Even now, the thought of going on the academic job market seems so spiritually suicidal that I would rather abandon my career altogether than submit to the scrutiny of another semihostile search committee. As far as I can tell, the hiring process in English favors psychopaths with ice water in their veins, which explains a…
“I was going to do gift bags, but I was going to do them right,” Zwicky recalled. The party had a train theme, so she got sticks and bandannas and made “hobo packs” that included animal crackers and bubble solution. Zwicky said that party was a turning point for her. She helped found Birthdays Without…
Because of the popularity of audio books, Lowe commissioned Bill Uden, a performing-arts student at Carmarthenshire College in Wales, to record readings from her book in his college’s studio. Lowe, who found Uden through a “blogging friend,” began releasing the podcasts along with her regular posts this month. And like many writers who publish their…
The ubiquity of the cell phone camera means that every moment in our lives is photographable. One consequence of this is an altered perception of the gravity of our day-to-day routines. We are now more aware of ourselves as observers of “history.” When a van catches fire in front of our house, we and our…
—toxickaty —Pac-Man Bathroom (Flickr | toxickaty) Awesome. Similar:Healing the WebThe lessons I learned in just over an ho…BusinessIt's Friday night in July, and I'm jamming with my fall course preps.The dean sends me an email at 9:07pm. In…AcademiaAnd the People of the Book of Face Were Deceived “And I looked up and saw a sign, and…AestheticsWhat…
The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires first of all recognition of one’s own intellectual limits and fallibilities–in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of today’s education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students, especially those who avoid serious science and math, go from kindergarten through…
The nefarious enemy of all that is good, the right paddle, has performed an act of agression against our sovereign right side by hitting the ball back in our direction.If we act fast, we may be able to intercept the ball. It is aimed for directly above our paddle! Move the great paddle up!Hold the…
If you checked out the Newsweek article that I mentioned last time, you were subjected to the above image, with multiple Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks all dolled up in hi-tech mo-cap gear. Here is where Warner Bros’ marketing was really banking on the prestige of Hanks getting all dirty, showing that he’s willing to go…
The science fiction drug is available everywhere to kids, in superhero comics, on TV, in the movies, in books and magazines. It is impossible to avoid exposure, to avoid the least hint of excitement at Marvel Comics superheroes and Star Trek reruns and Star Wars, impossible not to become habituated even before kindergarten to the…
The researchers found that the games can provide opportunities for achievement, freedom and even a connection to other players. Those benefits trumped a shallow sense of fun, which doesn’t keep gamers as interested. Players reported feeling the best when the games produced positive experiences and challenges that connected to what they knew in the real…
Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions. When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book…
“The 2007 National Freshman Attitudes Report,” a survey by Noel-Levitz of nearly 100,000 incoming freshmen at 292 public and private two- and four-year colleges, finds that men and women share high expectations for getting a degree, “no matter what obstacles get in my way.” But male students at the same time report coming into college…
Publishing a Short Story (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) A handout on my website, Short Stories: Top 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers, is currently turning up pretty high in the Google rankings. Every so often I get an e-mail from someone asking for advice. What advice I give depends on how serious the author is. Since I…
E-mail is , of course, cheaper and encourages quicker thought, and it introduces a peculiar blend of the personal and professional. The AIP historians have also detected a decline in the use of lab notebooks, finding that data are often stored directly into computer files. Finally, they have noted the influence of PowerPoint, which can…
What’s it actually like? Does it exploit the tragedy for cheap thrills? Or does it actually have artistic merit — offering a new way to think about Columbine? Right off the bat, Ledonne tries to put his critics off guard by delivering precisely the opposite of what you’d expect. Nobody will be able to use…
Even Twain scholars seem to have missed his foresight on this subject. I discovered it by accident, in browsing through the 24 volumes of his collected works in the “Author’s National Edition.” In an 1898 short story called “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904,” he describes an invention called the “telelectroscope,” a gadget hooked up…
Recently, I tried to help a faculty member at my college submit a grant proposal to a National Institutes of Health competition. I soon discovered that one can no longer submit a grant to NIH directly. One has to submit it through Grants.gov. I estimate that it took me more than 25 hours to try…
The [Association of American Colleges and Universities] report outlines curricular goals for all colleges, but they are not of the “two semesters of science, two courses in writing” variety. Instead they are four broad “essential learning outcomes,” with the idea that different kinds of institutions would assure these outcomes in different ways. Generally, the outcomes…
The primary focus of this conference is to explore the growing cultural importance of interactive media. All scholarship on digital interactive media, such as computer games, mixed realities and interactive fiction, as well as users, including adults and children, will be considered in one of four broad conference streams: —Interacting with Immersive Worlds (Brock University) The…
Mexican food in the united states is like the bow legged asthmatic cousin of real Mexican food. —Jonathan Stewart —Tacos, toilets and a glass of tap water! (Mexican Civilization) I have been enjoying the blogging that is currently being posted by students of my division chair, John Spurlock. Similar:Memories of Toronto Yonge Street EncountersI arrived in…