Similar:Beautiful News Writing: "Rampaging rooster attacks girl."I don’t want to make light of a little g…Aesthetics'A Klingon Christmas Carol' Translates Dickens' Scrooge Fable to 'Star Trek' Universe for …Be still, my nerdy heart. (The other hea…AmusingThe elements, in haikuEach element of the periodic table gets …AmusingOld English Has a Serious Image ProblemThis fall I…
The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left…
In addition to iPads and MacBooks, every freshman who arrives at Seton Hill this fall will get a copy of The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I taught this book last term in my American Lit class. Here are two of the best student projects on The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games: 2 Sides of…
Similar:Thoughtful PopCult Analysis of 'Peanuts' Deserves Better than a Clickbaity Headline Hating…On a shelf in the slanty room under the …CultureI don't usually post animal videos on my blog… But when I do, it’s because they are…AmusingDigital literacy is different from print literacy. How do we balance the trade-off?My job includes teaching…
Similar:Email (finding the right tone as a writer) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXlgO…Cyberculture10 top writing tips and the psychology behind themThere are plenty of folks happy to tell …AcademiaLine breaks are really, really importantI’m sure that whoever wrote this headlin…Current_EventsMy Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being OnlineWhen I find something interesting that a…CultureI Regret to Inform You That…
According to a somewhat dry AFP article (posted on a URL that will probably expire soon), “The researchers estimated that in 2008 Australian adults aged 25 and older spent 9.8 billion hours in front of the small screen, and that this time was associated with 286,000 years of life that ended prematurely. | Every single hour…
Our iPads will one day be stacked on a pallet, like these old PCs. They’ll be retro curiosities, having done their jobs — empowering us to build even better tools. Similar:Facebook Ad Refreshes Interrupt the Composition ProcessSo I’m trying to edit a Facebook status,…BusinessThe internet’s memory is fading in front of us. Preserve what you…
The business of journalism is changing. The approaching anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks is an occasion to reflect on how we received news in the days when newspapers updated their web pages once a day, and Google did not constantly monitor newspaper home pages looking for fresh stories. For journalists thinking about the future,…
A popular handout from my site, Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers, includes a phrase uncommon enough that Googling for it (“practiced scream therapy“) leads me to short story exercises that develop an example into more detailed studies, or pages that remix the content of my site in order to make a similar point.…
There is a lot to like about Google+, and getting to 25 million users so quickly certainly seems promising for the Google social network. But, it doesn’t bode well if the excitement is already fading. Google needs to not only create a capable social network, but it needs to make that social network compelling enough…
This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points. Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets…
I was doing a lot of impulse buying during the $9.99 days, but since then, on occasions when I’ve seen the ebook offered at a higher price than a paperback, I have just turned to interlibrary load instead. “Terrified” by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase…
David Mahokey of Dunbar, a senior at Point Park University, and Greg Kerestan of Greensburg, a senior at Seton Hill University, wrote the 20-song score and script, respectively, for ″In Control,″ a musical that focuses in part on Mahokey’s real-life battle with bone cancer. Two free performances of ″In Control,″ directed by Anthony Marino, artistic…
Which is cooler? That my 13yo son was just sitting at the kitchen table singing lyrics to MC Frontalot’s “It Is Pitch Dark,” or that my 9yo daughter was chiming in with corrections? It Is Pitch Dark Similar:Finding downtime during orientation week is not a walk in the park. Except when the downti…PersonalSo, What's in…
The heartbreaking thing is that this fall, over 10,000 bookstore employees across America will be out of work. The way the publishing industry is going, many of those people won’t be able to find jobs that are even tangentially related to books anymore; they’ll go on to work in movie theaters and grocery stores and…
The layout of this display at the Carnegie Science Center almost makes it look like the Maria duplicate in Metropolis came before Karel Capek’s play RUR (which was written in 1920, first performed in 1921). Similar:The High Ground (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 12) Sensitive, Artistic Terrorist I…(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break…EmpathyShrek: The Musical…
The control panel. Similar:One deck below the bridge, the chief engineer coordinates with his technical heads here at…AestheticsPoetry Stimulates the Brain's Reward-Anticipation Arousal Near Ends of StanzasI fixed the NY Mag’s clickbaity title, “…AestheticsPolice, citizens and technology factor into Boston bombing probeIn addition to being almost universally …Current_EventsThe exposition officer needs instant access to a…
Images from an extended tour of a cold war submarine. (We liked the tour we took last year so much, my son and I came back.) [portfolio_slideshow size=medium trans=scrollHorz ] Similar:Hermann Zapf, the font designer behind Palatino and Zapf Dingbats, has died at 96Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such…AestheticsDo Cultural Critics Have Any Value Left?[T]he…
My daughter, as the wizard, with her talented castmates, in our local theater school’s preteen summer camp musical. Similar:Thinking about the new semester vs. Creating submission slots in CanvasPersonalAmazing show. Young lovers, a witty (but often stupid) servant, speeches, rants, exaggerat… PersonalUgh. Unmarked items waiting for me as I start to recover from an illness.PersonalKids, Pants,…
As for Starbucks, the decision to pull the plug is reportedly up to individual stores thought to be only in New York. —Many New York City Starbucks Locations About To Put An End To Squatters « CBS New York. Awkward phrasing… Who is doing the reporting if this fact is “reportedly” so? Who is doing…