I just touched up a handout on Parallel Structure vs Faulty Parallelism. Similar:Adding a media project to a semester-long paper assignment is like adding a jetpack to a d…AcademiaMy Review of the Charlottesville Tryout of "A Few Good Men" 30 Years AgoA librarian at the University of Virgini…CultureCombating Shakespearean shrinkage – Shakespeare & BeyondThe worst…
These comic panels cover the issue well. (Pennington Publishing) Similar:Writing IndexJerz > About > Dennis G. Jerz [ P…AcademiaIronic QuotesAmusing“The author talks about [topic]” is filler. Your professors want your college-level ideas.AcademiaCurse you, conference proposal word limits. I’m frustrated by these accursed c…AcademiaEnjoying my "Dystopia in American Literature" class.After a kind of prelude in which we look…Academia'Jane Austen, Game…
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:‘Heil Trump’ and an anti-gay slur were scrawled on an Indiana church right after Trump’s e…A well-written news story, covering a se…CultureThe Case Against Reading EverythingRight now, I’m teaching “American Lit 19…BooksShe was a musical ingenue Sunday, filmed a slasher movie past…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Our 2014 class banner was an iPad. I can’t believe I just noticed that today.PersonalTin Man (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 20) Sad telepath bonds with starshi…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….CultureA Christmas Carol — new audio adaptationBooksKate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the SequesterApparently these are…
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:Scratch StatsScratch…
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:Loved seeing A Comedy of Errors @setonhillLoved seeing A Comedy of Errors @setonhi…TweetsOverheard at Quora: "Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?"Moodle is a free course-management tool …AcademiaRT @JordanFor: One of…
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:Homeward (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 13) Worf's foster brother interferes w… Rewatching ST:TNG The Enterprise-…EthicsCarolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating…
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:Seeing Lyle Kessler's "Orphans" with the girl.PersonalAnother lovely variation of a #steampunk control panel. #blender3dart #neovictorian #desig…AestheticsThe problem I just learned about calls for tea in the big mug.CulturePac-Man”The kids who grew up…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Everyone thinks AI is replacing factory workers, but Amazon’s layoffs show it’s coming for… Amazon announced Tuesday that it wil…BusinessNew Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An UpgradeWonderful, inspiring article that uses t…CultureGo Forth and Conquer, but Postpone the Selfie“We have about…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:New book: basic skills for the multimedia journalistLooking forward to this promising resour…CybercultureFamily Feud: Tense Thanksgiving for Facebook and George Takei Businesses — as well as groups like no…BusinessIf You Check the Source of an Inspirational Prayer You Shared on Social Media, You Might B…I…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:The Myth of ‘Learning Styles’The discourse around “learning styles” (…AcademiaAssociate Dean of What?The idea of students as customers relies…AcademiaHappy Easter 2024PersonalI had a singular time voicing Sherlock Holmes in The Mystery of Dr.…
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.…