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 to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks) http://www.youtube.com/wat…AmusingMSU asks faculty & staff to volunteer in short-staffed dining halls; @MSU_Football tweets …MSU, instead of asking your profs…
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:Paleo-Future: robotsThis is from the robots category of Pale…Aesthetics'Little Mermaid' brings new music to the Andersen fairy tale – Pittsburgh Tribune-ReviewThe story line is similar to the Disney-…Current_EventsIt's a Didactic Day in the…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Facebook Hired Journalists to Train Its Trending Topics AlgorithmRecently I noticed an unusually incendia…BusinessPater Noster Passenger ElevatorsSome 50 years ago, my father took me to …AmusingAnother very rough day. Students are cheerful and patient, obviously happy to be here.Another very rough day. Students…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:An Excerpt from Mechanisms [2]: 'Professor RAMAC'Among the attractions at the 1958 World’…BooksCriminal Code: Procedural Logic and Rhetorical Excess in VideogamesGreat example of the application of well…Culture100 Word ChallengeIt is a weekly creative writing challeng…CultureThe secret police: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:As yearbooks die, colleges lose a link to the pastThis year, for the first time in decades…AcademiaIn June 2021 I roughed out the proportions and deck heights for the flagship of the #steam…AestheticsThe…
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…
Let’s start at the end point: what you’re doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication web filled with people and machines. You do this by pointing and clicking, tapping a few commands, organizing your thoughts into symbols that can be read and…
Feeling productive. Hammered out eight scripts for training vids (3-5min each). It helps that I had an outline & know the content well. Similar:Parallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue well….HumanitiesAnd the girl has succeeded in getting me to wear t…And the girl has succeeded in getting me…TweetsHabits for happiness: tips…
So, the correct quote from “Miri” is actually “No ‘blah blah blah’” not “No more ‘blah blah blah.’” Classic Trek trivia I did not know. Similar:Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever CreatedPenn and Teller are involved with this s…BooksOverheard at Quora: "Why after all these years is Moodle still so ugly?"Moodle is a free…
For me, summer vacation means spending hours modeling shelves full of antique books in Blender-3D, so that the library adjacent to the bridge in my steampunk ship-of-the-line looks more lived-in. Similar:When backwards newbie poets write…PersonalLiberal Arts Classes Could Teach Neil deGrasse Tyson a Thing or Two about the Path from Da… Your mileage may vary,…
Came around the corner and saw my kids huddled on the couch, reading an Iron Man comic. http://t.co/S3xPQoZh1o Similar:Former student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, …A third alum in the last few weeks has c…AcademiaMaybe I'll just delete these QUARTER OF A MILLION spam comments.Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in…
I am reading to my daughter the fourth book in “Heck: Where Bad Kids Go,” and have recently finished reading her the fourth Oz book. But not too long ago I read her The Snow Queen, and once last year she asked me to read “Goblin Market” again. A mixture of kid-friendly classics and popular…
The search for what went right might take a hard look at the job market for our graduates. One recent survey, by the Web site payscale.com, paints a somewhat depressing picture of salaries, with humanities majors typically earning from $5,000 to $15,000 less than those with undergraduate professional degrees. Fifteen years after graduation, however, the…
Because apparently I am not already nerdy enough, the universe presented me with this version of Star Wars, written in the style of a Shakespeare play. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars® | Quirk Books : Publishers & Seekers of All Things Awesome. Similar:Six rainbow-colored objects, arranged like THIS?These are shoe-holding racks at a local …AestheticsCreative writing…