Last night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a member of the computer science faculty. A math professor was hoping to come, but had a change of plans. The previews suggested it would be a bit intense for me to take the kids to see it, but now that I’ve seen…
Several of my students created videos for class projects. EL200 Jessie Krehlik: Self Defense Videos (with Aero Windwalker) Jessie Farine: Suis La Lune Review Rebecca Marrie created this YouTube Channel, which I hope we can use to sort all the SHU student projects I hear about in the future. I have one independent study project…
It’s the first time I’ve given a final exam in a while. I usually mark final projects or final papers, which I’ve seen in numerous draft forms for the past month, so all I really need to do is read the student’s final reflection, after all the hard work is over. But in a large-ish…
This paper riffs on one of the most popular handouts on my website — Short Stories: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers (originally written by one of my technical writing students in 2002, though I continue to tweak it), and applies it to mathematics. [B]efore anyone can understand a piece of mathematics, they must first…
The cuteness of a tribble, the temper of a mugatu, and the ham of a Shatner. Similar:Another very rough day. Students are cheerful and patient, obviously happy to be here.Another very rough day. Students are che…AcademiaA Fistful of Datas (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 8) Worf Trapped in Western S…Rewatching ST:TNG Silly Gagh-Western …AmusingMy…
I know that my bridge playset has long since gone to the big warp core in the sky, and I can’t seem to find the shoebox where I kept my original Star Trek action figures from the 70s. Even as a kid, I remember being frustrated that the playset didn’t really look all that much…
A masterful spoof of one of my favorite literary works, skewering a reference book I spent a lot of time with in my formative years.. ‘Tis hard to say, which promises more Loot:Writing, or Telling others how to do’t. — Geoff Nunberg Similar:Winners Chosen in Annual Shakespeare Monologue and Scene ContestMichael Henninger took this wonderful…
A serendipitous click on a link brought me to this striking example of storytelling economy in a news story. “Three flower cars, wow!” said a pilgrim from Wisconsin who was just about to chomp down on a chocolate cannoli from Mike’s Pastry yesterday morning. The cheesehead was momentarily spellbound by the stately procession of black…
A big part of my work as a freshman writing instructor seems to be convincing students that I really do mean it when I explain that Googling to “find quotes” to support an opinion you’ve already committed to paper is not the same thing as doing academic research with peer-reviewed sources. I also find that…
I dislike the term “digital native.” I mean no offense to Marc Prensky, who popularized it (along with its counterpart, “digital immigrant”), but the term is laden with colonial baggage, though as a humanities person I’m perhaps hypersensitive to that sort of thing. More important, the term also misses an important point. Today’s technologically savvy…
I recall deciding not to blog about an unpublished study that reported a correlation between lower grades and higher Facebook usage, though I did make a mental note of how some of the coverage was confusing correlation with causation. A recent draft manuscript suggested that Facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in…
While hiding from the stack of final papers, I took a break in the cafeteria. Some of my colleagues were talking about the new Star Trek movie, and the conversation shifted to what’s on TV now. My daily household duties include putting the kids to bed. My wife doesn’t really do mornings, and homeschooling doesn’t…
The grammar offered an irresistible linguistic challenge. Klingon is difficult but not impossible, weird yet totally believable. Anyone can put on a pair of pointed ears or memorize some lines of dialogue, but learning to speak Klingon requires genuine hard work. Most languages created for fictional worlds involve simple vocabulary substitutions, such as moodge for…
I’m sitting in the back of a meeting where the speaker has spent 40 minutes tracking down a technical glitch interrupting his presentation. Happily, the room has wireless access… Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom (aka Rogue), created in the early 1980s[1] by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman, is an intriguing game for many reasons.…
The U.S. government could provide tax breaks for newspapers or allow them to operate as nonprofits to help the struggling business survive, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday. — Reuters Similar:Crash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gi…Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices…CultureWhat…
A great little indie game by Daniel Benmergui. The game is also a poem. Today I Die Similar:The Rise of "Synthespians"”Mr. Serkis is the human actor behind th…ArtAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. Trying to add a subtle pattern to the light-…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsWhat blogging wasI’ve maintained this blog…
His ear was severed by a sword wielded by his friend, the painter, Paul Gauguin, in a drunken row over a woman called Rachel and the true nature of art. Gauguin lied about the incident and fled, two German art historians now believe. Van Gogh covered up to protect his friend and was placed in…
Wonderfully technical discussion of interactive fiction programming issues, presented by Andrew Plotkin at Penguicon 7. Coding is art, art is code. As I write this, Inform 7 is approaching its third birthday. I7 is a tool for creating interactive fiction (text adventure games). Like all the most powerful IF development tools, I7 is a programming…
“We’re going to become a 24-hour, local news-gathering media company so we can more effectively gather content and distribute it among our different platforms: print, online and mobile,” [Baltimore Sun] spokeswoman Renee Mutchnik said. — Washington Times Reporters are reporting on how other news organizations are reacting to changes in the field of journalism. It’s…
Unicorns are much more fun when they move. It took about two minutes for my daughter to do the drawing, about an hour and a half to make the model (while my daughter played at my feet), and another two hours to make the animation (long after she was in bed). Similar:If I am not a pedagogical god,…