Other than one trip to the grocery store, I haven’t been in public since March 13, so I haven’t noticed if people in my community have started wearing masks. But I’ve wondered how I’ll be able to respond to people’s voices when I can’t see their mouths. In the past few years, I have…
A few interesting bits I found interesting to explore: There are two different ways to view the exact same data: The logarithmic scale shows a great comparison of the magnitude of growth between countries, but less of the human impact. The linear scale shows the real human impact — a growth twice the size is twice the number of…
My weekend coronavirus lockdown project was writing up a new handout devoted to Graham’s “Disagreement Hierarchy” for academic arguments. Does the word “argument” make you think of angry people yelling? This document presents Graham’s “disagreement hierarchy,” which catalogs multiple stages between juvenile name-calling and carefully refuting an error in your opponent’s central point. Siblings might…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After a member of a landing party dies an accidental, senseless death, Picard must break the news to her young son. “Jeremy, on the starship Enterprise, no one is alone,” says Picard. “No one.” Numerous times on my rewatch, I’ve wished episodes would devote less time to scanning and probing…
Public officials misspeak all the time. Journalists make mistakes all the time. Ordinary citizens over-react to headlines without reading the full article all the time. We are all of us human. It’s unfair for any of us to treat every gaffe as evidence of malice or incompetence. For example, critics of President Trump are stretching…
The Shape of the World, According to Old Maps Similar:Unearthing a Long Ignored African Writing System, One Researcher Finds African History, by…Not only is this a fantastic story about…AcademiaScientists should be goggled and in the lab, where they belong. Shut up and make me a vacc…Am I doing the tribal rage thing right? …CultureMedia Bias…
In March 2000, I was blogging about Palm V handheld computers for Navy officers Teaching with bells and whistles Stephen King selling a short story online NCAA banning online journalists Great moments in bureaucratic history Diploma mills Maps of imaginary lands Similar:Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53%, says global study Globally, Covid cases exceeded…
Similar:Citations: Efficient In-text QuotationsWhen writing a paper in MLA style, prefe…AcademiaIf You Ever Find a Link to ThoughtCatalog, I'm Begging You Not to Click It Here’s a thought… nothing you can …BusinessUnderstanding Anti-SLAPP laws – The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the PressShort for strategic lawsuits against pub…EthicsAll the world’s an appA review of three books…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After a primitive, rationalist society mistakes Federation technology for supernatural power, Picard must do whatever it takes to undo the resulting cultural contamination. Fortunately for Picard, that involves lots of talking. A grim scene in sickbay memorably demonstrates that humans in the 24th century can sometimes delay but cannot…
Similar:Capitalists Tell Facebook They've Had EnoughIt started as a murmur of dissent, but o…Business‘It’s destroyed me completely’: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI modelsOpenAI has already taken a toll on human…BusinessWhy I Was Wrong About Liberal-Arts MajorsIt’s a little bit shallow and solipsisti…AcademiaNASA's Perseverance lander brought some Easter eggs with it to MarsIt’s…
Similar:Knee-jerk sharing of memes denigrates the truth.Trump never told People magazine that Re…CultureAmazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst SuspicionsThis week, as part of a contract dispute…BooksProgress on a customizable "[E] to Activate" system (Visual Scripting, Unity3D)https://youtube.com/shorts/-X8eBT5QoPY …CybercultureNew utility chair and appliances from the service areas of my fantasy #steampunk #blender3…AestheticsPeter Sallis: Wallace and Gromit actor…
Not fake news. Not the enemy of the American people. “Nobody ever thought a thing like this could have happened,” said the the president at Thursday’s press event. Feb 27: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.” [Narrator: “Cases were not going down.”] Feb 26: “The 15 [documented cases of COVID-19 in the USA] within…
Similar:Who choked up while reading aloud Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” during a lesson on creative nonf…Who choked up while reading aloud Sagan’…PersonalRecent SHU journo grad, upon the hiring of an even more recent SHU journo grad: "Many time…A couple weeks ago I posted about a rece…AcademiaThat time three-year-old me spotted a Mary Cassatt painting at…
I haven’t done any audio theatre recordings in a while (thanks, coronavirus) and I miss it. Here’s my interpretation (recorded some time ago) of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Nightingale.” The nightingale is considered the most beautiful thing in the kingdom… until a mechanical nightingale wins over the citizens, and the true nightingale is banished. But…
Similar:My son, volunteering at the local food bank.PersonalThough I have marking and prep and committee work and paperwork to do, I took an hour befo…PersonalWhy You Hate Google’s New LogoThe new logo retains the rainbow of colo…BusinessDo Cultural Critics Have Any Value Left?[T]he Internet has dramatically changed …AestheticsViolations (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 12)…
The Society of Professional Journalists links to an interview with an MIT professor who’s studying misinformation on social media (which is not the same thing as bad journalism — some bad actors take journalism out of context in order to deceive). Responsible journalists are aware that sensational headlines can harm the public. The truth is…
Similar:Star Trek Graphic Design: Six journalists and surprising discoveries about their agency lo…After an intense 2 weeks prepping for fa…AestheticsPracticing with materials and geometry. The lamps and chair require hundreds of times as m… AestheticsThe "Monsters, Inc" company play helped me teach ShakespeareToday the awkward but delightful “Monste…AcademiaWhat the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they…
Similar:The truth hits Thorvald. Loved PPT PlayTime’s online presentation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s Hous…PersonalNext up for the girl: Amy, the youngest sister, in Little Women: The Broadway Musical. Nov…Personal‘Twelfth Night’ is a Shakespearean hoot, and Prime Stage actors Carolyn Jerz, Malcolm MacK…Why is Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Nigh…AestheticsHow 15 minutes I spent with a laptop in 1991…
In light of current events, I’m dropping the bleak Waiting for Godot from my World Drama class (actually I’m making it optional; students could drop a different play) and adding Thornton Wilder’s absurdist but optimistic The Skin of Our Teeth. Writing while World War II was still raging, Wilder depicts a representative American family…
The blurb for a 2011 English version of the 1999 Chinese play I’m teaching this week: China’s most popular and provocative drama. A modern story of love and obsession, Rhinoceros in Love tells the story of a rhinoceros-keeper who develops a dangerous romantic fascination with the woman of his dreams: the uncompromising, unobtainable Mingming. Hear…