Slow-motion Nightmare (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I had a busy day yesterday, with adventures that included diving fully-clothed into a large kiddie pool to retrieve my 2-year-old daughter, who had slipped and was floating face down, unable to straighten herself out. An older girl had taken my daughter’s hands and lured her to the center of the…
Children as young as seven in one British school are using weblogs as part of their normal routine, and are doing better than non-webloggers as a result, their teacher says. Weblogs, easy-to-use personal journals published on the internet, get children more interested in school work they might otherwise have disliked, says junior school teacher John…
While hardcore online gaming remains the preserve of young men, research firm Screen Digest found that “bored housewives” are fuelling the growth of other games offered on the net. —Net games lure ‘bored housewives’ (BBC) It’s not clear from the article whether the term “bored housewife” is used in the report, or whether it was just…
The bad words we removed, meaning that “The meteor is going to be pissed” was changed to “The meteor is going to be mad.” Howie Rubin of Jaleco (the company that was going to publish the game under license) advised us the that the baddest bad word is Kill. The central activity in most Nintendo…
Want to play a game that involves Monty the Mole? Commander Keen? David “Knight Rider” Hasselhoff? With RoN you can. The fact that anyone can freely contribute to the series means that its potential for growth is unrivaled. Indeed, at the time of writing this article, there have been over sixty RoN games. Even King’s…
It must be the painkillers, we thought. Or maybe hypoxia, the oxygen deprivation in the blood that often contributes to delirium in sick people. Or that the cancer now was destroying his mind, just as it had racked his body. But then our cousin Lynne mentioned that her parents had done a lot of similar…
Researchers at Cambridge University have discovered sheep prefer smiling or relaxed human faces, over angry or stressed ones. — Sheep like smiles say researchers (BBC) What about sheepish grins? Okay, that was a ba-a-ad joke. The news story says this research took place three years ago. What is the “news hook”? Is this article discussing recent…
An atheist’s attempt to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance failed on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the constitutional question and ruled he could not bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter…. The ruling came on Flag Day and on the 50th anniversary of the addition of the…
I couldn’t have been less interested. The pedagogical approach was entirely vocational. Just as my French and Spanish courses revolved around hypothetical trips to Paris or Madrid (like I was going to get there any time soon), my programming courses were filled with unlikely scenarios that read like a cross between an inter-office memo and…
NASA’s Mars rovers have completed their long cross-country quests and are now at two very different sites that scientists have been restlessly waiting to reach. —Mars rovers arrive at long-awaited sites (New Scientist) Similar:Facebook Should Pay All of UsThe trick is that most people think they…BusinessAfter Halloween where do all the pumpkins go? Now we…
Oxford and Cambridge interviews have long been the stuff of legend, or more probably, urban myth. Most people have heard the story of the candidate who is supposed to have set fire to his interviewer’s newspaper when asked to surprise him, or the student who, when asked to describe bravery, said “this” before walking out…
Several thousand Dubliners, tourists and literary experts filled the capital’s major boulevard Sunday to celebrate the fictional anniversary of “Ulysses,” James Joyce’s famously complex epic set on a single Dublin day 100 years ago. —Thousands in Dublin celebrate ‘Ulysses’ (AP|Seattle Post-Intelligencer) June 16, 2004 is Bloomsday. The mad cow disease scare means the thousands re-creating Leopold…
When Sandy called to tell me that she had been fired over the essay she had written for class, I felt like Joseph K. in Kafka’s The Trial?arrested without charge, guilty of something, but uncertain of what. I had been teaching writing since 1971, and to my knowledge a student had never before been fired…
After six years of regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the Preble’s mouse in fact never existed. It instead seems to be genetically identical to one of its cousins, the Bear…
When young writers describe characters, they almost universally make them flat goodie-goodies who might have problems, but little psychological depth. Or they don’t have enough conflict at all. Waggoner has students first write a character description, then pass that description to a neighbor. The neighbor is told to “do something mean to the character.” Then…
The Sound and the Fury. 75 years ago, William Faulkner finished his fourth novel. It was published later in the fall (October 7, 1929), and for the first fifteen years sales totaled just over 3,300 copies (an appendix was added in 1946, when most of Faulkner’s books were out of print. Of course, a few…
But when a piece of derivative fiction starts with a premise along the lines of “all the characters on Buffy are human EMTs in New York and vampires don’t exist” — or, less creatively, “in this story Angel dies in Season One and Buffy gets together with Xander because I always liked him better anyway”…
The grading system for courses offered by CCS is focused on accomplishment, a combination of Pass/No Record grading and variable unit credit. For each course taken in the College, the student enrolls for a specific number of units of work that he or she plans to do during the quarter, from 1 – 6 units.…
Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character. —The Death of Lincoln (Harper’s) From an 1865 article. Similar:How Literature Became Word Perfect There can be no true distinction drawn …CybercultureMy #AugustWilson #Steampunk…
Alzheimer’s had done what many feminist leaders fantasized about doing themselves, if only they could get away with it. Today, I am still pro-choice, and I still support fetal tissue research. But I now realize that those who disagree with me also have good points. I hope they reflect on their position as often as…