Have you hugged your college’s freshman writing course today? (Not the students, not the teachers—we don’t want disciplinary hearings. The course.) Like most who have worked in English departments, I was rarely excited to be assigned freshman rhetoric (as it was called where I started). The essay-grading was back-breaking and social-life-destroying, to say nothing of…
The Daly Dose I notice the photographer has filled his page with keywords designed to advance his commercial ventures, which is a little spammy, but they are still valuable photos. Similar:William Shatner: My Problem With Twitter's Verified AccountsAt age 84, William Shatner (most famous …CybercultureThings may be awful, but at least an invasive species of…
While signing up for some online training for work, I found this screen, which seems to ask me to grant my consent to permit the service provider to use my private information in one of zero ways. Similar:A #neovictorian #steampunk ship-of-the-line needs a dramatic flag and a conveniently locat…AestheticsLife would be so much better if…
Apparently, her defense of the classics and German was among the reasons UVa recently ousted the presudent. As a grad student needing to beef up my foreign kanguage credentuals, I took the summer German course Herr McDonald comments on here. William C. McDonald, director of undergraduate studies in German at the university, stressing that he…
This summer, I’m a “CSC Insider” — meaning that I’m getting some VIP treatment, in return for blogging twice a month about the Carnegie Science Center. First off, I attended the opening night gala for Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World.
via Rainbow Hector Weblog Similar:Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines?The X Files did a good job of embracing …CybercultureReading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communitiesthough Limbaugh is wrong to decide that …CybercultureThey figured it out.PersonalEmissary (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2) Cmdr. Sisko establishes a Fede…Rewatching ST:DS9 The…
The cast for “Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendeiner Hogan Bogan Logan Was Her Name” poses with Mr. McFeely (David Newell) at the Fayette County Fair, Jun 16. My daughter plays the young Catalina, who also narrates. In the photo, she’s the one holding the book (with some her lines taped inside. Shh, don’t tell!) Working…
On Monday Dragas, sensing that the university community might want some explanation for such a radical act, sent out a second message: “The Board believes this environment calls for a much faster pace of change in administrative structure, in governance, in financial resource development and in resource prioritization and allocation. We do not believe we…
Stop drinking from random bottles, child! Similar:Sharing a root beer float with your dad doesn't fix everything that's wrong in the world, …AestheticsChilling on Forbes Avenue with a small friend.Chilling on Forbes Avenue with a small f…AestheticsAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this meme because the last time I used in cla…AcademiaAir…
The council’s decision to impose the ban came after the Daily Record newspaper published a photograph of Martha alongside chef Nick Nairn under the headline “Time to fire the dinner ladies.” Speaking on BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland programme Mr Payne said his daughter was not happy about the council’s decision. He added: “I understand…
I find it really amazing that it has taken this long for Amazon to finally shrink that ridiculously huge margin, which persisted like fake stirrups on a horseless carriage. Similar:There is a thing in literature, theme X.I’m very happy that several students in …AcademiaYou're not going to read thisI ask my students to contextualize links…BusinessGoogle…
This young blogger has learned a very important lesson about power and privilege. I’m sure the story does not end here. We anguish about getting kids to be enthusiastic about healthy, sustainable food — to not prefer the bad stuff, not waste the good stuff, and not be entitled little monsters who whine about when their next…
Takei’s post-Trek, post-coming-out reinvention of himself as an internet meme fusion reactor is a beautiful thing to watch. With this move, I think Takei may have officially out-nerded former TNG child actor Wil Wheaton — and I say that with total respect to Wheaton’s own post-Trek reinvention. Takei warned that a hot war between Star Trek…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BYkuRBVXN4 Similar:More Americans now see the media’s influence growing compared with a year agoAmericans’ views about the influence of …CultureClever Modernization of Hamlet: Polonius with an iPhoneI teach Shakespeare in a literature clas…CultureToasty Warm Bed (designed by drunk AI neural net)AestheticsCollege bookstores adapting to changing times with additional servicesIn the corner of the Seton Hill…
I “liked” this when I first found it on Facebook, which means I helped spread it. So then, here’s to the editors of Tails, who found themselves unjustly ridiculed. So a few days ago a photoshopped cover of Tails magazine landed on Food Network Humor — a pretty funny comma failure — and our tipline lit up. We were skeptical,…
As a kid, I loved the feeling of confidence that came when my mom handed me a few bucks at the pool and told me I could get what I wanted from the concession stand. Since my main responsibility for the afternoon was to keep the kids occupied, and I was in no rush to…
I’ve been having some problems with the WordPress iOS app. Just testing. This should be a robot inspecting a donut. Similar:Liberal Arts Leaders: The 50 Best Professors Who BlogIt’s polite to say “thank you” when some…AcademiaIn September, 2002, I was blogging about science writing, satire, ebonics, Google News, ow…In September, 2002, I was blogging about…CybercultureIn…
Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same…
“What’s a meme?” I took my daughter to the birthday party of a 12-year-old friend yesterday, and hung around with the adults as the kids splashed in the pool. After a round of Chuck Norris jokes with his dad (“When Chuck Norris goes into the water, he doesn’t get wet, the water gets Chuck Norrissed”),…
A student project explores a niche of the games market, for a class taught by Infocom legend Brian Moriarty. The video game industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, growing from a 9.5 billion dollar industry in 2007 to a 25.1 billion dollar industry in 2010. This growth is due to the common interest that…