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…
About 20 of us are here in Brooklyn to play a large-scale war game — think Risk — but we’re also each assigned a character, which is a bit like Dungeons & Dragons. We’re told it’s Jan. 6, 2021. We’re given rows and rows of hand-painted mini-figures, a bowl of dice, and a measuring stick showing how far…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is moved by the interest Sisko shows in an artifact recently recovered from the Cardassians. After a classic “zoom in and enhance” scene where Sisko uses a reflection to unlock an archaeological mystery, a technobabble accident flabbergasts Sisko’s neural jimberjams, which Bashir says will likely give him heightened sensory experiences for a…
I had fun recording this in the studio — with live foley artists! Similar:Irony in Blakes7 Reboot?RT @Laroquod: @DennisJerz If #Blakes7 tu…BusinessThe Visitor #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 3) Old Jake Reflects on the life-cha…Rewatching ST:DS9 On a dark and storm…BooksEveryone Nov 1AmusingNarrating "A Christmas Carol" for WAOB Audio Theatre. (The four episodes…
Here’s my letter responding to an recent article about the future of the student newspaper I advised for over two decades. A pause. The Seton Hill University student paper is on what my English department colleagues described in a recent email as “indefinite hiatus.” At the time, we didn’t know for how long. I was…
Full version Similar:Teaching with iPads: Motivation, Inspiration and Alienation in the AppleverseHere are the slides for the half-day wor…AcademiaMissouri governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website • …I’m shocked… shocked that a reporter p…Current_EventsSyllabusing Like a BossAcademiaA fleet of drones performs a light show in Ireland for St. Patrick's…
Similar:Can AI write good novels?I expect that this is probably the year …AcademiaA Fistful of Datas (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 8) Worf Trapped in Western S…Rewatching ST:TNG Silly Gagh-Western …AmusingTeaching “The Odyssey” at San QuentinThe opening of “The Odyssey” describes O…BooksMAGA World Is Splintering: Following the riot at the Capitol, Trump supporters are having…
I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk on the cheap and selling individual books for $2 (about a 20-cent profit, per book, but I’m really rounding up so I don’t have to deal with change). Students will spend time in class annotating printouts and writing in their copybooks. They’ll still do online activities but…
Similar:Video ResumesI’m thinking of asking students in a med…BusinessSold out closing performance. Support the arts in your community!Sold out closing performance. Support th…PersonalI apologize for this one. R2-D2 stars in Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical CATS.Personal“Waiting for Life” (Once on This Island)https://youtu.be/NeoVD3prQWYPersonalAll the 'Happy Birthday' song copyright claims are invalid, federal judge rules In a stunning…
In the halls of power at Amazon, busy executives have no time for PowerPoints. At the start of a meeting, everyone gets a printed 6-page memo, and spends 20-25 minutes reading it silently and marking it up. After the discussion, the printouts (typically with detailed hand-written comments) are handed back to the person who called…
This sort of thing was funnier back in 2017. Similar:Why Fears of Fake News Are OverhypedFacebook seems to have made changes that…CultureNew Data Shatters Video Game Player Stereotypes: Gamers Regularly Involved in Community, C…”Gamers are everywhere and they’re every…BusinessCanada's Stratford Festival losing 'Shakespeare' from its nameAttending this was one of the handful of…CultureSeton Hill University's…
Carving out some time to enjoy this show as I prep to teach the Pittsburgh Cycle @SetonHill Similar:Carnegie Science Center: Roboworld (and a bit of SportsWorks)Here’s a brief video, made up of clips I…CulturePrime Stage Theatre to end 2018-2019 season with Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night, May 3–1…2019 Pittsburgh Public Theater Shakespea…Culture'We're back': Bushy Run's 2023…
I’m also thinking of the cost to the students who have to repeat a course or fail out of a demanding program because they couldn’t AI their way to a passing grade. “People use it much more than we expected,” the cofounder wrote, later adding in response to another user that he “personally chose the price and…
It was not that hard to leave Twitter. I removed the app from my phone and followed a lot of journalists and professionals on Bluesky. I still checked Twitter on my laptop, but not every day. Then one day when X asked me for my password to log back in, I decided not to bother.…