The importance of “show, don’t tell”

XKCD Similar:Times photo staffer's invention: the streaming backpack “From a photographer’s perspective it…AestheticsBackground for Trump's remarkable pivot to a pro-mask stance; via right-leaning Forbes and…Background for Trump’s remarkable pivot …CultureMy 10yo Launches a Soda Bottle Rocket http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbNu8…AestheticsThe Left has a post-truth problem too. It's called comedy.As I gear up to teach about memes and fa…CultureRefreshing…

My Memories of “Joseph…” [an original cast member reflects on Rice/Webber/Waring’s amazing technicolor musical]

My high school Drama coach and freshman English teacher Michael Garcia often shared his stories of making ends meet as a struggling young actor. When my 9yo daughter (a budding drama queen) recently started rehearsals for a local Stage Right professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and when I found out that…

How Cheap Should Books Be?

Why would Apple have agreed to pay higher prices for books while Amazon was still out there hocking them below cost? Good question. Those curious circumstances are why some, including Justice it now appears, think there might have been collusion on the part of the publishers. The European Commission opened its own formal investigation into…

Multiple victims in Western Psych shooting

The Pittsburgh regional FIRST Robotics Competition, held in the Peterson Event Center, was put on lockdown because of this incident. It looks like the search for an alleged second shooter was a red herring — the more recent stories have not mentioned any second shooter. A message sent to Pitt employees at 2:08 p.m. said…

How to Reboot Star Trek for Modern TV

I am so far out of the TV-watching habit that, Trekker though I be, I doubt I would watch any new Trek shows. I would probably just explore the fan-made wikis and blogs instead, as I have with Lost and the Battlestar reboot. Still, this imagined set of overlapping mini-shows sounds interesting. How does one…

How to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks)

  How to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks) Similar:My outward-bound editor's graduation cap.PersonalA Message from Hester Prynne (Student Video)Have I mentioned lately that I have awes…AcademiaA Better Way to Say Sorry I’m sorry for… This is wrong beca…CultureAnyone capitalized in a standard how way without no lowercase pretension down.Fact CheckJust look at…

Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code | Miriam Posner’s Blog

In an exploratory, ungraded in-class activity yesterday, I introduced students in my upper-level English seminar to code. Yes, there was some coercion, given the realities of the education system, and some students may have preferred a lecture or more structured format, but I tried to invoke community and play. How successful was I? Too early…

Developing digital literacy in higher education: live chat | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

The number and scale of the apparently unexamined assumptions in this comment gave me pause. This coding business baffles me. I recently tried out an online how to code course and lost the will to live after lesson 3. Surely it is not beyond the wit of IT technicians to invent a programme which translates…

The Death of Hypertext?

 “Hypertext.” When I was a college student, I was obsessed with the idea that, some day, we would all be creating and consuming information— not just information, but literature—via portable devices like cell phones, when the hyperlink might become as central to reading and writing as the sentence. Since then, that day has come and gone. There…