Today many people find it strange that the biggest meal of the day once centered around noon, but it made great sense at the time. Artificial lighting such as oil lamps and candles were expensive, and provided weak illumination at best. So people went to sleep at sundown, because it’s difficult to work and eat…
Each day I walk into my own classroom. Each day I stand before students who have book bags that I would never dare look into, believing that ignorance is bliss. I don’t want to know who’s packing and who’s dealing. A stupid sentiment, I’m sure. But am I really any safer knowing what they carry?…
I Smell Pretty (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This morning as I was getting ready to take my daughter to preschool, she told me that she sprayed my clothes with “pretty perfume.” I assumed she meant that she had sprayed the pile of dirty clothes near my bed, but my eyes have been watering all day because it…
There were a few minutes to spare near the end, but I decided to not ask students to share their opinions/feelings just yet, mainly because I didn’t want the class to be a lot of “well I heard?” Now that I’ve just watched the 10pm news and found out the student was an English major,…
i am in an abusive relationship right now have been in it for 7 months now. i dont feel the best. we allways fight he makes me feel like crap like i am nothing like everything is my fault. he promises me he ownt ever do it again this has happened over 20 times. and…
Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else;…
The laws of Roombotics, published on iRobot’s website, are basic ethical rules governing Roomba conduct. The first law states that the device “must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up.” The second law prescribes that Roomba “must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except…
Rumours that Chiang, 23, was the mass murderer swept across the world after links to his gun-obsessed blogs were posted on social networking website Facebook and similar sites. More than 180,000 people visited his sites, with many noting the similarities between him and the man described in accounts of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Some went…
Gamers like me have spent years railing against ill-informed parents and politicians who’ve blamed games for making kids violent, unimaginative, fat or worse. But now we’re in a weird position: We’re the first generation that is young enough to have grown up playing games, but old enough to have kids. So it turns out that,…
Erin Sheehan was one of four people able to walk out of her 9:05 German class in room 207 Norris Hall. —T.Rees Shapiro —Monday, April 16th 2007 5:27PM: Students react to the tragedy This item is too short, and needs some copyediting (that should be “peeked” where it reads “peaked”) but it’s the best eyewitness…
The Mercury News posted an Associated Press package that included a video news story, accounts from witnesses and a disturbing home-made cell phone video that recorded dozens of gun shots and angry and disturbed screaming, presumably from the gunman. Perhaps most troublesome was that whoever was shooting the cell phone video, actually moved toward the…
I may be nostalgic, but I’m not stupid. Today’s technologically superior, multi-million dollar monstrosities are, in almost every way, superior to anything that even the most creative guy could do in his basement on an old TI. But, without the full spectrum of gaming to be measured against, the games of the day really did…
On Sunday, April 15, Westmoreland County residents will remember the victims of Nazism by observing Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Memorial Day. —Interfaith Community to Observe Holocaust Memorial Day (National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education) I just got back from taking my nine-year-old son to this service, which was very moving. The service began in the Congregation…
My ultimate aim is to illustrate children’s books with images like the ones on this site. To this end, I am trying to find ways to make good-looking 3D images quickly–images that have all the magic of the illustrations I loved as a child. —Nick Towers —Children’s Book Illustration by Nick Towers For a year…
Although the CRPG has certainly suffered its share of ups and downs over the decades, history shows that when things are at their bleakest, there is always a new company poised to spring onto the scene with an amazing new title that brings every true CRPG fan back to the table. Perhaps we’re at such…
CITY COUNCIL is based on an actual city council meeting I covered while working for a small twice-a-week newspaper early in my career. Some of the items here have been fictionally enhanced for educational purposes. And, of course, some names have been changed to protect the foolish. Even as an assistant editor at this small…
A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal. —Producer for Katie Couric Fired — For Lifting from ‘Wall St Journal’ (AP | Editor & Publisher) Here’s a copy of Jeffrey Zaslow’s “Of the Places You’ll…
“It’s almost always the first play I teach,” she said. “I do that because very often students have only encountered Shakespeare in high school and have a misunderstanding of him as safe, moral, and dull. This one really dislodges the idea that Shakespeare is full of eternal moral truths. It takes place in a different…
The first issue was providing enough fun. Every puzzle should have some reward, and a complicated or multi-stage puzzle should provide some minor rewards for partial solutions. So once I had the puzzle structure in mind (more about that later), I could see which puzzles were going to open a lot of new game-play and…
MySpace vs. Facebook (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I just searched Google News for MySpace and Facebook, and was surprised at the difference in what I found. Of the first seven MySpace hits, five emphasized criminal acts, and two were PR-driven pieces. Of the first seven hits on Facebook, only one involved legal worries (in an item that…