About – The Great Gatsby for NES

The Great Gatsby for NES. Similar:Whoops, I Accidentally Used a Photo of Donald Trump in this Blog Post on Richard IIIHum de dum. Not paying any attention to …CultureStudents Produce Breathtaking 3D Simulation of 17thC LondonThe haze effect lying over the city is b…DesignI think they mean typeface conference, but "Font Conference" is still amusing.I…

Bother (a minor Turnitin.com grademark bug)

That whole thing should be a link — the underlining shouldn’t stop at the tilde. Similar:Thirty Years Ago, the Challenger Crew Plunged Alive and Aware to Their DeathsThe Challenger made it through the spect…CultureWhat Is The Value Of An Education In The Humanities?For those who go to college, the four ye…AcademiaHighlighters and Intellectual Growth in…

Apple’s new App Store rules affect Amazon’s Kindle – Computerworld

To meet Apple’s guidelines, Amazon must remove its “Shop in Kindle Store” link from its Kindle application. That link, which opens the iOS browser and displays Amazons Web-based e-bookstore, is currently the easiest way for Kindle app users to purchase new books. via Apples new App Store rules affect Amazons Kindle – Computerworld. Similar:Facebook Spot-tests…

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:Slicing up a massively detailed trimsheet…

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:Journalism ethics and the elephant in the room.The point of “the Rosenthal Rule” is not…CultureScratch StatsScratch is a kid-friendly programming sa…CybercultureOkay, not my most thrilling…

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:I'm really enjoying seeing how my students are responding to Hamlet.As part of a class assignment, one stude…AcademiaWhat’s Wrong With Being From the South? Just Ask an Academic in the NorthAs an American studying in Toronto durin…AcademiaMultimodal News Packages…

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:Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say  The brain was not designed for r…BooksEpilogue to Rossum's Universal RobotsMy…

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:A Conversation with Dennis Jerz, Actor — WAOB Audio Theatrehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU6vs0ZB…DramaCreative writing majors getting rich as demand skyrocketsSee, it’s funny, because poets need to s…AmusingThe Hidden Subversive Messages of [MGM's Screen Adaptation of] The Wizard of OzWhen I tried teaching The…

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,…