My 10yo has a complex relationship with books. She loves being read to, and she reads quite a lot, but she says she doesn’t enjoy reading. Of the various lessons she has to accomplish each day, she will often choose reading first, but only, she says, because she hates it least. Today when I finished…
The Idealist Similar:Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, dies aged 89Harper Lee, whose 1961 novel To Kill a M…BooksThe Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure BooksI didn’t realize how involved the childr…AwesomeThis is what an "umm" looks likeThis image, of the audio waveform from a…MediaIn November 2001 I was blogging aboutIn…
The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls. The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is ferric oxide, known as rust. The grizzly bear whose potent hug Was feared by all, is now a rug. Great Caesar’s bust is on my shelf, And I don’t feel so well myself. Similar:Murder Is Her…
If you have written anything you think my readers will appreciate, feel free to suggest it. Dankeschön. Similar:The Irreversible Damage of Mark Zuckerberg’s SilenceWired, obviously having worked on a thin…BusinessWhat Twitter Changes Might Mean for AcademicsThis is one of the reasons I still consi…AcademiaHeadphones, Croutons and RhetoricME (with crouton tongs in one hand and s…CultureDon’t Text…
That’s one small misspeak for a man… “The `a’ was intended,” Armstrong said. “I thought I said it. I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses.” Although no one in the world heard the “`a,” some research backs…
Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated. And one’s heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would…
I don’t get to teach technical writing much anymore, so when I touched on it in a new media class I took the opportunity to freshen up some older web resources. A business memo, a lab report, or a professional e-mail are all variations on the basic report structure described in this document. Feel free to modify these guidelines…
Are we moving toward an era where Americans will speak discernibly red versus blue accents? It’s hard to say. Social identities are complex, and can be defined along a number of different dimensions like class, race, or ethnicity. Not everyone feels that politics are a part of their core identity. But I suspect that political…
I’ve been meaning to create a screencast like this for a long time. Teaching an online lit course is great motivation for churning out these things. 1. What is Literary Close Reading? (0:30) Why a literary close reading doesn’t mean “anything goes” (1:00) 2. Why Do We Read Closely? (1:35) 3. Let’s Read a Text…
Newspapers and their fans make a lot of noise about the professionalism of journalism, that journalism needs to be paid for, that the Internet is no substitute for the hard core objectivity and insightful commentary newspapers offer. and so on. Whether these arguments are true or not does not interest me. I have found…
As gimmicky as “steampunk Huck and Tom” sounds, the characters actually may be quite well suited for steampunk. Twain’s novel Tom Sawyer Abroad was a play on Jules Verne-style adventure stories, and featured a mad professor and his absurd, futuristic airship. And Tom Sawyer had his own mystery story with Tom Sawyer, Detective. However, Twain…
Vote for Carolyn’s Headshot — Round 2. Similar:Tweaking yesterday's #steampunk workstations. Now with darker wood (better contrast with c…AestheticsJames Goodwin Clonney: Mother's WatchThis painting, of two impish children ta…AestheticsMore #steampunk #blender3d goodness. #design #cgi #blender3dartAestheticsSet design for a virtual production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Post-apocalypti… AestheticsSome new locations for my #neovictorian #steampunk personal project.…
Here’s a fantasy workspace, that I built in Blender 3D, using various Googled images of old books and this awesome steampunk keyboard. Here’s me in my real office. The books aren’t as neat and tidy. I just took some reference photos of the chair… I’ll add it to my fantasy office the next time I…
There’s often a moment in a lit class when a student says, “Since the professor says there’s no single ‘correct’ interpretation of a story, then pretty much anything goes, so I’m going to argue ‘Huck was a girl’ or ‘Hester was a witch.’ ” Of all the possible “correct” answers, the stronger ones are better…
Mars Panorama — My 10yo Pretends Her Bed Is NASAs Curiosi – YouTube. Similar:Latest #blender3d progress on a villain's lair. Added more carpets and cabinetry, and sta… AestheticsThree different sized buildings. Still working on variations for the biggest one. #blender…Three different sized buildings. Still w…AestheticsQuotations: Integrating them in MLA-Style PapersI touched up an older handout…
Which of these headshots do you like best? Let me know on Facebook. Carolyn Headshots. Similar:Passage: a Gamma256 video game by Jason RohrerGrand Text Auto introduced me to the exc…AestheticsOklahoma Was Never Really O.K. (Frank Rich, Vulture)”Oklahoma! was greeted as jingoistic ent…AestheticsLounge area of a steampunk villain’s lair. Still needs a light fixture or two.…
“If we really are trying to teach the world, including people from other cultures, we have to take a responsibility to educate people about plagiarism, not just vaporize people for it,” said Mr. Severance, who is also a clinical associate professor of information at Michigan, in an interview on Wednesday. —The Chronicle of Higher Education.…
My students and colleagues sometimes wonder why I don’t approve the Seton Hill student paper before it’s published, or give students grades on their published work. Student journalists at the University of Georgia resigned en masse rather than relinquish editorial control to an “editorial director” and nonstudent staff. In a draft outlining the “expectations of editorial…
Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. At first that might sound confusing; at one level the brain does multitask. You can walk and talk at the same time. Your brain controls your heartbeat while you read a book. Pianists can…
Last week my daughter and I were a little too early to see the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s new exhibit, so we revisited some of our favorite items in the permanent collection. Similar:Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship EverI’ve felt a bit like this guy the last f…CulturePagers, Pay Phones, and…