Westmoreland County Arts and Heritage Festival: Wacongo Dance Company

My daughter (in pigtails) joins the Wacongo Dance Company in an audience participation segment… then joins her cast waiting to perform her own show. Similar:Under my academic robes… photographer vest with 3 frozen ice packs. #heatwave #HonorsCon…PersonalFacebook Announces $300 Million Project, Allegedly to Support Local JournalismOnce upon a time, local newspapers could…BusinessChess tournament in Monroeville.PersonalUnearthing…

Carnegie Science Center: Roboworld (and a bit of SportsWorks)

Here’s a brief video, made up of clips I took at the Carnegie Science Center in July 2009, just a few weeks after the opening of the new, permanent exhibit, Roboworld. The clips have been sitting idle on my hard drive for years, but I’ve recently gotten some practice with Apple’s iMovie, and thought I’d…

Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History (Some Notes)

For me, the July 4 weekend marks the halfway point for the summer — if it’s not the chronological center of the summer, it is the time when I look at the number of weeks before fall classes start, and look at the list of things I had hoped to accomplish for the summer, and…

This Is What Summer Vacation Is For: Designing a Steampunk Airsloop with Blender 3D

Summer vacation means if I am telling my kids steampunk bedtime stories, and the story requires an ether-powered vehicle larger than a life pod, but smaller than the ship-of-the-line where most of the plot takes place, I can visit Wikipedia to look for a class name — I like “sloop” — and then dash out…

Justin Bieber, Hollywood drawn to steampunk movement

Do we really need Justin Bieber to make this story relevant? They’re steampunks, part of an international movement that’s a mashup of do-it-yourselfers, ahistorical recreationists and science fiction aficionados who are happily reliving a past that never was. The Victorian era was “a wonderful era when people were still being surprised by the world,” says…

A gift: The ‘sound and fury’ of great literature

Kierkegaard recognized, over 150 years ago, that we live life forward but we understand it backward. He was speaking about our being immersed in time itself: The simple truth that we live our present moments in a sort of confusion continuously being clarified by the retrospective understanding that comes later. Most novelists work to soften…

Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

Despite the lopsided drawing and grey shading around the eyes, these are not the zombies, these are the protagonists of a government-issued graphic novel designed to teach general disaster awareness. Similar:Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomerBrother Consolmagno, who works in a Vati…CultureJimmy Maher's Appreciation of Infocom's Classic Sherlock Text AdventureI learned…

Fiction books give a boost to the brain, says Stanford professor

Imagination is a powerful social tool. The novel provides us with a sustained window into another world, while still exercising the creative faculties that make us co-creators of the worlds we read about. Having said all that, I am aware that there may be some confirmation bias operating, as I here introduce an article that…

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare iPad app

Will the celebrity interpretation spark or short-circuit a student’s own interpretive creativity? Were I to use this, I would want to use the video as one of several possible sources of authority, including the student’s own, original, interpretation. ‘So long lives this, and this gives life to thee’ The Sonnets by William Shakespeare allows you…

I suspect my cupcake-fiend 10yo has been using my iPad again

It’s just this feeling I have when I view the last several dozen images saved to my photostream. Similar:Take a moment to appreciate these good COVID-19 statisticsMay 1, my state had the third-highest pe…AwesomeStarted Making a Journalism Game in TwineFor a long time, I’ve thought about crea…GamesBabylon 5 redefined TV science fiction, so why isn’t…

Women Explain Why Google+ is All Dudes

Google, which declined to comment on the gender breakdown of its social network, has a long tradition of using its own products internally before releasing them to the public. Products like Gmail and Google Buzz had lengthy incubation periods inside the company before they were released to the public. But that internal testing process can…

Too Hot? No Cooler Time To Honor The Steve Jobs of A.C.

Despite iPod-strong sales, air conditioning remained a luxury for many years. Newspapers in the ’20s and ’30s were still filled with headlines about thousands of deaths and “prostrations” linked to summer heat. It would be decades before most newly built single-family homes in the United States had A.C. — hard to believe today, when Census…

Atari tries to stay relevant at 40

It’s a stretch to say Atari has turned 40, since there isn’t much left but the name, but this is still an interesting read. Companies began collapsing and Atari was soon sold to a man named Jack Tramiel. Over the next decade, Atari made computers, a game console called Jaguar and a handheld game machine…

Tips from a recovering journalist: How to write effective press releases that help SEO

Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don’t try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some…

That idea about a set of hideaway tables and chairs? Shelve it.

Orla Reynolds Design. Similar:Now that I have polished so many details, I'm working on more selective lighting. #steampu… AestheticsMore #steampunk control panel bits for a #neovictorian #blender3D project. I have a master…AestheticsFacebook "Grid View." Is this new? My first thought is that I rather like it.I just noticed an option for viewing a F…AestheticsThis makes…

A majority of adult cell owners (55%) now go online using their phones | Pew Internet & American Life Project

I had already spent a couple hours today tweaking the smartphone version of my website, so this study was a welcome affirmation. Young adults – Nearly half of cell internet users ages 18-29 (45%) do most of their online browsing on their phone. Non-whites – Half (51%) of black cell internet users do most of…

Choking dog saves its own life by dialling 999

Actually a rather dorky story, but I love the final quotes about the dog: “He’s not usually very smart. “He’s really dopey and just likes to chew socks.” —Choking dog saves its own life by dialling 999 Similar:Thoughtful Gestures Sometimes Speak Louder than WordsShe ended up waiting out the light cycle…AmusingAre "Keds" still a recognizable…

How BuzzFeed makes viral hits in four easy steps.

How does this one site come up with so many simple ideas that people want to spread far and wide? What’s their secret? The answer, in short, is that BuzzFeed’s staff finds stuff elsewhere on the Web, most often at Reddit. They polish and repackage what they find. And often—and, from what I can tell,…

Open Letter from a Millennial: Quit Telling Us We’re Not Special

Even the things we do for fun – playing sports, joining a band, riding a horse, writing a story – you have made into a competition. You’ve taken our creativity and told us that it matters not because it fulfills us, but because we can sell it to a college and reap the returns on…

U.Va. board reinstates president Sullivan and prepares for strategic planning effort | Inside Higher Ed

Great writing, introducing the backstory while simultaneously focusing on current events. Back then, the faculty called for the resignation of two prominent board members, and many on the campus called for the entire board to resign. Tuesday, crowds applauded when the name of Helen E. Dragas, the rector, or chair, of the board, was called…