Muslims speak out against NPR's political correctness
While a Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), was instrumental in getting National Public Radio (NPR) to fire Juan Williams, some Muslims are speaking out against succumbing to the censorship of political correctness. —Caroline May, The Daily Caller “But it’s just Facebook gossip,” my students sometimes say — even my journalism students —…
Bloglines: Killed by the Butler, in the Conservatory, with a Need for Brand Focusing
On November 1st, my longtime favorite RSS reader website, Bloglines.com, will be kaput. It’s being put down by its corporate master, Ask.com. You know, that other search engine that no one uses. The one that used to be Ask Jeeves, with that happy little butler…. Flash back a year ago: my good friend over at…
Views: The 20-Something Dilemma
For most of the 20-somethings I know, which is an admittedly small group of graduates from some of the country’s best four-year colleges and universities, life’s third decade offers a disquieting mix of uncertainty and promise. Faced with friends scattering across the globe after graduation, the high stakes and complexity of modern life, a tough…
Abstract Pixel Art! (Part 1 of 2)
Pixel art entry from Something Awful. The site includes loads of others (most of which I don’t get). Similar:2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Exasperating MasterpiecePosting this mostly to prove that I can …AestheticsThe Hidden Benefits Of DaydreamingWhen your mind wanders, its like P. T. B…CultureLittle ThingsI recently came across an abandoned stas…AestheticsFathers' Day: Showing "The Princess Bride"My…
Halloween Pictures
My wife baked this cake for my birthday (and my daughter’s half-birthday.) Here’s how the family dressed up for Seton Hill’s haunted house fund-raiser for Make-A-Wish. Similar:Not bad for a couple hours of work. #blender3d #blender3dart #steampunk #neovictorianNot bad for a couple hours of work. #ble…AestheticsYour first attempt at a medieval gate and city walls…
Webcamgate case resolved. Badly
Amazing. The educators who used school-provided laptops to spy on teenagers — snapping pictures of them while they were sleeping or not fully clothes–are still on the job, and the taxpayers get to pay the legal bills. There’s a science fiction trope where aliens do something their unearthly mindset considers virtuous, but anyone with normal…
Livetweeting the 1970s Buck Rogers Movie
Soon I will start tweeting the series pilot for the 1979 Gil Gerard Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. #buckrogers 7:44 PM Oct 15th Just from the promo, my son recognized a reused laser sound effect from the original Battlestar Galactica. #buckrogers 7:54 PM Oct 15th I had totally forgotten the flying-through-four-light-blobs warp effect. #buckrogers…
Subtext
“I am learning about subtext,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “You?” “Yes, me.” he said, casually stretching. “It means the words say one thing, but there’s a more important meaning hidden between the lines.” She watched him. “Subtext sounds so… interesting,” she said, uncrossing her legs. He sat next…
Those Evil E-mails
This entry comes from a podcast sponsored by a Lutheran ministry group. At about 11 minutes in, the presenters discuss a handout that was originally submitted by a student, but that I have continued to maintain over the years. What kind of e-mailer are you? – Is your electronic correspondence short and to the point,…
Kindle Version of Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’ Priced Above Hardcover – NYTimes.com
I bought far more eBooks on impulse when they were all $9.99. When they break above $10, I have to think before I buy, and I buy less often. The skirmish over prices is possible because of deals that publishers negotiated with Amazon this year that allowed the publishers to set their own prices on…
GET LAMP: Documentary on History of Computer Games Screened at Seton Hill University
Documentary filmmaker Jason Scott will present GET LAMP, a documentary on word-driven computer games, at Seton Hill University, 7-10pm Tuesday (Oct 5). Scott is a digital entrepreneur with a Twitter account devoted to his cat Sockington (with nearly 1.5 million followers). He regularly gives convention speeches on such topics as Wikipedia and digital archiving. GET…
Showing vs. Telling (Example: "I like to win.")
I just wrote these examples on a student paper, in an attempt to reinforce a lesson in showing vs. telling. 1) Winning is important to me. It doesn’t matter to me what I do, so long as I win. (That’s TELLING. Its dry and boring, and not at all convincing.) 2) On the shelf in…
7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College
Like the labor-activist plays of the 1930s, where characters never face any problems that can’t be fixed by joining the Communist Party (or, at least, a union), Wired knows of no problem that can’t be solved by a geeky application of technology. Students in Seton Hill’s New Media Journalism program are doing pretty well on…
OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers
OpenOffice.org is (was?) an amazing, free alternative to Microsoft Office, that was originally developed by Sun Microsystems. If the geeky details don’t excite you, what all this means is that instead of being a corporation’s neglected project, the legal groundwork is being set so that enthusiastic volunteers can develop the project according to the needs…
American Lit Podcast #9 — Joel Chandler Harris, Nights with Uncle Remus
In the past, my students have expressed frustration when they encountered Jim’s thick dialect in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I thought I’d ease them into that, by producing a podcast that introduces the dialect, in the context of much shorter tales. We are studying Nights with Uncle Remus, which is the second collection of…
Suspense by Anne: Choosing Active or Passive Voice – Why Should We?
This article does a good job tying together two concepts I’ve been asking my freshman writing students to consider — showing vs. telling, and active vs. passive verbs. Active and Passive Voices are the difference between showing and telling. What are Active and Passive Voice? Active voice, when written well, draws the reader in, lets…
Best use of the iPad in my American Lit class so far…
My class was doing small group work, focusing on a challenging passage in Emerson’s Nature, when a student called my attention to a fiery red sunset outside the tall 19thC windows. I turned out the lights, and in the glow of their iPads, I could see the looks on the students’ faces as they took…
American Lit Podcast #8 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Emerson burst onto the American intellectual scene by more or less inventing that American intellectual scene. Emerson collected around him a group of like-minded intellectuals who played out, in their own careers, this same search for American identity. His first publication, Nature, calls for a distinctly American way of looking at the enduring questions of human existence. You…
T. S. Eliot and his Jellicle Cats
Like Caryn Thurman, I came to Cats (the musical) late, after studying and teaching the more “serious” works of T.S. Eliot. While Thurman’s interpretation is not necessary for us to understand and appreciate Cats, it’s still an appealing thought. It’s also worth noting that Grizabella is one of the only characters in Cats that does…