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:We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. …AcademiaOffice Hours in the Pool Hall My favorite story comes from the week …AcademiaMythbusting UX design: 7 misconceptions about user experiencePerhaps the most common mistake of…
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:Salman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule bookBy a…
Similar:Why teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’However, there’s a silver lining for Mar…BusinessWhat Twitter Can BeHardcore Twitterers have the savvy and p…BusinessHow Russia’s Disinformation Apparatus Ran Aground in UkraineSkillful propagandists always leverage p…Culture''Uh…''And yes, Liz’s face registers the shift …AestheticsMy crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…AestheticsThe Wedding…
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:In October 2001, I was blogging about nothing, apostrophes, the anthrax scare, and Boilerp…In October 2001, I was blogging about …Amusing11 Sites and Apps Kids Are Heading to After FacebookRemember MySpace? Not so long ago, pract…CultureThe Geekling Worked a Shatner/Nimoy Tribute into GodspellMy geekling daughter, who in Willy Wonka…AmusingThe Left has a post-truth problem too.…
Similar:In April, 2002, I was blogging about an autistic person's guide to asking a girl on a date…In April, 2002, I was blogging about …BooksImportant University of Virginia Messages Regarding Sexual AssaultUniversity of Virginia president takes a…AcademiaYour verbs have been lost and will be invisible until sentence author revision.The marketers and programmers at Google’…CybercultureWe Had…
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:Tips to Improve HappinessKing says many simple and effective tech…CultureRadio News Delivery: How to Sound Like a Radio BroadcasterListen to a short news broadcast, such a…AestheticsThere’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AITwo years after the release of ChatGPT, …Business35% of my site visitors right now are using mobile devicesThis year I…
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:Gen Z Never Learned to Read CursiveWhen I used to teach a “Media and Cultur…AcademiaShakespeare did not leave his wife Anne in Stratford, letter fragment suggests It has long been assumed that William …CultureSo Why Do People Shrug? Researchers Say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯While contemplating what sort of body la…CultureThe Offspring (StarTrek:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 16) Data…
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:Eye of the Beholder (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 18) Troi probes a crewman's… Rewatching ST:TNG An agitated eng…AmusingMy journalism students just gave me this wristband: "What would Jerz do? / Verify or duck…. AestheticsSeeing Floyd Collins, a musical about caving and journalism. Front Porch Theatricals.PersonalThe Writer Will Do Something by Matthew S. BurnsA…
Similar:Another sold-out Midsummer Thursday night. PersonalI'm in the timeline where the Borg are everywhere and Riker doesn't want to go b…PersonalMy mom’s Lionel train set (a gift from her father in 1948) had been in storage for 35 year… My mother wants me to thank John at …AestheticsOwner of former Latrobe Athletic Club continues pursuit to…
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…