I asked my 10yo why she was moping. “Because I don’t want to be a dancing mushroom,” she said, in a tone that added an unspoken “duh!” Like most of her theater friends, she is on pins and needles, waiting for Stage Right to announce the cast list for next month’s production of Annie “What…
My favorite story comes from the week I held my office hours in the Brother Gorch Pool Hall. Named for the Congregation of the Holy Cross monk who spent decades in charge of our student center and sometimes played pool with students, it was the perfect location for office hours the week we discussed William…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGh6MasSUVc The Search for IT Relevence – YouTube. Similar:The dawn of the post-literate societyThe world of print is orderly, logical a…BooksI'm amused by the quirky way the "Thin Bread Crust" meme remixes the remix.I’m interested in the way the “Thin Blue…BusinessThe Comic Sans SongComic Sans is a typeface, not a font. I …AestheticsI Cannot Begin to…
Fan Video Win Similar:Reading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communitiesthough Limbaugh is wrong to decide that …CybercultureHow We Can Help Students Survive in an Age of Anxiety Today’s students have also lived…AcademiaCaptive Pursuit (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) O'Brien Befriends a Nervous,…Rewatching ST:DS9 Sisko is listening …DesignSpit & Polish ''Pac Gentleman"Spit & Polish:…
Similar:The girl rehearsing as Babette in Stage Right's Beauty and the BeastCarolyn rehearses with Nick Lenz. Her sh…Current_EventsHow Not to Be a Jackass at Your Next Academic ConferenceOkay, I confess, I was once in the audie…AcademiaThe Wounded (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 12) O'Brien's Former Captain Goe…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….DramaMy Cow Game…
The 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Marco Innocenti, whose “Andromeda Apocalypse” took first place! The top three games were: Andromeda Apocalypse, by Marco Innocenti Eurydice, by Anonymous Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were: Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe Escape From Summerland, by Joey Jones…
Wonderful story! I still remember that chilly December day, sitting in science class. I’d finished a worksheet early and decided to get a TIME for Kids magazine off of Mrs. Estevez’s bookshelf. It was the 2008 Invention Issue, but that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye. In the magazine, there was an article…
It’s not surprising, then, that being a woman in geek culture was for a long time a profoundly gender-deviant act. “Girl” and “geek” were a zero-sum dichotomy: to claim space in one, you had to relinquish equivalent claim to the other. Recently, though, there’s been a dramatic change: a sudden surge not only in the…
A handful of vignettes communicating the point that mobile use of the Web is on the rise. It’s a challenge to teach students everything that will truly benefit them in a changing world, so for now all I can do is touch on how to use CSS to deliver different versions of a website for…
Have I mentioned lately that I have some really awesome students? Here’s a narrated screencast, presenting a progress report on a term project that involves programming in Inform 7 to create a text-adventure game designed to teach student journalists how to cover a campus event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKxPi3L6aDs This is what a 21st-century English major can do,…
I’ll have to look into this. Popcorn Maker. https://popcorn.webmaker.org Similar:Almost Flat DesignApple, Google and Microsoft have very di…AestheticsThe Bremen Town Musicians (WAOB Audio Theatre) My daughter plays the narrator, my…HumanitiesIs Babylon 5 secretly the most influential TV show of the past 25 years?When my wife and I were grad students in…Culture'Anti-dopamine parenting' can curb a…
It’s a prototypical Silicon Valley ethos, with one exception: The Khan Academy, which features 3,400 short instructional videos along with interactive quizzes and tools for teachers to chart student progress, is a nonprofit, boasting a mission of “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” There is no employee equity; there will be no IPO;…
Set phasers to “Squeee!” ThinkGeek. Similar:The 1982 Tron Holiday SpecialSides: split. Gut: busted. Milk droplets…AmusingI baked pools of light into the wallpaper, so I can quickly suggest background lighting, s…AestheticsText Games in a New Era of StoriesClever NYT writer cleverly notices a gen…CultureRichard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be publishedSome of my happiest memories of fatherho…AestheticsOmaha…
On the mobile version of my WordPress website, I made the subtlest stylesheet tweaks — adjusting the date text a few pixels to the right to align with the title text, resizing the comment box so that it fits on the screen, adjusting the whitespace ever so slightly. Most of the world will never notice…
Whether you are trying to raise money for your business or just want to perfect your business strategy, a solid elevator pitch is an essential tool for achieving your goals. An elevator pitch can be delivered either verbally, ideally in 60 seconds or less, or as a one-page overview of your business. Think of the…
I don’t text message much. As my kids (age 10 and 14) have become more socially active, and as I find myself volunteering and mentoring for their activities and coordinating with the parents of their peers, I find myself texting more. But it’s not my preferred medium. In countries around the world, text-message traffic has…
Facebook. Similar:In August, 2001 I was blogging about… Broken Links and Poor Information Ar…AestheticsBoth Sides in JournalismCulturePoetry Stimulates the Brain's Reward-Anticipation Arousal Near Ends of StanzasI fixed the NY Mag’s clickbaity title, “…AestheticsMr. Spock, weren't you wearing blue and black a minute ago?AmusingShowing vs. Telling (Example: "I like to win.")I just wrote these examples on…
She guarded her late husband’s literary legacy following his death in 1965. Valerie Eliot also allowed Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats to be based on TS Eliot’s whimsical verses, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The stage show became a global hit that brought in huge sums for the Eliot estate, and enabled her to…
One of the charges of the journalist is to make the important interesting. Advertisers and celebrities are already so good at packaging what is fundamentally trivial that journalists have to work very hard to compete. Infographics are a useful tool for the news industry, but like all tools, they require skill. Similar:A New Talent EmergesI…
I’m talking about you, Havingsaidthat. You have wriggled your way into the mouths of every Letterman, every shiny-tied anchorman, every political pundit who can now read one poll every way but sideways, every Fox News body language “expert,” and every reality talent show judge. Even the humble weathermen and subway station apocalypto (2013 end of…