My students were awesome. So many thoughtful final projects. So much growth. A stressful, rewarding, unforgettable term.

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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 Similar:While at Sadecky's Puppets to record the role of Heidi, Carolyn…

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

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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…

I spent Thanksgiving break building a #trimsheet for steampunk control panels, because why not? #blender3d

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The Wounded (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 12) O’Brien’s Former Captain Goes Rogue

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. This episode introduces the Cardassians, who years ago attacked Picard on the Stargazer when he approached them during a diplomatic mission. Worf grumbles that the Cardassians have no honor. Indeed, during the teaser they attack the Enterprise. Still, Picard listens to Gul Macet’s complaint: a Federation starship has attacked…

Cursor*10

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The disinformation system that Trump unleashed will outlast him. Here’s what reality-based journalists must do about it.

Highlights from a column by Margaret Sullivan (The Washington Post): President Trump didn’t create the media cesspool that he’ll bequeath to a troubled nation. He just made it exponentially worse — not only with his own constant lies but with his ability to spread the ugliness. Just days ago, he tweeted out a debunked conspiracy theory that…

You’re Doing It for the Exposure!!

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Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In November 2000, I was blogging about the US Presidential election, mirrors, Arts & Letters Daily, and more

In November 2000, I was blogging about Ursula K. Le Guin Why we perceive mirrors reversing things left/right but not up/down Pioneering blog Arts & Letters Daily (just a year older than my own blog) Nick Montfort’s constrained poem “Upper Typewriter Row“ The 2000 US Presidential Election controversy (ballot design, hanging chads, recounts, political cartoons)…

Dr Jerz I think your microphone glitched

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The Loss (#ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 10) Troi’s Empathic Sense Flatlines

Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After losing her Betazed empathic sense, Counsellor Troi dramatically ignores her own advice about grieving. As the scriptwriters hustle her through shock, denial, anger, bargaining and depression, a Space Thing of the Week threatens the Enterprise. Scenes where Troi counsels a recently widowed ensign offer an intimate view of…