I just touched up a handout on Parallel Structure vs Faulty Parallelism. Similar:My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole (Village Voice)A closed-minded liberal writing a letter…CultureHow Literature Became Word Perfect There can be no true distinction drawn …CybercultureStem subject snobbery: a student’s view on why arts subjects matterWhile everyone complains about the subje…AestheticsStudy confirms that ending…
These comic panels cover the issue well. (Pennington Publishing) Similar:My View: What will you do with an English degree? PlentyI just found my first reading assignment…Academia5 of the Fiercest One-Liners in HistoryYes, the Spartans’ one-word response to …CultureGo Ask AliceFrom the tangled tale of mass literacy o…BooksWe’re in Denial About the True Cost of…
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:About 30 years after I first saw John Speed’s 1676 map of York, today I was working on a r…About 30 years after I first saw John Sp…CultureGem of the Ocean (August Wilson's Century Cycle, 1 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle >…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:'Great Pause' Among Prosecutors As DNA Proves Fallible : NPRIt seemed the labs were using an outdate…EthicsYes, I do feel rather awesome right now.Lost brand-new earbuds. Reached in pocke…PersonalStudents Learning about First Amendment FreedomsIn an opening lecture for my journalism …CultureWith actor Ken Bolden, who appears in Quantum…
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:More Fake…
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…CultureYes, I do feel rather awesome right now.Lost brand-new earbuds. Reached in pocke…PersonalTweet: Came around the corner and saw my kids huddled on…Came around the corner and saw…
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:How PatrioticAmusingLeonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced…Current_Events'Nope,' He Says, Body Isn't HisThe story goes like this: A man goes to …AmusingIf you like…
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:Facebook Axes “Trending” SidebarFacebook is discontinuing the “trending”…BusinessHow Not to Be a Jackass at Your Next Academic ConferenceOkay, I confess, I was once in the audie…AcademiaYouTube distortion after the same clip is re-uploaded…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:The science of fake news: Addressing fake news requires a multidisciplinary effortThe rise of fake news highlights the ero…AcademiaProgramming as Magic Spells in Erica Sandbothe's New NovelIn her new novel, Codecrafter, Sandbothe…BooksTwitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Clickbait writers hate this English professor's time-saving trick!Defeat clickbaiters with this one weird …CybercultureI Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two Weeks.She stopped liking, and started commenti…CybercultureIntroduction to The Skin of Our Teeth (optimistic, absurdist metatheater; Thornton Wilder,…https://youtu.be/1okt8MIVTtsAcademiaThe "Best" E-mail Signature Is Actually the WorstI…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:From this station on the bridge, the exposition officer can relay whatever random bit of i…https://youtu.be/_E-3E7Q3LSs Get a lo…AestheticsWhile at Sadecky's Puppets to record the role of Heidi, Carolyn met a new friend.We…
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.…