August 2011
July 2011
“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
...”
– George Bernard Shaw - playwright and founder of the London School of Economics
(a prose poem to end the month)
July Temperature in the upper seventies, a bit of a breeze. Great cumulus clouds pass slowly through the summer sky like parade floats. And the slender grasses gather round you, pressing forward, with exaggerated deference, whispering, eager to catch a glimpse. It’s your party after all. And it couldn’t be more perfect. Yet there’s a nagging thought: you don’t really...
WatchNew York: Hook And Ladder Company 8, also known as the Ghostbusters firehouse.
During our shoot there on a Saturday afternoon in mid-June, we encountered a steady stream of people stopping, taking photos, and talking to the firefighters inside about the building—not bad for a film that came out 27 years ago.
It’s a legacy FDNY seems to embrace; inside hangs the sign from the Ghostbusters...
“The whole business of love is to drown in the sea.”
– RUMI
Arne Duncan Boosts Merit Pay At Teaching... →
WASHINGTON — Teachers should have salaries starting at $60,000 and the opportunity to make up to $150,000 based on performance, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told educators at the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards conference on Friday. “The field of teaching is poised for change,” Duncan said. “Many bright and committed young people are attracted to teaching, but...
5 Bucks an album
Last chance to get albums for $5 on Amazon
“Yesterday is a canceled check: Forget it.
Tomorrow is a promissory note: Don’t...”
– Ed Bliss (1912-2002)
Remembering Stanley Kunitz →
THE ROUND Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning…
Training and Learning →
I recently got back into doing some instructional design and teaching that is more closely related to workforce training
than to traditional college coursework. Sometimes the line is very clear…
Steve is running the show
Read: Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government
I wonder if Apple has a debt ceiling?
“Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old...”
– Stanley Kunitz
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Happy Birthday, Stanley
It’s the birthday of poet Stanley Kunitz, born 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He published his first book of poetry, Intellectual Things, in 1930.
His 1971 volume, The Testing-Tree, marked a shift in his work, from his early, formal style to one that was looser, more personal, and written in everyday language. He explained the shift in Publishers Weekly: “I think that as a young...
Science Writing Intensive →
In Fall 2011 the Writing Initiative will be piloting two new writing-intensive science courses. Biology I and Intro to Microbiology will join Biology II and Environmental Science,…
“The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42.”
– According to Deep Thought from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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Eveything old is new again
INXS & Berlin 8/03, Pixies 10/27… at The Wellmont Theatre - Montclair, N.J.
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Birthday Boys
It’s the birthday of Austrian science philosopher Karl Popper born in Vienna in 1902. His main contribution to the philosophy of science is his rejection of inductive reasoning, which is the view that one can prove a scientific theory is true through trials and experiments.
Popper countered that it was impossible to prove irrefutably that something was true; the best you could do was to...
“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre (via fissiparous)
“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is...”
– Iris Murdoch
Connections to Area High Schools →
One component contained in our Title V writing grant is to make connections with the area high schools that send students to the college and with other New Jersey college writing…
Marilyn’s making us look bad.
Or maybe it’s more like we’re making ourselves look bad?Or maybe it’s mostly tourists taking those already-cliched photos while clutching Marilyn’s ankle or gawking up her skirt. Whatever the case, that beyond-kitschy, 26-foot sculpture recreating the moment when Marilyn Monroe’s dress flies up in “The Seven Year Itch” is threatening the Bean as the most photographed...
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100 Thousand Poets For Change →
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is an event that will take place in many cities, at the same time and date, Saturday, September 24 from 11:30am - 11:30pm, outdoors when possible, and of…
NYU Prof Vows Never to Probe Cheating Again—and...
A New York University professor’s blog post is opening a rare public window on the painful classroom consequences of using plagiarism-detection software to aggressively police cheating students. And the post, by Panagiotis Ipeirotis, raises questions about whether the incentives in higher education are set up to reward such vigilance.
But after the candid personal tale went viral online this...
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
– E.L. Doctorow
Amelia and Zelda's Party
Today is the birthday of American aviator Amelia Earhart (1897), born in Atchison, Kansas. It’s also the birthday of Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre in 1900.
Those are two party guests I would have loved to talk with…
A couple of nonconformists. Amelia kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about women who had made a go of it in male-dominated fields. She served as a...
That Cricket Said It's 90 Degrees
The frequency of chirping varies according to temperature.
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count the number of chirps in 15 seconds then add 37 to get temperature. For example: 30 chirps + 37 = 67° F
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature. For example: 48 chirps / 3 + 4 = 20° C
The number...
Moon Lore 3 – New Moons →
Continuing in our series of collecting superstitions, folk traditions and other Moon lore, here is a third collection that focuses on New Moons. In astronomical terminology, the new moon is the lunar…
Is Google+ For Educators? →
Maybe you have been exploring Google+ this summer and
thinking about whether or not it has any applications for your classes. Google+ is built to take you away
from either Facebook or…
