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:A WELL HOUSE FOR A LARGE SPRINGI was digging through my archives and ca…AestheticsNewspaper For Sale: The Growing Threat of News Deserts in Western PennsylvaniaAs circulation has declined, local newsp…BusinessPart of Wright brothers' 1st airplane on NASA's Mars chopper “Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pl…AwesomeHumans…
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:Saints and Poets, Maybe They Do SomeI wrote the following in 2004, when…
Similar:Why is Elon Musk attacking Wikipedia? Because its very existence offends him So, the sight of Elon Musk charging to…BusinessJerry Lewis’s Costars Speak Out: “He Grabbed Me. He Began to Fondle Me. I Was Dumbstruck”As a kid I watched Jerry Lewis movies wh…CultureTwenty-Six Old Characters, The (1947)Sheaffer Pen celebrates the art of writi…AestheticsEnterprise-D Blueprints As…
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:Beauty and the Beast (St. Vincent Summer Theatre)The girl (blue skirt and pigtails), who …Current_EventsMultimodal News Packages (for Student Journalists)A multimodal news package simply means “…AcademiaRenata, Carolyn and Alex in a scene from this weekend's Pippin.CultureWhat is Technical Writing?I noticed an uptick in traffic to an old…AestheticsSubtle Stylesheet Tweaks for Mobile SiteOn the mobile version…
Similar:LGN Launches Quandary to Develop Ethical Thinking through PlayThe Learning Games Network, a non-profit…CultureWhy fake news worksFake news works on our emotions, usually…CybercultureThe phrase "debate begins" in the headlines of multiple stories on coronavirus does not me…If you encounter the same story on diffe…BusinessWhat gives you comfort? I collect lights. Some of these have magnets!!AmusingWhat…
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:Playing with depth of field (blurring details that are closer than and farther from the fo…AestheticsNo more braces!PersonalAttending the Texture Contemporary Ballet.PersonalThat felt sooo good!PersonalA young father sold his beloved sports car for “diaper money.” Years later, the man’s son …“While my dad has always spoken lovingly…AestheticsOkay, not my most thrilling #blender3D creation, but a…
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:Busy with Midterm GradesPosted midterm grades for the most labor…AcademiaFormer Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed [a Certain Political Slant] NewsOne day when I was an undergraduate work…BusinessData-Related Deaths, 1960-2019 (Excluding Fatalities Caused by Misreadings, Typographical … DesignSecrets of a 60 Minutes cameramanThey say polo ponies can run 35 mph and …Current_EventsA certain potions instructor is…
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:"Oliver Twist" is a story of redemption for PICT Classic Theatre.Carolyn started rehearsals for PICT Clas…BooksMy 10yo Launches a Soda Bottle Rocket http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbNu8…AestheticsEnterprise-D Blueprints As a newlywed, when my in-laws were …BooksBefore the haircut. PersonalYep, it's time to read student papers on Flannery O'Connor.AcademiaHTML5 Boilerplate: The web’s most popular front-end template HTML5 Boilerplate helps you build…
Similar:Final week of Pict Classic Theatre's Oliver Twist (NEXTpittsburgh)Today is Carolyn’s day off from Oliver T…BooksThe Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek TOS – a photoset on FlickrI know what you’re thinking, but my stor…AestheticsOverwhelmed? Start a new to-do list with "1) Breathe; 2) Make 'to-do' list" Felt momentarily overwhelmed by the da…CultureHalf a Life…
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…