The Photographer's Right

Krages.com (PDF) In the event you are threatened with detention or asked to surrender your film, asking the following questions can help ensure that you will have the evidence to enforce your legal rights: What is the person’s name? Who is their employer? Are you free to leave? If not, how do they intend to…

This Course Brought to You By….

Scott Jaschik (Inside Higher Ed) At Hunter College of the City University of New York, some professors are asking those questions — and a Faculty Senate committee is considering a formal complaint about violations of academic freedom — over a course sponsored last year by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (known as the IACC), an organization…

Sparking the texts instead of reading them

A student in my “History and Future of the Book” class today referred to how some students in a different class got caught “sparking the texts instead of reading them.”  I knew she was referring to Spark Notes, but I’d never heard the name being used as a verb before. Similar:The Last Outpost (ST:TNG Rewatch.…

''You Can Always Look It Up''… or Can You?

E.D. Hirsch (2000) The progressive theory that students should gain knowledge through a limited number of projects instead of by taking courses in separate subjects is based on the following reasoning. If you learn a bunch of facts in separate, academic courses you will passively acquire a lot of inert, fragmented knowledge. You will be…

Esme by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

H.H. Munro (SAKI)  Esme “The hyena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with…

Creationist Diorama-Rama

Bennett Gordon, Science and Technology blog (Utne Reader): Every diorama in the Home School Science Fair, which took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, had a biblical quote attached to it. A young woman whose project involved teaching her dog how to run circles between her legs decorated the words: “If you love…

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain

Stephanie Rosenbloom, NYT: Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls. “Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13,…

A Real Swinger

It probably only makes sense if you pay attention to Lego sets, but its made my kids and me all laugh. Similar:xkcd: Pathogen ResistanceThis is just an excerpt. Read the whole …AmusingInterface changes make it a little harder to work with Google's image searchWhen I’m looking for a picture I’m going…BusinessSo many dials to polish.…

Passage: a Gamma256 video game by Jason Rohrer

Grand Text Auto introduced me to the excellent indie mini-game Passage.  Play it. It takes a few minutes to download and about 5 minutes to play. I’m misty-eyed. Play it! Similar:A warning to college profs from a high school teacherMy students did well on those questions …AcademiaBlog ten-beat lines of verse, like Shakespeare wrote. Blog ten-beat…

Retro Sabotage – True Self

Retro Sabotage remixes Pac-Man.  Lots more where that came from. Via MetaFilter. Similar:A Quick and Comprehensive Guide to Type A Quick and Comprehensive Guide to T…AestheticsGoogle overtakes Apple in the US classroom Google in US schools, with Chromebook …AcademiaHow to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks)   http://www.youtube.com/wat…AmusingLooking for Par'Mach in All the…

Star Trek – Video Episodes on CBS.com

CBS makes up for canceling Star Trek almost 40 years ago, by publishing the full video of every episode on their website. (Sigh. Yet another cool thing I won’t have time for.) Similar:'Inappropriate' dance moves lead to calls for student lessons in Peters Mr. Merrell said the students told h…AmusingLet there be light The Irish…

Aardvarchaeology : Ruins of Childhood

Aardvarchaeology has a fascinating piece on abandoned suburban treehouses. These sites and their formation processes reflect children’s psychological characteristics. Kids have little sense of order, short memories and strange rationality. They also have no idea that childhood is brief and transient. They will happily fill their treehouses with junk without any thought that they might…