Redshirt (fan video for Jonathan Coulton song)

Similar:A certain potions instructor is done with everything after submitting midterm grades. (Har…AcademiaBad Doggy — practicing "Tomorrow" with a human Sandyhttp://www.youtube.com/v/718e4XsNvGY …AmusingMore #steampunk control panel goodness. This section features a nice retro pixelboard text…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsA Man, a Plan, a Pointless(?) ProgramI readily admit that my accomplishment h…AmusingThe Adversary #StarTrek #DS9…

One in a Billion: email tips – Google Search

In the grand scheme of things, this means very little… but still, it’s kind of cool to be one in a billion. —email tips – Google Search. Similar:Go Forth and Conquer, but Postpone the Selfie“We have about 850 graduates, and we hav…AcademiaWhat can you do with an English Major?AcademiaA trend story about millennials, by The…

The Importance of Mind-Wandering

When I am insanely busy during the academic year, I relish the time before I fall asleep, as time I can think about anything at all. If it’s productive and interesting, I’ll stay awake. If not, well, then I won’t waste much time before I conk out. In an attempt to carve out enouth time…

The Pocket Camera Moment

In 1975 a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the world’s first portable digital camera by cobbling together parts scavenged from a Super-8 and a cassette player. Baffled colleagues asked, “Why would you want to look at photos on a TV?” —The Pocket Camera Moment | Raw File | Wired.com. Similar:Today's unexpected but welcome moments…

a few thoughts on academic time management – more than 95 theses

Remember this, Dennis. Remember this, Dennis. Remember this, Dennis. That is all. I ask my students to give me, by email, a proposal two weeks before the essay is due. I tell them what I think is good about their idea and what they need to watch out for; more often than not I advise…

Critical Damage: Quit Pretending There Isnt A Videogame Rape Culture

A powerful essay, for the next time I teach Videogame Culture and Theory. (Some salty language ahead.) So the Hitman Absolution trailer. Do I have a problem with the existence of female assassins? No. Do I have a problem with female assassins dressing up as nuns? No. Do I have a problem with Agent 47 killing females…

The Pulse: Seton Hill’s iPad Experiment

This month’s edition of The Pulse podcast features a conversation with Mary Ann Gawelek, provost of Seton Hill University, discussing how her institution’s iPad experiment — begun in 2010 — has fared. RPP_102_iPads-in-Education.mp3 via The Pulse: Seton Hill’s iPad Experiment | Inside Higher Ed. Similar:Google overtakes Apple in the US classroom Google in US schools,…

How Facebook Killed the Virtual World

Almost all the promise once held by virtual worlds has since been realized by Facebook. For every social interaction, brand engagement or persistent multiplayer social experience that Second Life or World of Warcraft or MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side was supposed to provide, there’s something the same or very similar available on Facebook — probably…

Youngest-ever National Spelling Bee competitor says fatigue, stress led to misspelling onstage

“Overall, it was just boring. Really boring! Really boring!” —The Washington Post. Similar:Computer Interfaces in Star Trek's "Assignment Earth"I was watching classic Star Trek with my…CybercultureYour Students Learn by Doing, Not by ListeningToday one of my students gave a final pr…AcademiaKnee-jerk sharing of memes denigrates the truth.Trump never told People magazine that Re…CultureDo Cultural Critics…

National Headline Contest 2011

Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:The Unbearable Weakness of Trump’s MinionsNote that the URL of this story indicate…AcademiaThe chief engineer of a fantasy #steampunk flagship needs a small booth for shift change r…AestheticsAnti-Semitic Times Square Elmo admits to Girl Scout extortion attemptThe headline made me click the link, and…EthicsAttached (#StarTrek…

OUP research reveals children’s imaginative language use

Contrary to concerns that increasing use and popularity of ‘txtspk’ will ruin children’s vocabularies, youngsters demonstrated that they know when it is not appropriate, only including it in their stories when transcribing an imagined text message. The research also found that many of the words contained in children’s stories are repeated from celebrated writers –…

Reading in the Morning

To qualify for a day at the local water park, my daughter woke up early, and is now happily reading. Similar:We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. …AcademiaWhat Borges Learned from CervantesBorges reinvented Don Quixote as a playf…BooksThe Battle (TNG Rewatch, Season…

Teaching the Holocaust or slavery: Is role playing effective or fraught with problems?

A middle school teacher in South Carolina has been accused of dragging a student under a table during class, telling the boy “this is what the Nazis do to Jews,” police said Monday. The 12-year-old student said he got up to sharpen a pencil at Bluffton Middle School on Wednesday when Patricia Mulholland grabbed him…

Updated Journalism Handouts

I updated the journalism portal of my online writing site, and touched up some existing handouts: News Story vs. English Essay Your English instructor carefully reads your essay to evaluate the depth of your knowledge, the breadth of your vocabulary, and the loftiness of your ideas. Joe Sixpack glances quickly at your news story to…

Six Reasons a Non-Computer Nerd Might Want to Learn to Code

Atwood, on his blog Coding Horror, miffed by the “everyone should learn to code” meme, likens coding to plumbing. It’s not for everyone. “Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people,” he writes. “But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge…

Stage Right! Homeschool Musicals

My daughter was recently in the Stage Right! Greensburg homeschool preteen production of Once Upon a Mixed-up Fairy Tale, playing Little Red Riding Hood. Here the girls are singing “Astonishing.” My son played Marshal Cord Elam in the teen production, Oklahoma. He’s wearing the vest and white hat. Similar:The Internet Archive Is Digitizing & Preserving…

The Evolution of Adventure: Make Game – Asio City

In the early 1970s William Crowther worked for the high-tech R&D company BBN Technologies as part of a team developing the ARPAnet; a computer network predecessor to the Internet. Crowther has never shown any desire to court celebrity for his achievements. Aside from a couple of interviews from books, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Genesis II: Creation and…

How and Why to Make Your Digital Publications Matter

My intuition is that, even for the wary, recalcitrant, or skeptical, the ways individuals connect now online and learn from one another’s connections no longer represent the pathological or aberrant (i.e. the shallow, distracted, lonely, asocial, unprofessional digital generation: you know the litany!), but “the future.” Since many are worried about “the future,” those who…

Choosing Our Own Adventures, Then and Now

If you were a kid during the ’80s and read any books at all, you probably read at least one Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), probably by either R.A. Montgomery or Edward Packard. And if you read one, you read more than one. They were addictive, candy for our brains, but also, they empowered us…

Ancient life, millions of years old and barely alive, found beneath ocean floor – The Washington Post

Scientists now believe that much of the life on Earth is barely able to fog a mirror, as it were. The deep-sea microbes may be an extreme example of a laid-back norm. Most of Earth life, measured by numbers, is not rambunctious and charismatic like life in the sunshine, nor is it akin to the…