Dave Barry is the reason I wanted to go into journalism for a very long time. One of the highlights of my college career was the year I wrote a weekly humor column with a voice that was very much inspired by Barry’s column. But I was almost always impressed when he turned to serious […]
I mostly stayed away from watching football during the regular season, but I drifted back to check out the playoffs. So I’m glad that Ta-Nahesi Coates keeps putting together pieces like this to remind me of the consequences of what I’m watching. When Pattie and I listen to sports radio on the drive to work, […]
My daughter really likes to play board games. I also really like to play board games. This works out very well. This week, she wanted to get a copy of Clue, so we went to Target. We came THISCLOSE to buying a newer, updated version of the game that changed a lot of the rules […]
My daughter’s old enough that her school calendar syncs up with the high school calendar. Which means that just as I am trying to get my students to the finish line of the marking period and catch up with all of the paperwork that goes with it, my daughter has her end of marking period […]
Just stealing an item I posted on Facebook: Just got an email from Amazon saying that tracks from many of the CDs I bought from Amazon since 1998 can now be downloaded as MP3s trough their Cloud Player. Do they think I’ve been sitting here with the CDs on my desk for the last ten […]
When I watched President Obama’s inaugural speech today, I was struck by how he tied the speech together by the idea of what we do together, as “We, the people.” And I have to say, I think John Dewey would have found a lot to like in his fellow faculty member of the University of […]
I just realized that 20 years ago, I was using an IBM PC and a 1200 baud modem to connect to local bulletin boards. I was getting ready to graduate from high school, and still didn’t know where I would go to college. Bill Clinton was giving his first inaugural address: I still feel like […]
So this year in World History I decided to go with a combined thematic/chronological structure. I organized the whole year around the theme of power, and then split it into five units: Defining Power: Who Has It Today, and how Do They Use it? History of Military Power History of Economic Power History of Cultural […]
The first time I met Chris Lehmann, one of the things we talked about was the notion that educators shouldn’t just read John Dewey; from time to time they should reread Dewey to keep in mind his ideas about the experiences that truly teach us. I nodded my head, finished my dissertation, and while I […]
My fondness for 90s alt-rock is pretty well-known, and with an iPod library well over 1000 songs I’m not actively looking for new music as hard as I used to. Plus, I don’t listen to the radio a whole lot, and even if MTV were playing music videos I don’t have cable anymore. So the […]