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:45m into a game against a player ranked 400pts higher than him. In a frilly shirt for the …CultureThe Pope's Prayer for Countering "Fake News"Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sal…CultureOn the Virtues of a Dadsplained Literary ChildhoodThe last book…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Sondra's Garden: Butterfly Release Honors Dr. Lettrich (Seton Hill University)”Every good lesson plan has a culminatin…AcademiaThe Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 ( #StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 26) We Hav…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break …PersonalAfter a productive run-through of West Side Story, the girl decided…
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:Stage Right…
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:Parallel Structure vs. Faulty ParallelismI just touched up a handout on Parallel …HumanitiesCarolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating use of social media. To be c…Current_EventsI asked…
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:Typeset In The FutureWhile watching classic science fiction f…AestheticsA 40sq cm section of a #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsI came of age playing too many CD-ROM point-and-click adventure games to…
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:Today's lunarbaboon… there might be something in my eye. Hey! Want me to take her f…AwesomeWhat is a CRT and Why Don't We Use Them Anymore?I remember when I started seeing politic…AestheticsAnother delightful…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be publishedSome of my happiest memories of fatherho…AestheticsWhy Computers Will Never Write Good Novels If it were possible to build a digit…BooksBag a Bot DayAt midnight tonight, participants in the…Current_EventsNewly acquired technology for teaching writing in the age…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Woah there, online tech site. Let's not set that bar too high, now.I just saw the following clickbait for a…Current_EventsGame Design Program for Education & TrainingI haven’t tried GameSalad yet… and won…AcademiaTrump Fires Senior Adviser’s Son From Transition for Sharing Fake NewsTrump senior adviser’s son,…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Controversial Content in YA Literature: A College Professor and Homeschooling Parent Answe…I received this comment on my blog: [F]…BooksMy daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25…
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…