There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, “just blow us away.” We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different…
Dear Professor Jerz, Associate Vice-President Rodd Webb has forwarded me your concerns about the reproduction of your work on a York based website without proper citation. I am writing first of all to apologize for York’s delay in responding to your concerns. The essay has now been removed from the website, and the issue of plagiarism…
My son wants a plastic pie for Christmas.Literacy Weblog) Our toy kitchen has one plastic pie, but my son Peter wants another one, so that he and I can pretend to have a pie fight like the one in The Great Race. He has asked Santa on two different occasions (once at church, once in…
It’s a peculiarity of scholarly life that everyone is expected to be able to deliver a lecture well, but almost no one is trained to do it….If you put your bulleted ideas up on slides, your audience will look at the slides, not at you. You’ll also be teaching them that What You Have to…
Making Slow Progress on MT ResurrectionLiteracy Weblog) Dave my ISP has made a copy of the whole blogs.setonhill.edu website the way it was this morning, and backed up the last working version of the site (from about five days ago, when comments stopped working). Already I’ve gotten five e-mails from bloggers reporting that they can’t…
Hugh Kenner, the literary critic who died on Monday aged 80, wrote on subjects as diverse as geodesic mathematics, the cartoons of Chuck Jones (creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd) and the effect of modern technology on literary imagery; he was best known, however, as a leading authority on American and Irish…
Our MoveableType Installation Should be Renamed StuckTypeLiteracy Weblog) Drat, drat, drat, and darn! I’m sorry to report that blogs.setonhill.edu is even more busted now; apparently since about noon today it’s been impossible to post new entries. I feel sick to my stomach about the terrible timing — especially for those students whose blogging portfolios are…
In one of the most secretive presidential trips in American history, George W. Bush flew to Baghdad under intense security on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with United States troops and to thank them for standing up against the “band of thugs and assassins” they are fighting in Iraq. —Elizabeth Bumiller —On Secret Iraq Trip, Bush…
INTJ – “Mastermind”. Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population. Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test INTJ: Mastermind I think the Myers-Briggs Personality Test is copyrighted material, so I wonder about the legality of this online version. Found via Kate Cielinski…
Tomorrow (Thursday) will be Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. — a time for turkey feasts and family gatherings. I’ll probably blog a bit when I get the chance, but I’m also preparing syllabi for next semester. I’ll be teaching the second half of “Seminar in Thinking in Writing,” a course in “Media Aesthetics” (the…
—Miss Pennsylvania Pageant (Sugarpacket) My student Karissa Kilgore is participating in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant this weekend. She had hoped to use her weblog as a way to keep her family informed, but alas since MT won’t let us post comments, she’s missing an opportunity to let her friends and family cheer her on. If anybody…
—done! (dr jill/txt) Congratulations to Jill Walker, whose Ph.D. defence was closely watched in certain parts of the blogosphere. Similar:SAT essay section: Problems with grading, instruction, and prompts.In my freshman writing courses I work ha…AcademiaTroy Sterling and the Active and Passive VerbsJerz > Writing > Grammar…AestheticsPoint Park cancels 'The Adding Machine: The Musical' after student objections to offensive…Citing…
Untenured radical flirts attend MLA meetings in skirts, feathers, tassels and suits, with leatherette boots Rendered wholly from Savile Row shirts —Kieran Healy (see first comment) —Like Circus Ponies? (Invisible Adjuct) Similar:A familiar performer choreographed and dances the "Canaan Days" tango in Stage Right's Jos…AestheticsLiberal Arts Leaders: The 50 Best Professors Who BlogIt’s polite to say…
Users are berated and insulted for not having consulted the documentation, but, in many cases, the user can hardly be blamed. The documentation is shoddy, incomplete, and badly organized, if it’s present at all. Exceptions are becoming rarer and rarer.| As documentation decreases in quality, users stop turning to it. As users stop turning to…
Doctors say Mrs Roberts, who was born and bred in Indiana, has a condition called foreign accent syndrome. | This rare condition occurs when part of the brain becomes damaged. This can follow a stroke or head injury. There have only been a few documented cases. —Stroke Gives Woman British Accent (BBC) This article conflates the…
He was giving away Zippos for answering a survey…. So, even though I don’t smoke, I took the survey. He asked what I smoked, and I answered “Marlboro Lights.” Divine inspiration. Then he asked the tough question. “Hard or soft?” Well, I had no idea cigarettes could hard or soft. I was pretty sure they…
Most newspapers have traditionally not made room for online producers and editors in their newsrooms, shuffling them off instead to a different floor, or to a different building entirely.|But in the past few years, many newspapers have decided that having two newsrooms — one for print and one for online — doesn’t make much sense.…
“We intend to try our case in the courtroom, not in the public or the media.” —Michael Jackson, on a website devoted to trying his case in public and in the media. —Michael Jackson (The Official Press Room) I don’t actually blame the guy for wanting to have his say, but it’s a bit hypocritical…
Moveable Type FrustrationLiteracy Weblog) I’ve been using MT since the middle of September and haven’t had a single problem with it — until now. Since some time over the weekend, none of the 40 or so authors on blogs.setonhill.edu have been able to post comments. They can still post blog entries, but we can’t comment…
VOCALOID allows song writers to generate superb authentic-sounding singing on their PCs by simply inputting the words and notes of their compositions. The software synthesizes the sound from “vocal libraries” of recordings of actual singers, such as those being developed by Zero-G, and retains the vocal qualities of the original singing voices to reproduce real-sounding…