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:Another #steampunk #neovictorian control panel module. #blender3d #blender3dart #design #…AestheticsHow are you holding up? What difficult choices have you made? How can we all help each oth…Carolyn and were recently cast in a hist…CultureThe GE Mascot That Proves They've Never Seen 'The…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:New utility chair and appliances from the service areas of my fantasy #steampunk #blender3…AestheticsBloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs broke the story of Hope Hicks's COVID-19 InfectionThose darned reporters. Always publishin…Current_EventsOwner of former Latrobe Athletic Club continues pursuit to transform it into a theater The lead roles in “A Midsummer Night’s…CultureHappy…
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:Voiceover artist…
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:Proto iPads and Paper Coexist in Classic Star TrekRewatching the classic Trek episode “The…CybercultureI asked my geekling whether she was ready for bed…I asked my #geekling whether she was rea…AmusingMaybe I'll just delete these…
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:Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Mas…Yesterday, I performed in a school matin…AcademiaForward is the officers' wardroom. To the right is an airlock.…
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:Is Google Making Us Stupid?Nicholas Carr, in The Atlantic: As the …BooksWhy Computers Will Never Write Good Novels If it were possible to build a digit…BooksHow’s newsgathering during COVID-19 at the state level?…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:On Death and iPods: A RequiemI never owned a classic iPod, though I d…CultureHow to Reduce Racial Bias in Grading (Use Objective Rubrics)To gauge the potential impact of a stand…AcademiaWriting IndexJerz > About > Dennis G. Jerz [ P…AcademiaNo girl wins: three ways women unlearn their love of…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Robot Dramas: Autonomous Machines in the Limelight on Stage and in SocietyA thoughtful overview of robots in cultu…AestheticsThe Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create ItI’m getting ready to introduce my freshm…CybercultureThe Quality of Life (#StarTrek #TNG…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:12yo Actress Carolyn Jerz on Pict Classic Theatre's Great Expectations: "Your heart will b…My daughter, who plays Young Estella in …CultureI am happy with how this turned out. My mother told me about…
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…