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:My understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingTeaching myself the #Unity3D game engine. Each step requires a lot of focused attention. I… Teaching myself the #Unity3D game engi…AestheticsThat moment when you're logging into a table read of #RUR (Rossum's Universal Robo…Personal7 web design trends you’ll actually see this year and how to survive themContent is…
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:Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack informationFrom whaling and sealing stations to mis…AwesomeLego-Building Tween Refers to "The Hobbit"…
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:Storage…
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:An overnight traffic spike on an older online handout prompted me to touch it up. #techwri… Those are the stats for my entir…AcademiaA college tells…
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:Lysistrata live.Current_EventsThe "Best" E-mail Signature Is Actually the WorstI have no particular opinion about how t…BusinessComments on: A vane Osama bin Laden shown in new videos – CBS News Comments on: A vane Osama bin Laden …AmusingIt's such a privilege to introduce these young people to Shakespeare's body of work.After starting my 200-level “Shakespeare…AcademiaCommonly…
Similar:Bad Doggy — practicing "Tomorrow" with a human Sandyhttp://www.youtube.com/v/718e4XsNvGY …AmusingVincent Connare, Inventor Of 'The Most Hated Font,' Defends HimselfA typographic engineer, Connare was work…AestheticsCan we hope to understand how the Greeks saw their world?Fascinating contemplation of color perce…AestheticsOur news is dominated by people in expensive suits, shouting at each otherMost of the time, I religiously…
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:What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-GeeksI’ve been following the frustrating slow…Current_EventsSibling Affection and Paternal Abstraction as Drawn By a Six-Year-Old; or, Aren't My Daugh…My six-year-old daughter is a very visua…AmusingWet Book Rescuehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9_fwmdC…BooksCoronavirus Tribute to Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" (1942) I found this image on Facebook (wher…AestheticsHow to Lie with Data VisualizationData visualization…
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…