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:Get ready for Generation ZStudents continue to change… I’m doing…CultureDon’t worry: It’s not just art!Before a school play, a principal worrie…AestheticsFrozen opens tonight. (All shows have been sold out for over a month.)DramaAirport retro video games collect spare coins in SwedenFliers arriving…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Now I can relax a bit. (But just a bit.)PersonalWhat gives you comfort? I collect lights. Some of these have magnets!!AmusingVaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility, as opposition to shots hardens What began as “vaccine hesitancy” has …CultureThe Satellite That Took This Incredible Photo Almost Didn’t Leave EarthThe camera’s…
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:Tin Man…
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…AcademiaTweet: Came around the corner and saw my kids huddled on…Came around the corner…
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:Duet (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 18) Kira is convinced an ailing Cardassian…Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is convinced s…CultureThe chief engineer of a fantasy #steampunk flagship needs a small booth…
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 Find Myself in Another Showhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=517BhV1j0…DramaGo not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.First runner-up for the girl’s Halloween…AestheticsHi, I’m the St Joe’s basement doorstop. Let me…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Critical Thinking Rhetoric The IdealistAcademiaGames Based Learning through Text Adventures As I make progress in designing the cl…AcademiaThe Medium is the MoralIt has been more than 40 years since Mar…AcademiaVerizon's $4.4 billion deal for AOL sends AOL stock on a tearVerizon has experimented…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Not a #carguy but I pried open the hatch of the van to change 4 bulbs. #adulting PersonalJuror's CreedWhile researching my obligations for #ju…CultureHow a billionaires boys’ club came to dominate the public squareThe world’s richest man, Elon Musk, atta…BusinessTelekinetic Coffee Shop SurpriseBlogworthy promo for a…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:How Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson notes that Sili…BooksA young father sold his beloved sports car for “diaper money.” Years later, the man’s son …“While my dad has always…
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…