Early in my teaching career, I noticed some students silently body-shaming another. I’m sure the target, who had a minor wardrobe malfunction, didn’t even notice. Later that day I asked a more experienced mentor for advice, awkwardly mentioning that the target of the body-shaming was not slim. My mentor interrupted me. “Ignore your students from…
I first met my wife in person, but we were in a long-distance online relationship for a year, and some weeks are so busy we text each other more than we speak in person. Starting a relationship during a pandemic would be tricky. Similar:Annoyed and Bored by Lazy Anachronisms in The Great Gatsby MovieI just…
It’s striking to hear her audience erupt in laughter at the comedy bits in the opening scenes. I assume they didn’t know what they were in for! Similar:Introduction to The Cherry Orchardhttps://youtu.be/8o_4Bjcfl0Y …AcademiaDid you put enough donuts in the elevator shaft of your #steampunk #neovictorian cruiser t…https://youtu.be/lSgv5L0sXtc &nbs…AestheticsPicking a rubric in Canvas should…
In the wake of the pandemic, the entertainment industry created a new position on set to help keep outbreaks at bay. […] The demands of the job are big: sanitization, testing, safety equipment and distancing. Cast and crew are split into different zones, based on the frequency of testing and ability to wear masks. The…
I’m proud of the daughter for her involvement in this Equity audio production. (Some of the screams mentioned by the reviewer are hers.) One would be hard-pressed to find a more perfect production for the pandemic, as the radio drama comes with no visuals and forces one to shut out the outside world for the…
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Bits and pieces from a news article that summarizes recent scholarly studies. Some moderately good news, and a reminder that increased testing means finding more cases, and finding them earlier, which means people get medical treatment sooner. (More testing means less suffering and fewer deaths. For those of us who care about such things.) Over…
My big finish as Alquist in a Zoom-based production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Similar:Stage Right's production of 'Secret Garden' is heart-tugging showIn the Stage Right production, the role …Current_EventsClever Modernization of Hamlet: Polonius with an iPhoneI teach Shakespeare in a literature clas…CultureLife would be so much better if all the interfaces we encountered looked…
Rewatching ST:TNG. The plot, such as it is, quickly gets Picard and Wesley separated from the Enterprise and in the company of a mining shuttle pilot who challenges Picard’s authority. After a few on-location scenes in a bleak desert, the story shifts to the standard generic cave set, where some falling chunks of foam and…
I wish I had the time or energy to get out the telescope and camera, but I did go out for a walk in the neighborhood and got an eyeful of this in the sky. Similar:The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 ( #StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 26) We Hav…Rewatching ST:TNG after a…
In October 2000, I was blogging about The F. Scott Fitzgerald Short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (background; full text) A biography of Virginia Woolf The precarious status of English as a global language A call for papers for a special issue of Text Technology devoted to interactive fiction (I have a copy on my shelf…
There are some sound pedagogical reasons for turning cameras on. Thus, I suggest sharing those reasons with the students before giving them the choice of what to do about their cameras. Explain why you are making your request. For example, being able to see students’ faces gives instructors a quick and easy way to discern whether students are finding the material engaging, at least in smaller classes. One instructor told me that “I asked students to turn their cameras on to say hi to their classmates at the beginning and end of class, and those were the best moments of the class.”
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Obviously I would have preferred to see it live, but the pandemic-era video presentation — with clever graphics that indicate stage actions and pop-up text that augment the recorded performances — was subtle and touching. Similar:Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk #neovictorian control panel. Not the end product. Just prac…AestheticsOkay, please stop droolingIt perfectly pulls…
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The daughter plays Laertes in Seton Hill’s free, live Zoom production of Hamlet (with a film noir theme) which opens tonight at 8. (The first half will be performed tonight and next Friday; the next half will be performed Saturday and next Saturday.) Free tickets to Seton Hill’s livestreaming video production of Hamlet Through the…
From The Brookings Institution (non-profit, deeply sourced factual writing; has been accused of both conservative and liberal bias; is cited in Congress about equally by conservative and liberal politicians; leans a bit left in terms of loaded language): American institutions are not perfect, of course. We all should want to improve scientific practices, remove bias…
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It was a reporter’s bodyguard, not an anti-fascist activist, who shot and killed a right-wing demonstrator who had assaulted him. The viral spread of those false claims apparently alarmed the Denver Police Department, which had taken Dolloff into custody along with the journalist he was guarding and quickly determined that they were not left-wing…