I just touched up a handout on Parallel Structure vs Faulty Parallelism. Similar:Children struggle to hold pencils due to too much tech, doctors sayWhen I was in middle school, I developed…Culture'Fontgate': Microsoft, Wikipedia and the scandal threatening the Pakistani PMI would call this “typefacegate,” but th…CultureWriting Tips for Critical Thinking Critical Thinking Matters Pers…AcademiaDo Cultural…
These comic panels cover the issue well. (Pennington Publishing) Similar:Context for Hayles, My Mother was a Computer (Ch 3 & 4)My undergraduates are working their way …AcademiaBranding Essentials for the English Major: 4 Examples of How to Re-package Your Skills for…It seems every week some “expert” publis…AcademiaActors too reverent with Shakespeare, says Mark Rylance”To…
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:My son just handed me my serving of noodles in the butter substitute container. Recycling.AmusingThe Chronicle of Higher Education Announces Plan to Limit, Curate CommentsBy 2016, the terrain has shifted. Public…AcademiaSummer Theater Camp Photos: "Patrice" in "13" My 11yo performed the part…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:The Tempest, According to My 9yo DaughterShe’s 10 now, but here is her response t…CultureThis class has been everything that I expect it would be and I cannot believe that we are …Some days are slogs. Some weeks are slo…AcademiaI may have mentioned that I have a daughter…
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:The history…
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:Hello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s restore you fr…TweetsHabits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of lifeHabits for happiness: tips for looking o…PersonalParallel Structure vs. Faulty ParallelismI just touched up a…
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:Business as Usual #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 18) Quark accepts a lucrative …Rewatching ST:DS9 Playing tongo at the …BusinessThe elements, in haikuEach element of the periodic table gets…
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:The Xplor Store: The Forgotten Carnegie Science Center Exhibit? (Guest Post by Leigh Jerz…The other day, my wife suggested a Carne…BooksOne of my undergrad lit papers. Dot-matrix printed, with hand-written instructor annotatio…AcademiaAnother 10…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Happy memories of PC games I played with my son (now 19) sitting on my lap.While doing some spring cleaning around …CultureGoogle's Super Bowl Ad: A Romance in SearchI didn’t watch the game, but I did catch…AestheticsHTML5 Boilerplate: The web’s most popular front-end…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Downloading Great ExpectationsA few weeks ago, I bought an audio recor…BooksGranting a Student SuperAdminGoddessOMGWhatHaveIDone Network PrivilegesI should probably not grant a student su…AcademiaI should be writing my "Fake News" paper for this weekend's "Computers and Writing." Inste…Could the absurd examples of bizarre pub…AcademiaIn September 1999 I…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Homeschool prom 2017PersonalThe Duolingo owl has been judging my German every day for the last year.EducationI ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk…AcademiaThe…
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.…