About – The Great Gatsby for NES

The Great Gatsby for NES. Similar:iTunes 11: It’s time for Apple’s horrible, bloated program to die.At the head of the team is a grizzled ol…AmusingA Simple Investigation #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 17) Odo falls for a femme…Rewatching ST:DS9 A duo of knobby-fac…AmusingMy Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being OnlineWhen I find something…

Bother (a minor Turnitin.com grademark bug)

That whole thing should be a link — the underlining shouldn’t stop at the tilde. Similar:Celebration of Writing  My freshman writing students…Academia8 Questions for 'Star Trek' Superfans Restoring Galileo ShuttlecraftThis nerd’s geek heart grew three sizes …AestheticsThree different sized buildings. Still working on variations for the biggest one. #blender…Three different sized buildings. Still w…AestheticsAfter your shift…

Civilization IV song wins Grammy Award

While there’s an instrumental theme from Civilization III that’s even catchier, I was happy to run into an old friend. For the first time ever, a music score from a video game has won a Grammy Award, as Christopher Tin’s “Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV won the Grammy for “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)”. While…

Shipwreck that inspired Melville’s Moby-Dick found

The shipwreck lies off French Frigate Shoals in the blue waters of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in Hawaii. Melville completed “Moby-Dick” in 1851, drawing on an Essex crew member’s account of the remarkable event. The twice-cursed Pollard retired from whaling, became a watchman and lived to be almost 80. Melville met him in Nantucket shortly…

Science Fair Victory

In this photo from the front page of today’s Latrobe Bulletin, my daughter explains her “Endangered Art” science project for the judges. She created numerous identical paintings, kept a control in a safe place, and exposed the others to various threats (sunlight, temperature change, the grubby fingers of children). Similar:Confessions of a Nerdy Homeschooling DadAre…

Discretion in First-Person Shooters

I recently learned that my kids have the habit of turning this hectopus (a toy they’ve each played with since babyhood) away from the screen when they play Half-Life 2. Similar:The Unbearable Weakness of Trump’s MinionsNote that the URL of this story indicate…Academia30 years later, Sierra's Laura Bow mysteries are still a treasureWhen I was…

On the Ten Twenty Thirty

The F. Scott Fitzgerald story “Head and Shoulders” features this unfamiliar phrase, spoken by a young actress who, through an unimportant plot contrivance, invades the study of a bookish progeny: “I knew a girl,” said Marcia reminiscently, “who went on the ten-twenty-thirty when she was sixteen. She was so stuck on herself that she could…

Poetry, the First Milk

Tomorrow I will be teaching some Harlem Renaissance poets in my American Literature class, so this reflection on the function of poetry is welcome and timely. Poems are first and foremost to be experienced—sensually, imaginatively. Of course, learning more about form and structure, the words and historical contexts of a poem may make that experience…

How To Get Students To Integrate Quotations

It’s comforting to know that I’m not alone. Like many writing teachers, I put a lot of effort into asking students to integrate their quotations, but being a logos kind of guy, I emphasize the efficiency of MLA style. From the ethos perspective, I point out that college asks for a different, more concise pattern,…

Liveblogging Injury

I threw a muscle in my shoulder while furiously blogging a record of a committee meeting. Similar:Happy to see a familiar face in a slide during today’s Academic Affairs Workshop. Classes …Happy to see a familiar face in a slide …AcademiaFour Academic Plagiarists You've Never Heard Of: How Many More Are Out There?Stealing someone’s words…

Apple Cyclops

A happy apple cyclops, with a marshmallow eye and banana teeth. My daughter’s creation. Update, 12 Feb: Carolyn, noting the condition of her apple creation, asked for “a good-bye picture of Poli-yumyum.” Similar:Siblings gotta sib.PersonalHanging with the rude mechanicals @setonhilluniversityA Midsummer Night’s Dream.CultureHeadlines matter. Were they migrants, people who happened to be at a migrant…

Remediate a slideshow via whiteboard? When the techno-awesome video projector won’t start, I draw the line.

This term, I teach two sections of “Seminar in Thinking and Writing,” the second course in our two-course freshman writing sequence. My sections both meet MWF, nicely bookending my lunch break. Since Seton Hill usually schedules committee meetings for Tue/Th, that means on MWF I usually have nothing else to do but prepare for, and…

Glad to see so many thoughtful responses.

Looking forward to a good discussion of a complex story. via Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace”. Similar:Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Minecraft Stylehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…AestheticsLong Live The English Major—If It’s Paired With An Industry-Recognized CredentialWhat does this simple question and its r…AcademiaThe Outsiders — four sold-out weekday matinees; four more performances this weekend So proud of my talented, hard-working …BooksWhy…

Learning Beyond Words

I work so closely with words that I sometimes have to force myself to remember that there are other ways to learn. I saw a DVD of Annie Get Your Gun for the first time, and was sort of struck by the lines sung by the backwoods sharpshooter, “Folks are dumb, where I come from,…