It has long been assumed that William Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway was less than happy. He moved to London to pursue his theatrical career, leaving her in Stratford-upon-Avon and stipulating in his will that she would receive his “second best bed”, although still a valued item. Now a leading Shakespeare expert has analysed a…
Some 50 years ago, my father took me to his office in Washington, DC. I believe he was working for the Social Security Administration as a technical writer. I remember he held tightly onto my hand as we used a moving lift like this. The event was notable to young me for two reasons. One,…
I first taught Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle during an intensive 3-week online course during the 2020-21 winter break, during the Time of Covid. The nature of that course was such that I could only reasonably require students to read 6 of Wilson’s 10 plays; I think I required everyone to read 4, and then split the…
A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to restore The Associated Press’ full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that the government…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap of last week’s “In Purgatory’s Shadow,” we see the Defiant, a couple of runabouts, and Dukat’s Bird of Prey lining up against the huge Dominion fleet. But instead of attacking, the invaders head for Cardassia which (we learn from an even smugger than usual Dukat) has joined the Dominion. In…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira helps Odo re-adjust to life as a shape-shifter, obliviously but brutally friendzoning him in the process. Upon learning that someone on the other side of the wormhole is sending encrypted Cardassian military signals, Sisko calls on Garak. The enigmatic tailor downplays the event, telling his found family (Dr. Bashir and Ziyal) the…
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I have a daughter who does things. Her next is ensemble/musician/understudy for Mary Magdelene in Jesus Christ Superstar, Pittsburgh Musical Theater Apr 3-13. Similar:Are we spreading fake news about fake news?In a new research paper that Poynter say…CultureThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m… CultureThey…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves) Sisko, in civilian clothes, seeks an informer, but is instead met by the rogue security officer Eddington, who uses the plight of the refugees in the cave to justify his treason against Starfleet. Eddington claims the moral high ground, but Sisko is unimpressed. Eddington beams away…
I planned ahead pretty well this term. I like the pace in all my classes.
I always enjoy my visits to the studio. This recording was a quick one!
After marking a set of bibliography exercises, I created this graphic to focus on the kinds of citation errors I found in submissions that students clearly aren’t proofreading. I’m amazed that students don’t correct the capitalization errors (often caused by the keywords the student was searching for) or when they don’t notice that entries repeat…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Odo walks stiffly into the infirmary, where Bashir scolds him for not taking better care of his recently-acquired humanoid body. Quark presents a bottle with what he says is a dead changeling. Odo, entranced, says it’s alive. Bashir manages to mostly unflabbergast the creature’s cellular jimberjams, and there is certainly no plot significance…
Imagine a society that engineers its highways so that ordinary people who make mistakes, and even people who intentionally break the law, are less likely to kill people with their cars. On 22 May 1997, the Swedish government presented Bill 1996/97:137 to parliament. It cemented zero deaths as a long-term goal for road fatalities. It reiterated that…
My years of watching MacGyver definitely paid off. (Not that my GenZ students got the reference.) I’m doing a lot more in-class work with paper, giving students handouts to annotate in class, asking them to write in copybooks. For the midterm I gave students a short academic article, excerpts from a play we haven’t read…
As a grad student at the University of Toronto, I picked up a bit about Marshall McLuhan here, a bit of Harold Innis there… Blogging this so I keep this in mind the next time I teach a course like The History and Future of the Book. (There’s so much out there!) [S]ome media are…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves), a pleasant-looking Bajoran monk welcomes guests to a “days of atonement” retreat, and is zapped by a beam of light. In the infirmary, the very pregnant Kira, griping comically that the herbs she’s been prescribed mean sedatives don’t work, learns that Latha, formerly a violent member…
This morning, after students submitted a homework assignment (a 200-word evidence-based argument paragraph), I asked them to annotate a printout of the instructions (including a rubric), had them peer-review their own submission, and then had them write additional annotations on the assignment sheet, in which they stated what changes they now realized they needed to…
Given that they need to write multiple stories a day, while also appearing on podcasts and 24-hour news channels, lobby journalists cannot plausibly understand policy detail or how financial markets work. It’s also not what they’re good at. Their skillset is to nose around and cause trouble. If you want a scandal covered or to…