I invest a lot of energy asking my college students to unlearn the pattern of summary and personal reflection that was enough to to earn a good grade in high school. I emphasize repeatedly that their high school teachers didn’t do anything wrong by teaching them what they needed to do in order to get…
In October, 2002, I was blogging about The stupidity of explosions in space movies The Chronicle of Higher Education rescues the briefly defunct Arts & Letters Daily The superiority complex An anti-telemarketing script An “I Love Lucy: bible study Why whitespace matters when creating a sign The coming air age of 1955 (as envisioned in…
Similar:Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.Culture#Blender3D rendition of the bridge of the æthership that featured in the musical #steampun…PersonalWhere There's a Whip, There's a WayThe girl was singing lyrics she learned …AmusingMy too-big Android phone stresses the pockets of one of my favorite shirts. My…
Similar:An important day to remember.Never again.PersonalMore #blender3d #steampunk goodness. #design #aesthetics #blender3dart AestheticsMy Father's Day adventure included replacing the family gaming computer (a 2011 Mac Mini…..One of the benefits of working at Seton …AcademiaSomeone I know very well is in the trailer for Midnight (2020)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5BczlGs…CultureBefore and after making a meme of myself as Oberon, King…
Students who cheat with ChatGPT can look forward to these $15/hr jobs training the AI that they relied upon to get them their degrees. The students who actually did the work themselves should be much be better prepared to demonstrate how their work differs from the mediocre stream of bot-produced content. Savreux is part of…
Similar:Eco-critical Code Studies: Reconfigurations of nature in the born-digital artifact “Coloss… Video game history is colliding:…AcademiaCandlemas, by John Henry Newman (read by Dennis Jerz for WAOB Audio Theater)I enjoyed reading this short John Henry …CultureBrought my in-progress #blender3d project into the #unity3d gaming engine. Plenty of frust… AestheticsA Message from Hester Prynne (Student Video)Have I…
Do the headlines encourage empathy, or do they “other” the victims of crime? (Click to zoom in.) Similar:The Case for Breaking Up With Your ParentsI already felt fairly independent from m…Academia"Syllabus Day": The Absolute Worst Way to Start the SemesterI’d rather blog about prepping my fall c…AcademiaAs a student journo, naturally I covered…
I am curious enough about cockatoos that I might click a link to read an article about people who own a cockatoos. I feel the same about British royalty, or “van life,” or VR. Other than remembering a cool exhibit that stacked up various NASA and other historical rockets so you could see the scale,…
Arrgh! This is sooo stressful! (Some great visual gags as the intro drags on.) No, it is not worth it to watch the whole thing. But that’s the point. Similar:What Does the Demise of Cursive Mean?Are you aware that our children aren’t b…CultureFacets #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 3, Episode 21) Dax's colleagues channel the personal…Rewatching…
Similar:As Twinkle Twinkle is to Suzuki musicians, so is a wooden shipping crate to CGI modelers. …https://youtu.be/diQF9buONqY I ha…AestheticsWe found a mushroom fairy ring in our yardIt won’t make the afternoon of mowing mo…AestheticsMeme alleging Trump said “Africans Are Lazy, Good at Sex, Theft” is a hoax I’ve seen this meme shared by severa…Ethicsink: Inkle's…
She waived a fee. He accepted a slightly expired coupon. Someone bent a rule in my favor. (I may or may not have deserved it.) I bent rules for five different people. (They may or may not have deserved it.) That 1/4 inch post that was too big popped off and under it was a…
Today’s students have many strengths. They are great at collaboration, introspection, and remixing. While my students are very familiar with phone apps, even the English majors who want to be professional writers are not very familiar with the conventions of writing for the World Wide Web. Because their sense of “being online” mostly entails interacting…
When I worked at a radio news station in the late 80s, when I was about 20, I would often saunter into the newsroom a half hour before my shift started, so that I could sit down with a sandwich and a bottle of apple juice, and page through the newsroom’s copies of The Washington…
Similar:Mr. Chen Goes to WuhanA Chinese media personality with over ha…CultureInternet Explorer cheated its way to the top, and I won't miss itI started teaching myself HTML in earnes…AcademiaThe crisis in local journalism has become a crisis of democracyThe paucity of reporters has triggered a…CultureRhinoceros in Love (World Drama — China, 1999)The blurb for a…
Federal officials have approved a site on the National Mall for the capital’s first memorial dedicated to journalists who have died while reporting the news and to the role of the free press in a democracy, the foundation planning the project announced Monday. The Fallen Journalists Memorial will be located on a third-of-an-acre parcel in…
A former dancer reckons with the rigors and ordeals of life in ballet. If ballet was all self-effacing torture, there would be no need to wrestle with it. But despite the inhumanity of its current training methods, Robb also makes it clear that it gave her so much. “At ballet, I had learned not only…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The opening acts remind me why I cringe at all the Fergengi-focused episodes, and the great writing, the mix of comedy and drama, impressive performances, and the plot twists remind me why I end up admitting that yeah, that Ferengi-focused episode was pretty good. A humming Sisko cooks up an analog dinner for…
Still plenty of work to do before I finish for the summer, but not a whole lot more grading. Similar:My big brother and my son facing off at chess. I am outclassed! GamesThe YouTube "Blender3D to Unity UMA" tutorials blow through all the steps in a h…PersonalPICT Classic Theatre brings The Strange Case of Dr.…
A new study from researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, investigated what happened when a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The results suggest that video calls could help parrots approximate birds’ communication in the wild, improving their…
Here’s to you, grim-faced photojournalist who waited just long enough to make sure 20-year-old me learned an important lesson, before saving me from the consequences of my own poor planning. Every day on the job, I’m trying to pay it forward. In 1989, I was an intern in a crowd of media professionals covering…