitiesMaybe I'll just delete these QUARTER OF A MILLION spam comments.Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in …CybercultureAnd the girl has succeeded in…
RT @DepressedDarth: Dear J.J. Abrams, If the new Star Wars is bad, you will forever be known as Jar Jar Abrams. Sincerely, Star Wars fans Similar:Learning the hard way, by making mistakes and starting over. The fore section of the fanta… AestheticsMy meme about the distracted boyfriend memeAmusingVisionary #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 3, Episode 17)…
I really like MailChimp’s “Social” plugin, which not only publishes a WordPress blog entry to Twitter and Facebook, but also collects responses from Twitter and Facebook users and collects them as WordPress comments. Today I installed a different plugin, Twitter Tools, which is really just a single tool — it lets you create a WordPress…
Habits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of life. At bedtime, in order to avoid a nightly litany of complaints, I ask my glass-is-half-empty-and-I-hate-the-pirate-glass-and-there’s-a-bug-in-it tween to list three good things, two neutral things, and one sad thing about her day. Sometimes if she needs to share more than one sad thing, I…
While researching my obligations for #juryduty Thursday, I came across this “Juror’s Creed.” The gender-specific reference to men, the instruction to reflect upon the virtues of democracy, and the instruction to respect the judge’s education all hint at a historical context for the creed. Institutions never put their creeds into writing unless they feel those…
Spent a productive work day doing nothing but optimizing my blog. Added a very nice plugin for displaying thumbnails of related posts. Similar:That moment when you're logging into a table read of #RUR (Rossum's Universal Robo…PersonalToday's annoying adventures of adulting: fixing the bathroom ceiling fan.Not fun, but done. ModdingWooden document holders. Pretty routine, but practice…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Price History Chart of The Associated Press Stylebook 2013 (Associated Press Stylebook and…The AP Stylebook jumped in price by more…AcademiaClassroom collaboration marketplaceWhile I am uncomfortable with the whole …BusinessIs College Worth It? Clearly, New Data SayAmericans with four-year college degrees…AcademiaThe Post-Coding Generation?I knew…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:In December 1999, I Was Blogging About Joseph Heller, E-Journalism, and Travel WritingIn December 1999, I was blogging about: …BusinessInterior Detail of Steampunk Convertible Gazebo Spent much of Tuesday wrestling with co…AestheticsInterview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer – Boing Boing GadgetsBoing Boing interviews…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:The Bremen Town Musicians (WAOB Audio Theatre) My daughter plays the narrator, my…HumanitiesI love my students enough to teach them the difference between passive voice and past tens…If a goggles-for-brains Lego character c…EducationIf…
While I am uncomfortable with the whole “classroom as marketplace” metaphor, since it’s pretty much gamifying without the fun, I am nonetheless interested in this strategy for encouraging students to collaborate by having them attach a value to the artifacts they present to the class for sharing.. We shop for everything from apps to ideas.…