Steampunk Submarine Room

Yes, please, I would certainly like one of those. Thanks for asking. Steampunk Submarine Room » Geeky Gadgets. Similar:A certain potions instructor is done with everything after submitting midterm grades. (Har…AcademiaWhat a fluke (great headline; great story)AmusingNew infographic to help our graduating English majors make sense of their capstone project…AcademiaShakespeare's Globe Theatre, Minecraft Stylehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…AestheticsOn Instructional…

NASA prepares a Mercury probe for orbit

NASA’s Messenger probe is about 10 days away from parking in an elliptical orbit around Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system. Messenger has been en route since 2004, making a crazy Spirograph-looking series of orbits around the sun, taking the craft past Venus, and past Mercury three times, and finally heading for orbit…

Materials for Students: Writing the Academic Paper: Developing Your Thesis

Despite the differences from discipline to discipline, a good thesis will generally have the following characteristics: A good thesis sentence will make a claim. This doesn’t mean that you have to reduce an idea to an “either/or” proposition and then take a stand. Rather, you need to develop an interesting perspective that you can support…

Define “Digital Humanities”

Digital Humanities is the deliberate, critical application of emerging technology to the study of traditional subjects such as literature, art, philosophy, and language, often (but not always) with a focus on how those traditional fields are now using emerging technology. We are deliberate and critical when we foreground the study of our own digital tools…

Will future generations understand “The Simpsons”?

“Krusty Gets Kancelled” is one of the greatest of all “Simpsons” episodes, but if it were a poem, it would need to have nearly as many footnotes as “The Waste Land” — and the further away from its original air date we get, the truer that’s going to be. "Krusty Gets Kancelled" is one of the greatest…

Livetweeting Jamie Lee Curtis in Buck Rogers “Unchained Woman”

There were actually no chains in this episode, but there were spandex-clad women, explosions, and Dr. Huer’s superhuman power to deploy payloads of expertly-timed exposition. About to start livetweeting another #BuckRogers about 2 hours ago via Twitter for iPad #BuckRogers Unchained Woman about 2 hours ago via Twitter for iPad Jamie Lee Curtis us the…

Doctorow’s take on HarperCollins self-destruct ebooks

What if each ebook came with a black box with wires and a red LED.. Or maybe a computer voice intoning a countdown… HarperCollins has informed libraries that henceforth, ebooks will be sold on the condition that they can only be circulated 26 times before they self-destruct. HarperCollins argues that this reflects the usage characteristics…

Observations about Crowther’s original Adventure (1975) « Renga in Blue

A long held-belief about Crowther’s Adventure was that it was designed as a “cave simulation” and it was Woods who came along added magic and treasures and turned it from interactive simulation into interactive fiction. We know, from the hard work of Dennis Jerz locating the original source (before Don Woods started modifying it) that…

Why Twitter’s Quick Bar on iPhone Doesn’t Work

Twitter started out, years ago, as a social service for a common techno-clique who all attended the South by Southwest music conference, so trending topics made sense. But since then, it’s expanded and fragmented into a mass medium made up of non-overlapping micro-communities. Everybody uses Twitter differently, but almost everybody consciously or unconsciously cultivates their…

MIT Scientist Captures 90,000 Hours of Video of His Son’s First Words, Graphs It

From the day he and his wife brought their son home five years ago, the family’s every movement and word was captured and tracked with a series of fisheye lenses in every room in their house. The purpose was to understand how we learn language, in context, through the words we hear. MIT Scientist Captures…

Sledding in Spring Break Snow

My wife suddenly decided I should be a Good Dad (TM) and take the kids sledding. (I said okay, as long as she was coming along, too. There she is at the bottom of the hill, way in the background.) Our hilly campus was almost deserted, since we’re starting our three-day spring break. Similar:Work-Life Balance,…

Did scientists discover bacteria in meteorites? : Pharyngula

I’m looking forward to the publication next year of the discovery of an extraterrestrial rabbit in a meteor. While they’re at it, they might as well throw in a bigfoot print on the surface and chupacabra coprolite from space. All will be about as convincing as this story. Did scientists discover bacteria in meteorites? :…

Feeding a Neighbor’s Lambs

A neighbor invited us over to help feed the lambs they are raising in their garage. (The mother sheep died, and her lambs needed more care than the owners could manage.) The lambs are Piccolo and Brown Sugar. Similar:Lysistrata live.Current_EventsFirst page of a student’s Texture project. (This made me laugh.) This clever freshman writing student…AcademiaIt’s…

Exclusive: NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite

Let’s see what the peer review process does to this claim. In what he calls “a very simple process,” Dr. Hoover fractured the meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to…

Students Looking for Course Pages

I’ve redesigned my site a little. If you are looking for a course website, please click the “Teaching” menu item. Similar:"Godspell" is sure to entertain audiences of all ages and faithsThat’s me in the white shirt, with a tie…CultureThe daughter (giving the piggyback ride in pic 2) doing a thing that starts tomorrow. Tribune ReviewAmusing12yo…

Jerz’s Literacy Weblog is now powered by WordPress

I’ve been blogging in a shadow location for a month, while trying to get the kinks out of the system. This site now uses the WPTouchPro plugin to deliver iPad and mobile-friendly versions. What do you think of the design? What do you think of the WordPress features? Similar:No filter October mist as I walked…

Star must identify anonymous posters to website, judge rules

A Marion County judge has ruled, for the first time in Indiana, that news media outlets can be ordered by the court to reveal identifying information about posters to their online forums.

Any excuse for a song. Plot? We don’t need no steenkin’ plot. #AnythingGoes

3/2/11 8:48:24 About to start livetweeting the musical #AnythingGoes. 3/2/11 8:51:09 Bing Crosby, Donald O’Connor. #AnythingGoes 3/2/11 8:51:56 I saw the Gonzaga High School production in the 80s. Haven’t seen is since. #AnythingGoes 3/2/11 8:52:58 Any excuse for a song. Plot? We don’t need no steenkin’ plot. #AnythingGoes Similar:Descent, Part 1 (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season…

Heather Wilson – Our superficial scholars

I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country’s best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when…

Blog U.: Tiger Mothers and Superficial Scholars – University of Venus – Inside Higher Ed

Practice scholarship interviews for tiger cubs typically close with the interviewee stating in frustration, “I didn’t know what answer you wanted.” She cannot imagine a question to which no ‘right’ answer exists and for which she therefore cannot prepare by memorizing it. I have to teach the cubs to answer based on what they know,…