Category Archives: Popular Culture

One-A-Day: Louis Sachar, Holes

I know some people are skeptical about whether you can teach people to write fiction in a conventional classroom. At the very least, I think aspiring writers can benefit by reading marvelous examples of particular kinds of writing or particular … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments

Now That I Like

Eddie Izzard, apparently, will be voicing Reepicheep in the upcoming film version of Prince Caspian.

Posted in Popular Culture | 1 Comment

Liberal Arts Poster Children

I was thinking last week, after another discussion of assessment, about what I would regard as a successful product of a liberal arts education. If I don’t want to have a test of a fixed body of knowledge, but I … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Popular Culture, Swarthmore | 6 Comments

One-A-Day: John Wright, Fugitives of Chaos

I feel like finding new authors to like in genre fiction can be quite difficult. You know who you already like, but the marketing of work by new authors often makes them seem either as if they’re derivative of someone … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 1 Comment

Viral Disgust

I have almost the same reaction to two utterly separate kinds of mainstream media decisions over the last two weeks: both decisions drive me to the brink of ending my consumption of that media. The first is the New York … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Popular Culture | 5 Comments

Traveller IQ Challenge and Learning

The Traveller IQ Challenge, besides being a great little bit of casual-game design, strikes me as showing how potentially useful certain kinds of instant-feedback quizzes and games could be in a fully wired classroom, while also showing the limitations of … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

Dear Intellectual Property Santa Claus

For next Christmas, please release the following DVDs: 1. The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. 2. The Six Million Dollar Man, first season. 3. The 1971 animated version of A Christmas Carol, with Scrooge voiced by Alistair Sims. ———- The interesting … Continue reading

Posted in Popular Culture | 8 Comments

Better Movie

It’s got nothing to do with the decision to tone down the references to religion, but the film of The Golden Compass is pretty bad. It suffers from a number of storytelling failures. It doesn’t allow the viewer, particularly anyone … Continue reading

Posted in Popular Culture | 10 Comments

Hollywood Sells Out, Makes Better Movie!

There are a lot of interesting articles in this month’s Atlantic, but the piece on the film version of Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass drove me batty. The film looks promising, and my daughter and I plan to see it … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Popular Culture | 5 Comments

Buy Early, Buy Often

If ever a webcomic deserved stunning marketplace success through the mass purchase of a book edition, it’s this one. I have been annoying everyone at our house with frequent laughter. My daughter is also annoyed that she cannot look at … Continue reading

Posted in Popular Culture | 6 Comments