I already felt fairly independent from my parents before I went off to college, as my older siblings were both good students who did not get into any trouble, so because I kept bringing home good grades my parents let me be very independent. I had (and still have) a good relationship with my parents,…
I’m not giving any final exams this term. On the one hand, we tell students to value learning for learning’s sake; on the other, we tell students they’d better know this or that, or they’d better take notes, or they’d better read the book, because it will be on the next exam; if they don’t…
Great little story that I’m saving for a future “history of journalism” module. The German surrender happened at 2:41 a.m. on May 7, 1945. Kennedy was one of 17 reporters taken to witness the ceremony. He and the others were hastily assembled by military commanders, then pledged to secrecy by a U.S. general while the…
I don’t really want to assign a grade to this draft… I just want to sit down with the student and have a conversation about why the words “cannot” and “because” mean completely different things according to context. “The ice cannot be melted because the temperature is below freezing” uses “cannot” as a physical impossibility…
I don’t want to put Humpy Dumpty back together. Let him lie there, a cracked shell oozing yolk. He is broken. And he is beautiful. The smell, the colors, the flow, the texture, the mess. All of it, it is unavailable until we break things. And let’s not soften our critical blow by calling it…
I knew Rather was still fighting, but I didn’t know what he’s saying now about the Killian memos that ended his career: A CBS-commissioned investigation of the disaster—headed by Richard Thornburgh, U.S. attorney general when Bush’s father was president, and Associated Press chief executive Louis D. Boccardi—faulted Rather and his top producer, Mary Mapes, among…
JoAnne Boyle says she thinks women should stop worrying about child-rearing choices they make and stop criticizing other women’s choices. Boyle, president of Seton Hill University in Westmoreland County, raised six sons and a daughter — now ages 37 to 50 — while working full-time. She said she “often felt like I wasn’t doing a…
I’m withholding judgment until I find out exactly what the argument was about. Perhaps the punch was appropriate. Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush said the man went to a party at a home in the 100 block of North Ingalls Street at about 2 p.m. on Saturday. Bush said the man was sitting on…
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” Zimmerman is heard saying in NBC’s edited version. The difference is significant, since activists have been claiming that Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin. Critics have argued that NBC set out to purposely advance that narrative by condensing the 911 tape to make it…
According to my 9yo daughter, “It’s completely and utterly stupidulous.” Pancho McFarland, an associate professor of sociology at Chicago State, fears the policy could restrict all types of communications by professors, including speaking engagements. “It will put a chilling effect on our ability to speak in a number of venues,” he said. “It is part…
My 9yo was ordered not to leave the kitchen table until her lessons were done, but she wanted to communicate to the world that she was in a bad mood. From where she was sitting, she had access to paper, scissors, and tape, which she used to construct this head-mounted frump-amplicfaction isolation cube. Ironically, it…
What follows is an excerpt from NBC Jumps the Shark on George Zimmerman | Mother Jones: According to the Today show, here’s what George Zimmerman said to a 911 dispatcher as he was trailing Trayvon Martin last February: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black. What a racist! Obviously Zimmerman had a real…
This is both creepily terrifying yet kind of awesome, in a drunk-whisperer, Pied Piper, passive-aggressive arrogantly Gallic yet obviously better than pepper spray and riot gear kind of way. You have encountered a “Pierrot de la Nuit,” or Night Mime. These “nocturnal artistic intervention squads” are officially being launched this weekend in 15 Parisian neighborhoods.…
I’ll be Tweeting my workday, as part of an organized grass-roots response to a recent essay that claimed faculty members outside research institutions earn professional salaries for just 9-15 hours of teaching a week, for just 30 weeks. That essay assumes that 1 hour of prep time is all a prof should need. It takes…
Hyperbole and a Half: PROCRASTINATOR!!!! (Updated, Like, a Million Times Probably).
A Princeton physics professor tries to get all rational over climate change fears. I am fascinated by the way this plays out in public, among non-scientists trying to make sense of it all. It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or…
War On Words: NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 'Forbidden' Words Banned From Standardized Tests « CBS New York. The article presents a list of what the headline described as “banned words,” and we see whole concepts and topics, including “Children dealing with serious issues” and “Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or…
Cool Infographics – Blog – 10 Tips for (journalists) Designing Infographics.
“We think it’s a terrific time to be making investments in the leading brands behind providing Moodle services,” [Blackboard’s] Henderson told Inside Higher Ed on Monday. In a blog post, he called the growing popularity of open source “the most important new dimension shaping the LMS market today.” Henderson acknowledged that some advocates might look upon Monday’s news…
After taking a whole bunch of new high-quality images, I found myself running out of space on my production machine. I briefly toyed with the idea of uploading a big chunk of files to The Cloud — thinking I could just get it back if I ever needed it — but then the voice of…