I just touched up a handout on Parallel Structure vs Faulty Parallelism. Similar:Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' pricesRobert Darnton, director of Harvard Libr…AcademiaI told them to put their name on both pages.I told them to put their name on both pa…AcademiaWhat a 21st-Century English Major Can Do: Screencast Demo of an Inform…
These comic panels cover the issue well. (Pennington Publishing) Similar:Why Writing Matters When You Advertise a Cragslist GiveawayThe latest example of why writing matter…Current_EventsA former student contacted me to share her thoughts.A few years ago, I told myself I would s…AcademiaIn April, 2001 I was blogging about interactive fiction, Roget's Thesaurus, John Lennon, H……
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:Shall we dance? The girl tries on her ball gown for The King and I. Her featured show is …DanceJerz Nerdcation 2013On a visit to the Washington DC area for…CultureThe Storyteller (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 14) A Bajoran village mystic…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:The Sentence That Knocked Down the Berlin Wall (But Almost Didn’t)Words that defined Ronald Reagan’s presi…CultureA student who had often been frustrated during my class used this poem in her final reflec… PersonalHappy ice cream turkey cake day. AestheticsLiving Room PhysicsI’ve blogged before about my eight-year-…EducationMore #steampunk control panel…
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:Donald Trump…
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:Former student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, …A third alum in the last few weeks has c…AcademiaWhat kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not being…
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:Elementary, Dear Data (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 3) When a holodeck bet spawns a fict…Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…Amusingcopyranter: New Milwaukee Public Library ads mock facebook, YouTube, and…
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:Overheard at Quora: "Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?"Moodle is a free course-management tool …AcademiaNo, Trump's tweet about "Heritage, History, and Greatness" is not a quote from a speech…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:NASA finally makes contact with Voyager 2 after longest radio silence in 30 yearsI was thrilled as a middle-schooler to s…Current_EventsRebooting “Rossum’s Universal Robots” for the 21st century“It is over three hours long, and it is …CultureRequiem for the NewsroomWhen I worked at…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Booby Trap (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three Episode 6) When LaForge gets absurd with a hologr…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year b…DesignAll the world’s an appA review of three books — The App Gener…CultureMy Tween Preps to Program a Lego Hobbit GameAs part of a course I’m teaching…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:My meme about the distracted boyfriend memeAmusingThey still need work but we have 2 weeks before classes start, so I feel pretty good.They still need work but we have 2 weeks…PersonalWinnie the Pooh…
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.…