Back to the Classroom

As an administrator, I worked with other professors and administrators. As an instructor of graduate creative writers and upper-division English majors, I was teaching students who also loved words and writing, students who aspired to be what I was, a published author employed in a bookish field. Believe me, I am no longer preaching to…

The Immortal Henrietta Lacks

“Oh yeah! Scientists I’ve talked to say you cannot overestimate how important HeLa cells have been.” Yet no one in the Lacks family had been informed by Johns Hopkins of the existence of their mother’s cells, until a researcher called in the early 1970s wanting to test the family. “Henrietta’s husband basically got a phone…

Epic Game Design Tour

Epic Game Design Tour / Final Exam Review from Adam Marshall Smith on Vimeo. Similar:Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Coloring PagesOver the past few weeks, I spent several…ArtRandom #steampunk workstation with a porthole, because why not. Most of the surfaces are f…AestheticsThe Challenger disaster, Jan. 28, 1986On this day in 1986, the Challenger spac…EducationNo, Kirk…

Doritos Tablet (iPad Spoof)

Similar:Editorial: Video Games and The Great Train Robbery Through the development of crosscuttin…AestheticsHomeward (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 13) Worf's foster brother interferes w… Rewatching ST:TNG The Enterprise-…EthicsAllegiance (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 18) Picard plays 'Escape the Roo…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EthicsThesis Reminders and Transitions: Touched up and created an infographic…

YouTube – Future Designer laptop – ROLLTOP //Diploma Thesis//

Very cool design! Thanks for the suggestion, Jefe!   An episode of Star Trek TNG featured a character who carried around a roll-out piano keyboard, but the prop they used looked more like just a piece of cloth. This looks very believable. Similar:Clickbait writers hate this English professor's time-saving trick!Defeat clickbaiters with this one weird …CybercultureStudents…

Change The Code, Keep the Text

Today, programmers, web-developers and designers possess countless different ways to display digital words online, much like an artist with a blank canvas. As words float across our computer screens, code may be considered the underlying thought and form of expression that supports online words, preventing the words from physically or metaphorically “disappearing into [cyber]space” (Richards,…

Teaching Online Journalism » 21 examples of Flash journalism

These are interactive news packages I’ve selected to show to journalism students as we discuss some of the capabilities of Adobe Flash. Many are very recent. —Mindy McAdams Similar:Almost Flat DesignApple, Google and Microsoft have very di…AestheticsDax (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 7) Jadzia Dax faces the legal consequences …Rewatching ST:DS9 Dax is apprehended…

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

Link pointing to blog entry about a different self-referential clip, and also a different (more vulgar) self-referential clip.   Similar:What if I design a #steampunk fantasy cruiser and there aren’t enough chairs? How do I kno… AestheticsStudents Don't Read Syllabi, Exhibit 58623https://twitter.com/ConnorMEwing/status/…AcademiaTapestry (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 15) The dying Picard has a chance…

Words Are Cheap

I am so looking forward to Jason Scott’s Get Lamp. (Family obligations are keeping me from attending the premiere at PAX East.) Talking to Scott, his passion for the subject and for detail are both formidable. Most of our interview was tangents, and I didn’t mind any of them. Discussing Colossal Cave Adventure, he ran…

Citations: Efficient In-text Quotations

When writing a paper in MLA style, prefer brief quotations from your sources, in order to emphasize how the complex connections between the sources support your original argument. In the essay “The Full Title of an Essay Fills Lots of Space” by Maxwell Wordsworth Filler, it talks about how easy it is to bury your own thoughts when…

Crash Blossoms

Legendary headlines from years past (some of which verge on the mythical) include “Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel,” “MacArthur Flies Back to Front” and “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans.” The Columbia Journalism Review even published two anthologies of ambiguous headlinese in the 1980s, with the classic titles “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim” and…

You will consume.

I didn’t watch that movie awards thing, but I understand this ad premiered last night. Here we see the iPad as a tool for monetizing the consumption of the internet. I saw brief flashes of a keyboard, e-mail, a desktop publication program, and a photo album, so the ad does acknowledge the role of user-created…

Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution

Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth’s creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children “religious or moral instruction.” Hold…