In “Drama as Literature,” I assigned the first third or so of Oedipus the King, which always throws students for a loop. What’s with the “strophe,” which is the part of the choral performance chanted as the performers dance from right to left, and the “antistrophe,” which is chanted as the performers dance from left…
—Austrian national anthem ‘sexist’ (BBC) Should that caption read “Austrian schoolchildren are taught the national anthem during solar eclipses”? I can’t imagine why else they might be wearing those goggles. I don’t mean to make light of the subject. I’ve written a handout on gender-neutral language, and in my American Lit class, we discussed the ritualistic…
Usually once a decade an invention comes along that makes everyone revise the way they think about an accepted form of technology. In the first decade of the 21st Century the invention is Uni-Screw?. Uniscrew? replaces Slotted, Phillips,? Pozi-Drive,? Torx? and Square Head style screws and offers significant advantages compared to these fastening mediums. As…
Hi, I’m a reporter with National Public Radio and I’m doing a story on the plague that’s hit World of Warcraft. I’m really interested in talking to some people who play the game about the plague and what’s been done about it and generally how it feels to have your virtual character done in by…
In these days of instant messaging, e-mail, videophones and nearly instantaneous satellite communication with all parts of the world, the idea of communicating by telegraph is perhaps best described as “quaint.” However, it would be difficult to overestimate the impact that the telegraph had on worldwide communications at the time of its introduction. —The road…
Clutching the shredded tatters of my pride and dignity, I trudged to the office hours of my math instructor every week, seeking an explanation for the increasingly mysterious problems in the textbook. My instructor welcomed my presence as she would welcome the Angel of Death. Irritated? She was terrified. Explain…the problems? Articulate…the steps? Relate…the concepts?…
During the 1990’s, Lorin Anderson (a former student of Benjamin Bloom) led a team of cognitive psychologists in revisiting the taxonomy with the view to examining the relevance of the taxonomy as we enter the twenty-first century. REMEMBERING Recognise, list, describe, identify retrieve, name ?. Can the student RECALL information? UNDERSTANDING Interpret, exemplify, summarise, infer,…
More and more, video game-related courses are being offered in colleges around the country in response to the digital media industry’s appetite for skilled workers and the tastes of a new generation of students raised on Game Boy and Xbox. —Michael Hill —More Colleges Offering Video Game Courses (AP|MyWay) Seton Hill University January, 2006 (3 weeks,…
Ambiguous word choices are the source of some misunderstandings. Scientists often employ colloquial terminology, which they then assign a specific meaning that is impossible to fathom without proper training. The term “relativity,” for example, is intrinsically misleading. Many interpret the theory to mean that everything is relative and there are no absolutes. Yet although the…
Sheehan moved to New Orleans in 2004 to take a year off from the University of California at Berkeley, where administrators had temporarily suspended the stem-cell research program in which he was enrolled in hopes of helping to combat his younger sister Ruth’s spinal meningitis. Friends report that his public spirit continued in the Big…
—Keybag (João Sabino) I can hear my wife now… “Where did I put my keys?” Similar:Enjoying my "Dystopia in American Literature" class.After a kind of prelude in which we look…AcademiaFacebook’s News Feed: Often Changed, Never GreatI’ve never liked Instant Articles — Fac…BusinessTrump communications director Murtaugh rallies supporters by tweeting fake Washington Time…Here’s more evidence of just…
The original handwritten manuscript of what became Alice in Wonderland has been put online using software to virtually turn the pages. Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, by Lewis Carroll, is the latest 3D addition to the British Library’s Turning the Pages collection of books. —Original Alice work in 3D online (BBC) I had to hunt on the…
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Leaving a comment on someone‘sweblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation. As in real life, online there are some people who are a pleasure to converse with, and some who are not. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged.…
Nowadays, the phrase, “Oh, golly!” may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. “Golly” is a compaction of “God’s body” and, thus, was once a profanity. Yet neither biblical commandment nor the most zealous Victorian censor can elide from the human mind its hand-wringing over the unruly human body, its chronic,…
Political Cartoon Prompts Racist Accusations against Student Paper (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Exhibit A: Political cartoon, edited. Funny? Exhibit B: Political cartoon, original version. Funny? Exhibit C: Editorial. Exhibit D: The controversy, in context. Exhibit E: Debate, in situ. Exhibit F: Your thoughts? Similar:Family, I Hear You. I Love You. Go Away. This Weekend, I'm Marking Papers.No,…
Proof by clever variable choice “Let A be the number such that this proof works. . ” Proof by tessellation “This proof is the same as the last.” Proof by divine word “And the Lord said, ‘Let it be true,’ and it was true.” Proof by stubbornness “I don’t care what you say-it is true!”…
Beside the fact that math professors in the movie wear ties — “never,” said Kontorovich — and “there are no blackboards,” noted Stechmann – who laughed when Hal called a proof “hip,” – the aspect of the movie the students found strangest was that it centered on an argument over whether Catherine could have done…
Reflection on Wojtyla’s The Jeweller’s Shop (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Last night, I read Karol Wojtyla The Jeweller’s Shop for the first time. I knew it was mostly a collection of monologues with little action, in part because it was written to be performed in secret, in Nazi-Communist-occupied Poland. It is a poetic drama, in which the…
Finally, don’t even think about applying to a small college unless you love teaching. Students will eat you up. Their need for your time and your energy could overwhelm you, and if you don’t love the idea of the enthusiastic undergraduate student just sitting in your office, sipping coffee with you, while you talk about…