About – The Great Gatsby for NES

The Great Gatsby for NES. Similar:'New York Times' considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirlBe careful of the parts of news stories …BusinessThe Interactive Fiction CompetitionDownload and Play The Games of the 2014 …Current_EventsThe Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan PoeSo, who else is taking advantage of curr…Current_EventsApple's iPad turns 5:…

Bother (a minor Turnitin.com grademark bug)

That whole thing should be a link — the underlining shouldn’t stop at the tilde. Similar:MS-Word's helpful "View -> Focus" mode delays stress-related breakdowns.You won’t usually catch me saying anythi…CybercultureAnecdotal evidence reliable? One man says “yes”.AcademiaEnglish teaching: Johnson: Talking past each otherWhen I got to college, I had already lea…AcademiaI have two scenes in a…

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:The Google Classroom TeaseJoshua Kim, Inside…

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:Truth Trumps BiasTrump offers plenty of opportunities for…Current_EventsCarolyn appears as homeschooled teenager "Carolyn." Free holiday show Tuesday at 7. PersonalMisaligned interior and exterior portholes. Bulkheads from…

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:In November 2000, I was blogging about the US Presidential election, mirrors, Arts & Lette…In November 2000, I was blogging about …BusinessThis Is How My Composition & Culture Class Preps an Oral PresentationInstead of delivering a formal speech fo…AcademiaNew…

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:Melissa Terras' Blog: Male, Mad and Muddleheaded: Academics in Children's Picture BooksLabcoats, suits (but not if you are fema…AcademiaAnother 10sq cm of background…

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:In 2019, I have a college student who annotates readings like this!I asked students in my online “Dystopia …AcademiaJoe Turner's Come and Gone (August Wilson's Century Cycle, 2 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle >  Spoi…BooksDigital Storytelling (EL231: Topics in Creative…

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,…