A Wealth of Words

People with similar vocabulary sizes may vary significantly in their talent and in the depth of their understanding. Nonetheless, there’s no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person’s vocabulary. Simply put: knowing more words makes you smarter. And between 1962 and the present, a big segment of the…

Pinkalicious — “Buzz Off”

My daughter plays the Bumblebee in “Buzz Off,” which both ended Act I and opened Act II in last weekend’s Stage Right! production of Pinkalicious. Similar:Seton Hill Supports "Man of La Mancha" Student Outing (Feb 17 and 19)Seton Hill University students can atten…CultureMemorizer (Memorization Tool)A Midsummer castmate shared a link to th…CybercultureYou are standing in a field.…

Make Games in the Classroom with Inform 7

I’ll blog pretty much anything that has to do with Inform 7. Text-based games, or interactive fiction, have continued to evolve since the days of Zork. Many works can be powerful for play in the classroom: Emily Short’s “interactive epistolary” First Draft of the Revolution, Andrew Plotkin’s physics-grounded Dual Transform, Peter Nepstad’s historically grounded 1893: A…

Almost Flat Design

Apple, Google and Microsoft have very different design aesthetics. Almost Flat Design | Matthew Moore Design. Similar:People with autism spectrum disorder avoid eye contact because it causes anxietyMy culture has taught me that eye contac…CultureSymbiosis (TNG Rewatch, Season 1 Episode 22)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…CultureAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this…

Why You Never Truly Leave High School

It’s also abundantly, poignantly clear that during puberty, kids have absolutely no clue how to assess character or read the behavior of others. In 2005, the sociologist Koji Ueno looked at one of the largest samples of adolescents in the United States, and found that only 37 percent of their friendships were reciprocal—meaning that when…

Surviving the Next Apocalypse: a Modest Curriculum

Obviously, given this surge in student demand, we need to make survivalist education another distinctive feature of our educational mission, and we must scramble to build institutional capacity in “apocalypse preparedness.” The admissions office already has brochures: “Where would you send your child: someplace that prepares them for a 20th-century job, or a community that…

Internet Explorer and Murder Rates: More Fun with Causation and Correlation

IE.png – mlkshk. Similar:Set Phasers to Teach!Fans of Star Trek have thus already been…AcademiaAnalysis | The ‘Kellyanne Conway on the couch’ controversy is so incredibly dumbOne photo from the event shows her scrol…CultureKristin and Haley's Discussion on Poe's "The Raven"I gave my literature students 30 minutes…AcademiaBP Lawyers Cheat by Adjusting Line Spacing in a Legal Brief U.S.…

Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax

Great example of investigative journalism, piecing together a coherent narrative from conflicting bits and pieces culled from various sources. A reminder that journalists — even when they are fighting deadlines, and even when they are writing more-fluffy-than-the-crime-beat pieces — must verify claims before going public. Too many sports journalists reported unconfirmed bits and pieces of…

Smartphones, Silly Users

Frequent smartphone use imposes significant psychological costs on the user, and negatively impacts our personal and professional lives. —Daniel Gulati – Harvard Business Review. Similar:RIP Metaverse, we hardly knew yeI am curious enough about cockatoos that…AcademiaFor Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.Farhad Manjoo says he’s a better, more-i…CultureStage…