Life is too short to muck about with electronic news sources that don’t let me save text, email annotations, and blog excerpts. I can understand restricting the free stuff that’s given away on web sites, but punishing paid subscribers by taking away the flexibility and mash-up-ability of etext? This is all rather amusing, not unlike…
The Great Gatsby for NES. Similar:Bacon Starry Night MemeI’ve no idea where the “Bacon Starry Nig…AestheticsAmLit Rescue — Scratch GameA student in my “American Literature: 19…AcademiaKatie Couric Gun Documentary Undermined By Manipulative Editing : NPRInterviewer Katie Couric asks a group of…CultureInnovative journalism: A game about the rising sea, a podcast about fire, a 20-year Colum…How…
That whole thing should be a link — the underlining shouldn’t stop at the tilde. Similar:To DoTo Do (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) 5: …AcademiaScratch StatsScratch is a kid-friendly programming sa…CybercultureThe Distracted Classroom: Transparency, Autonomy, and PedagogyI don’t ban technology in my classroom, …AcademiaThe News from Ferguson – Live, on Twitter[I]t turns out that Twitter is not just…
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:Time article…
Quick Cite, which costs 99 cents and is available for both iPhones and Android-based phones, uses the camera on a smartphone to scan the bar code on the back of a book. It then e-mails you a bibliography-ready citation in one of four popular styles—APA, MLA, Chigaco, or IEEE. via Smartphone App Makes Book Citations…
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…
I think we make a huge error of judgment if we assume that just because a 14 year old takes a lot of photos with their phone and sends 300+ texts a month that they have some sort of innate “native” status. We seem to assume that because they use tools like Google to find…
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…
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:Second episode of “Electron Jones” paranormal…
I’ve heard very little about the Borders Kobo e-reader, probably because I was a fairly early adopter of the Kindle (with my school library having purchased a first-generation Kindle, and my school providing me with a Kindle DX) and also because of the role the iPad has taken at my school. We do shop at…
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:Testing out my new greenscreenFriendly advice… If you are practicing…AestheticsOh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Mas…Yesterday, I performed…
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…
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…
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,…
I threw a muscle in my shoulder while furiously blogging a record of a committee meeting. Similar:Thesis Reminders and Transitions: Touched up and created an infographic for a web page tha…Touched up and created an infographic fo…AcademiaYork Plays 2025: Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours of footage.Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours of…AcademiaKids…
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:College Instructors Don't Require Enough WritingI was surprised a few years ago to learn…AcademiaSesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is CrushingI’ve…
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…
Looking forward to a good discussion of a complex story. via Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace”. Similar:Beowimp (spoof I wrote for my high school lit magazine c. 1985)I got an email this morning from someone…AmusingI'm nerdy enough to give my 15yo a used copy of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." I’m nerdy enough to give…
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,…
An unexpected and unwanted text message from a wireless company prematurely exploded a would-be suicide bomber’s vest bomb in Russia New Year’s Eve, inadvertently thwarting a planned attack on revelers in Moscow, according to The Daily Telegraph. via Would-Be Suicide Bomber Killed by Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier | Threat Level | Wired.com. Similar:Other than…