Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader,…
The fantastically-colored star is our own sun as STEREO sees it in four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. The black disk is the Moon. — Stereo Eclipse (NASA) A movie sequence shows the sun slowly turning from left to right, while the disc of the moon approaches from the left and crosses the face of the…
”slip of the click” (Google Search) Just now, a colleague accidentally hit “reply all” instead of “reply,” and immediately sent out an apology: “Got you all by a slip of the click.” I’d never heard that term before, but I like it. A quick search of Google reveals only 5 references on the internet. Similar:ChatGPT promised…
A group of Buddhist monks in Malaysia is appealing for help to solve a problem with ants. Buddhism forbids devotees from harming any living creature. So the monks are looking for a creative and non-violent solution to deal with the insects, which are biting worshippers. —Malaysian monks face ant dilemma (BBC) Rosemary, who sent me the…
The music-master of George III said to his royal pupil, “There are three classes of violin players; those who do not play at all, those who play very badly, and those who play well. Your Majesty has already succeeded in reaching the second class.” —Constructive Exercises in English (Boogle Books) Now that’s tact. Similar:'Inappropriate' dance moves…
Then they tried to do a documentary of their own about him — and ran into the same sort of resistance Moore himself famously faces in his own films. The result is “Manufacturing Dissent,” which turns the camera on the confrontational documentarian and examines some of his methods. Among their revelations in the movie, which…
Then how the pussy-cats did mew What else, poor pussies, could they do? They screamed for help, ’twas all in vain, I So then, they said, “We’ll scream again. Make haste, make haste! me-ow! me-o! She’ll burn to death,- we told her so.” So she was burnt with all her clothes, And arms and hands,…
The first person to come to his stand is a man from the Mekong Delta. He’s got a letter with him, addressed to a businessman from Europe. He’s his chauffeur, and he’s been driving him to business meals and meetings for a year. He asks in writing if the man can get him health insurance…
The new policy, which is currently under discussion by the community of users who regularly write and maintain the site, is being considered after it emerged this month that one of Wikipedia’s most respected editors didn’t hold the qualifications he claimed. The user, who went under the pseudonym “essjay,” described himself in an online profile…
I had begun with a flourish, emphasizing the excitement created when a young curator at the British Museum first deciphered the Gilgamesh epic, with its seeming confirmation of the biblical story of the Flood: “When George Smith discovered the Flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh in the fall of 1872, he made one of…
During the Stalin era, Soviet officials frequently vanished from official photographs after falling out of favor at the Kremlin. But the advent of Photoshop and its variety of tools has made it easier for photographers to tinker with images after they’re captured. By the same token, the internet has allowed skeptical bloggers around the world…
Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized…
Described in its patent filing as a “hype-generating mechanism with fully integrated Mac compatibility,” the iLaunch is powered by Intel dual-core processors optimized to calculate a product’s gravitas. Apple claims the iLaunch can garner the same amount of press attention as a major scientific discovery, high court ruling, celebrity meltdown, or natural disaster at 200…
—Field of Rainbows [Copyeditor’s Make Mistake’s Sometime’s] (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) The caption should read “photographer’s shadow.” The mistake doesn’t come close to overshadowing the power of this great photo. Similar:How to Keep Students Writing in the Age of AI Tools In a writing-intensive class, studen…AcademiaWhy Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering FreshmenWisdom from science writer John…
Of Dental X-Rays and Sales Pitches (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I went to the dental office at Sears yesterday, where I noticed that the woman X-raying my teeth didn’t entirely disappear behind the lead wall when she pushed the button. Three times I watched, and I could see her elbow and part of her hand. Before she…
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, a social theorist known for his acerbic commentaries on consumerism and excess, died Tuesday, his publishing house said. He was 77. —Noted French philosopher Jean Baudrillard dies (Jerusalem Post) When I first heard of this, I checked the Wikipedia entry, and was a little surprised to see no information on his death.…
Maybe tomorrow I’ll think this is cute. In the meantime, I trust no one named Vladimir. God help me if I dream about this… —Karissa Kilgore —Nabokov will play you, fool (Sugarpacket) One of my students vents her frustration at being completely fooled during her first encounter with Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Similar:What My Classroom Looks…
Remakes are common these days for several reasons, primarily the fact that Hollywood is short on new ideas. Plus, the original story is actually pretty good, even if the movie failed to live up to its promise. Capricorn One is not exactly a classic, but it does have some great ideas, great scenes, and a…
The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in…
“To use the Minute Paper,” Angelo and Cross write, “an instructor stops class two or three minutes early and asks students to respond briefly to some variation on the following two questions: ‘What was the most important thing you learned during this class?’ and ‘What important question remains unanswered?’ Students then write their responses on…