Just as you can’t be too rich or too thin, I’d always thought, so you can’t have too many tools on your Swiss Army knife – but that was before I took delivery of the new Giant Swiss Army knife. Grotesque, if superbly engineered, the Giant weighs nearly a kilogram and features 85 devices in…
—Advent Calendar 2006 (Leslie Harpold) A cute Advent calendar. Similar:That Class Where Stanford Profs Projected Hundreds of Zoom Students on a Video WallOf course, not all institutions happen t…AcademiaFinished the female officers for my neovictorian steampunk personal project. #blender3d, #… Female officers, from the le…AestheticsThe girl as Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn and Thorin. #proudofthegirl #notentirelysurewhy #still…AestheticsClicking,…
Parents trickled to the school later Tuesday morning to pick up their children. Nearly three months ago, a 10th-grader at the same school, just outside Philadelphia, was arrested for allegedly bringing in a loaded gun. The boy showed the gun to another student, and word soon trickled to a teacher and then a security officer,…
That craft has never been more vibrant, or vital. But the ability to make a living at it will crumble soon. The pros who deal in breaking news have a problem. They can’t possibly compete in the media-sphere of the future. We?re entering a world of ubiquitous media creation and access. When the tools of…
I can never resist a challenge and this one, posed by a mischievous friend, was a humdinger: could I befriend one of my own children on one of those ‘social networking’ websites for teenagers without being caught out? Could I make a convincing youngster and engage my son in online conversations? While it was an…
There is no clacking of keyboards in most classrooms at the Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville Junior School, although there is a full range of facilities for computer lessons and technology isn’t being ignored. But the private school’s principal believes the old-fashioned pens have helped boost the academic performance and self-esteem of his 1,200 pupils.…
*clunk* The rotating tin cylinder within the phonograph vibrates slightly as a brass needle scrapes against it. The sound of a throat being cleared emerges from the machine’s hornshell speaker, followed by a thin, haunting voice. “March the 16th.” A deep, shaky breath. “I dread to say it, but I believe I am going mad.…
Someday, much sooner than you’d like, that shiny new toy you just bought will break. When it happens, you’ll swear, you’ll cry — then you’ll sigh and open your wallet.–Kris Wagner —Gadgets Built to Fail (Wired) “They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.” — Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman…
I have a Verizon unlimited data plan in the U.S. and recently crossed the border to Canada. Prior to crossing the border I called customer service to find out what rates I’d be paying for voice and data. The data rate I was quoted was “.002 cents per kilobyte.” I was surprised at the rate…
I no longer see cases of blatant plagiarism as personal insults. They are, instead, the pathetic bleats of students who think they know enough — maybe all there really is to know — about how to read and think and write. The paradox of plagiarism is that in order to be really good at it,…
“For more than 100 years journalism has been sustained by this virtuous circle in which the audience paid for their news, and the advertiser paid to reach that audience, and the publisher made a profit and paid his journalists and the society benefited into the bargain,” said Michael Oreskes, executive editor of the International Herald…
‘Theory’, we are told, has radically changed the nature of literary studies, but people who say this do not mean literary theory, the systematic account of the nature of literature and of the methods for analysing it. When people complain that there is too much theory in literary studies these days, they don’t mean too…
I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t seem to connect at all with the average audience. Seriously, folks, what is the problem here? I’ve been doing this a whole lot longer than any of the clowns out on the circuit these days, so I think I know a thing or two about…
—Maybe! (Wondermark) Click to see the punchline. Saving this for the next time I teach A Doll House or “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” This one with an elephant is good, too. Oh, and this one about the kidney made me laugh out loud. I feel like I need to add a new tag called “retro”. Similar:Hacking the…
Less intimidating and frustrating than the conference, more “human” than the margin note, audio commentary possesses the potential to become a space where real teaching and learning can emerge in the midst of feedback. —Sommers and Sipple —A Heterotopic Space Haven’t looked closely at this, but I’m blogging it for access later. Since I find…
Scientists say they have photographic evidence that suggests liquid water may have been on the planet as little as five years ago. —Julie Wheldon —Does water STILL flow on Mars? (Daily Mail) Similar:Brain, InterruptedIn most situations, the person juggling …AcademiaSeton Hill Virtual Commencement Fall 2020 AcademiaIn May, 2002, I was blogging about… typefaces in period movies;…
The lunch took place just a couple of days after the Democrats crushed the Republicans in the midterm elections, regaining the House and the Senate. Mr. Bérubé, to his credit, kept the gloating to a minimum. It’s worth noting that, even though they’ve been writing about each other for years, the two men had never…
In what seems to be a growing genre, we have a new trailer for Mary Poppins re-cut by a fan into a horror film called “Scary Mary”. —Mary Poppins re-cut into Horror film (The Disney Blog) Stay awake… don’t close your eyes. Similar:It Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is Losing Money on $200…
I discovered that an online newsletter, Podcasting News, had run a small piece titled “Professor: University Podcasts Are Totally Bogus.” The professor was me. The piece included a link to our student newspaper, which led the reader to a mangled version of my opinion piece, reduced to a fifth of its original length and printed…
Writing, in a radio story, has to be tighter and simpler than print: the beginning should hook listeners fast and hard, the way a song does. A succession of straightforward, declarative sentences (like those in the beginnings above) might feel a bit too clipped in a print story, but it’s just right for radio. A…