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:Thoroughly enjoying Company.PersonalDear daughter, let Miley Cyrus be a lesson to youI am intrigued by the possibility that M…CultureDear readers: Please stop calling us ‘the media.’ There is no such thing.When my students refer in passing to “th…CultureThe Complete Deaths: all of…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Heart of Glory (TNG Rewatch, Season 1 Episode 20)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…MediaThirty Years Ago, the Challenger Crew Plunged Alive and Aware to Their DeathsThe Challenger made it through the spect…CultureMarching in a parade and watching a patriotic musicalHappy Independence Day, fellow Americans…CultureWhat Each Side of the…
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 Visitor…
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:Juror's CreedWhile researching my obligations for #ju…CultureJury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentFormer student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, …A third alum in the last few weeks has c…AcademiaProto…
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:Overheard at Quora: "Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?"Moodle is a free course-management tool …Academia13: The Musical Promohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40MbeApiX…CultureThe daughter looks stunning in pink. AestheticsBad Doggy –…
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:Every family has one.PersonalSupport the arts in your community!PersonalOutsiders. Four sold out matinees this coming week. — Prime StageFour sold out matinees this coming week….BooksTo all these tools I've loved before…While cleaning out…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Your verbs have been lost and will be invisible until sentence author revision.The marketers and programmers at Google’…CybercultureA WELL HOUSE FOR A LARGE SPRINGI was digging through my archives and ca…AestheticsHermann Zapf, the font designer behind Palatino and Zapf Dingbats, has died at…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By Shouting Title Of Book Loudly And Repeatedly New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By S…AmusingMy Father's Day adventure included replacing the family gaming computer (a 2011 Mac Mini…..One of the benefits of working at Seton …AcademiaFirst-Gen Social Media…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:West Side Story (One-Minute Preview)From Mrs. Lovett two weeks ago to Maria …AestheticsHomage to PoeMichael Dirda offers a thoughtful assess…BooksMerchant of Venice Part 2 live, now! #PPTPlaytimeDramaMore Adventures in Suburban AdultingAbout four years…
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…