I recently updated a handout I first created in 1998. A phrase like “a good policeman knows his duty” unnecessarily excludes women. While it would be excessive to read history as if every general use of “man” is sexist, today’s culture calls for alternatives. Using “police officer” instead of “policeman” is easy, but replacing every…
Similar:How Americans DieFantastic data visualization. How Ameri…CultureMy new inspiration as I work on my syllabuses I applaud you, person who, halfway …AcademiaMeet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureLighting really makes a difference! A glimpse into the captain's ready room, off the offic… AestheticsMan enough to…
Filing this for the next time a student proposes a paper that uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” to “prove” something about postpartum depression. Here’s Google’s Ngram for “postpartum depression, “rest cure” and “Yellow Wallpaper” from 1870-2000. Similar:Lonely Among Us (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) Crew-posessing spark roams and a droid …Conflict between two species who…
In 2003, when I chose MovableType for a institutional weblog, WordPress was a plucky but under-powered alternative. Until very recently, WordPress was only able to manage a single blog per installation, which meant that each blog user would also be a blog administrator.  Since I was trying to form a blogging community, not training blog…
The grammar/punctuation flames from not-all-that-well-informed posters at the end of this article are quite interesting for he or she who likes such things. Four years ago, I wrote an essay for The Chronicle Review cataloging “The Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers“–the errors and infelicities that cropped up most frequently in my students’ work. Since…
Great little story from robohara.com. This morning for Christmas, I got a box from Dad. Inside the box was a treasure chest. The treasure chest was wrapped twice with a chain, and the chain was fastened with a combination lock that uses letters instead of numbers. Also inside the box was this: A map. Similar:My…
I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning today, teaching myself something called “normal baking” in the computer modeling program Blender. I did it because I had nothing else pressing to do, I was too wound up to sleep, and too tired to do anything really productive. I wouldn’t say it was boring,…
Restricting access to content doesn’t work. Someone else’s content will get filtered and curated instead of yours. Scarcity is not a viable business model on the Internet. —Fred Wilson, AVC Similar:WordPress duplicate images driving me crazy I’m using the Atahualpa Theme with WPT…HomeLooking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5,…
The very last roll of Kodachrome film will be delivered today in Parsons, Kansas. Kodak has slowly phased out the materials needed to make and develop the film. Only a single operation in the world — Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons — had continued to develop Kodachrome. First introduced in 1935, the death of the film…
“We love to hear what kids think of our books, and this is a great way to see what they’re reacting to,” said Suzanne Murphy, vice president and publisher at Disney Book Group, one of two dozen publishing houses that send advance copies to the young Bethesda readers. The Bethesda group is one of 16…
For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and…
0 Similar:Anti-globalism Is Common Factor in Social Media Conspiracy Theories, says UW ProfFascinating academic effort to find a pa…AcademiaAI crawlers destroying websites in hunger for contentTraffic on my website has plunged over t…Business'We're back': Bushy Run's 2023 battle reenactment will be heldI’m glad to know that this recent contro…CultureThe bots are coming. And they have…
Similar:The Search, Part 2 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 2) The Federation makes a ri… Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap…MediaOn Stephen Hawking, Vader and Being More Machine Than HumanIn one version of Hawking’s eulogistic s…Cyberculture‘I saw the possibility of what could be done – so I did it’: revolutionary video game The ….. Realising…
As my 12-year-old son gets ready to surpass my six-foot height any day (his lip needs a third shave, but he’s apparently in no rush to graduate away from calling me “Daddy”) and as my 8-year-old navigates a peer community that includes mean girls and true friends, gallant young gentlemen (thank you, little boy who…
Hidden? Sure, but certainly not accidental. I didn’t notice it when I was a kid, but it sure jumped out at me when I watched the Schoolhouse Rock videos with my kids. And even small details are pro-girl. The nameless character who shows up in a mini-skirt and platforms in “Interjections!” is unbelievably excited not…
What’s a well-written, gripping, yet breezy novel (something that will engage students who would otherwise be distracted by late April weather)? A colleague has chosen The Virgin Suicides. What about The Secret Life of Bees? The Hunger Games? Little Brother? (Yes, I know Cory Doctorow is Canadian) I’ll likely need to trim some of these…
Beginning journalism students often need some practice giving the best lines to their sources. Here are the first two paragraphs in a story about missing tailgates. It’s just a routine story, but the writing makes it inviting and personal. Luke Himler said employees at Hollywood Cars near Greensburg were moving vehicles on the lot Saturday…
I have been reading a lot more in the past few years, in part due to the text-to-speech capabilities of my Kindle, in part due to the convenience of having a collection of Emily Dickinson poetry or a Sherlock Holmes anthology on my iPod Touch when I find myself in a line somewhere, and in…
Similar:My Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being OnlineWhen I find something interesting that a…CultureDeSantis-backed bill would make it easier to sue news mediaAmerican law protects the free speech an…Culture20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't GetI expect my English majors not to balk w…AcademiaHere is an example of how I teach with Inform 7.Here is an…
Fascinating discussion of the evolution (and violation) of the emerging blogosphere convention for citing links, in the late 90s. A few years ago, I was exploring what happened to the canonical first blogs, a short list of frequently updated web pages that Jesse James Garret identified as weblogs, and I mentioned in passing that I…