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:Sad that NASA is taking a back seat to a private company, but still nerding over an Americ…BusinessHow newsroom managers can invest more time developing their staff — and why it mattersOne of my most consistently rewarding pr…BusinessNo, Dr. Seuss is not…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:The Girl Has Started Rehearsals for PICT Classic Theatre’s Jane EyreI’ve chauffeured the girl into Pittsburg…BooksI dunno what to call this but it really hit the spot.PersonalCarolyn appears as homeschooled teenager "Carolyn." Free holiday show Tuesday at 7. PersonalYesterday my wife took this last known picture of our two…
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:Share a…
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:Maybe I'll just delete these QUARTER OF A MILLION spam comments.Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in …CybercultureOverheard at Quora: "Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?"Moodle is a free course-management…
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:A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkYet another widely held cultural myth fa…CultureForward is the officers' wardroom. To the right is an…
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:I just caught myself thinking, “This doesn’t suck.” #medievalyork #mysteryplay #blender3d …I just caught myself thinking, “This doe…AestheticsWhat Does Children’s “Obsession” With Technology Tell Us About What They Really Need?Wise thoughts. When we…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse This was probably the wealthiest, most…BusinessI’ve been teaching with this handout for over 25 years, updating it regularly. I just remo…I first started teaching with this hando…AcademiaChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Fancy iPad Holder with Compartment For Storing Your BabyFisher-Price enters the Apple aftermarke…AestheticsTwitter, Fix Your Cropping AlgorithmWhen given the chance to crop four diffe…CybercultureMost Christians don’t actually care about Starbucks cups. Here’s what we do know.No Christians in my social media feed ca…CulturePeer Review Paranoia:…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:FBI: 'Exercise Caution and Attempt to Verify Information Through Appropriate Official Chan…The FBI reminds journalists about a few …CultureTaking the Lid Off the McDonald’s Coffee CaseHave you heard the story about the lady…
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.…
The researchers found that each singer’s heartbeat was linked to the song’s melody – i.e. the speed and structure of the music. They also found that when the choir sang together, their heart rates tended to increase and decrease at similar times. “As soon as the singing begins, (the hearts) start following each other,” Vickhoff…
We live in an elegant universe. The cosmos is like a string symphony. Genes are selfish. There is an endless battle between thermodynamics and gravity. Do you love these statements, or hate them? The reading world gets pretty divided over whether or not it’s okay to apply metaphors and similes to descriptive science writing. It…
Literature majors and students otherwise drawn to literature courses can be an introverted bunch. Students overall can at times resist course projects that fall outside the expected parameters of a given discipline. Yet my class proved my assumptions wrong. Many of the students were nervous, to be sure, but overall they seemed to enjoy the…