My J-Term course on August Wilson doesn’t actually start until tomorrow, but the first assignments are already coming in. Sixteen weekdays to cover Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle.
We’ll cover all 10 plays, but each student will only be responsible for reading an overlapping list of six plays. The movie adaptation of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom opens on Netflix this weekend, and we’ll be covering that play on Monday.
I’m glad President Trump was right about the coronavirus vaccine
In May, NBC published a “Fact Check” challenging President Trump’s prediction that there would be a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. Â NBC was factually reporting the answers they got when they asked experts. Those experts didn’t say there would be no vaccine, they said it would be extremely unlikely. The fact…
Most Television From Before 2000 Is Trapped in the Uncanny Valley
Just as the technological innovation of the mass-produced book paved the way for the new storytelling medium called the “novel,” technological innovations that allow audiences to rewatch TV shows and binge-watch whole seasons have changed the whole medium of episodic video storytelling. (Babylon 5 did it early and did it well — but the article…
Seton Hill Virtual Commencement Fall 2020
Responding to Literature at the College Level
A new handout, based on the opening lecture I give in every literature class. I’m trying to uncouple this chunk of content, which never changes, from the “intro to the course” lecture, which is topic-specific. Your high school teachers probably praised you for summarizing what you read and perhaps relating it to your own life…
We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time
You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity…
Sound Design and the Wilhelm Scream
Ahh-aaggh!
Clues (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 14) Data’s faslehoods nonpluss and Picard thinks he’s sus, that’s a re-do
Rewatching ST:TNG After the crew blacks out, Picard investigates Data’s mysterious behavior. Although I haven’t seen this episode since it first aired in 1991, I remembered it as a strong episode, with a script that respects the audience’s intelligence. I didn’t remember the Dixon Hill holodeck sequence, which was longer than necessary. Instead of showing…
Amusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
Imagine a scenario in which circumstances outside your control confine you to a single room for an indefinite period of time — and you have basically nothing to do but stare at the walls. Available activities are strictly limited; you aren’t allowed company; you can’t really go outside; time collapses in on itself; and your…
This long-nelected CD-ROM case tucked away behind my monitor holds almost as many portable USB hard drives as CDs.
In December 2000, I was blogging about typeface snobbery, freedom in video game spaces, the first email message, and T.S. Eliot’s anti-semitism
In December 2000, I was blogging about Typeface snobbery (The Onion) Videogames as gendered play spaces (Henry Jenkins) Who wouldn’t want to trade in the confinement of your room for the immersion promised by today’s video games? …. Perhaps, my son finds in his video games what I found in the woods behind the school,…
Oh, No. YouTube is Deleting Videos.
Oh no. First YouTube institutes a “COVID-19 Medical Misinformation Policy” and starts deleting videos that tout fake cures or discourage people from following the medical advice of the WHO; then, YouTube takes a stand against any video that “misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential…
My students were awesome. So many thoughtful final projects. So much growth. A stressful, rewarding, unforgettable term.
Motivation Amid Crisis (Autotrophic Bat)
As part of an independent study project, a graduating Seton Hill student wrote a blog about self-publishing her original collection of fairy-tale adaptations. She’s a double-major in creative writing and graphic design, and she freely adapted each story and illustrated each one in a different style. (She’ll be self-publishing her anthology soon, and I’ll certainly…
Final grades are due tomorrow. My Fall 2020 is almost over. I survived.
Final grades are due tomorrow. My only unmarked assignments are just a handful of final projects with some components I couldn’t evaluate, mostly for some technical reason. It’s been a pretty rough semester, but I’m glad I started prepping for it in July, rethinking and reorganizing and rebuilding lesson plans and assignment sequences with a…
“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster (a reading)
This week for #StorytimeFriday friend of Prime Stage @DennisJerz reads The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, a 1909 short story about a world in which people primarily communicate via video screens. Sound familiar? Enjoy! #PrimeStageShares https://t.co/KaHdCGHVTC — Prime Stage Theatre (@Prime_Stage) December 4, 2020
Details on the disappearance of the Utah monolith
Mr. Bernards, 34, of Edwards, Colo., was visiting the monolith on Friday night when, he said, four men arrived as if out of nowhere to dismantle the sculpture. Mr. Bernards had driven six hours for the chance to ogle the sculpture and to take dramatic photographs of it. Using upscale Lume Cube lights attached to…
The reflection should show what's about 60 degrees above the shuttle, not what's in front of it. #startrek #tng jerz.setonhill.edu/the-devils-due
Devil’s Due (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 13) Picard vs. sexy devil Ardra
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Picard searches for a legal loophole in peaceful planet’s pact with the devil. Memorable scenes include Data playing Scrooge on the holodeck, courtroom hijinks (“The advocate will refrain from making her opponent disappear”), and Picard padding around on the planet in his jammies (“Just have Mister Data fetch me…