Reading Christie’s The Pale Horse and struck again by a couple things in Christie. We think of Christie as chronicling the 30s, and that’s what most of the horrible TV remakes have focussed on. But for Christie it wasn’t nostalgia, it was a real desire to engage and dissect a contemporary world. The Pale Horse Continue reading

A recent find, as applicable to new media as to numeracy. From Robert Orrill’s Mathematics, Numeracy, and Democracy: “For both Dewey and Cremin, the matter becomes even more complex when we ask what literacy means in a society dedicated to democratic ideals and informed by an ethos of individual freedom. In democratic settings, Cremin says, Continue reading

We have a department twitter account here at CELT. The idea of that account is it’s a place to share edtech and ed design info without forcing faculty members to sort through my political rants, Jenny’s comments about beer and biking, etc. But obviously it’s makes very little sense for us to log into that Continue reading

This is really a continuation of my conversation with @gobman on twitter, but it was too big for twitter, so I’m dumping it here. Do I believe in learning styles? Yeah. I think so. I believe that people have different approaches to solving problems, and that to me seems to be learning. I, for one, Continue reading

I’ve been looking for a Twitterfeed alternative, since the service has been a bit shaky lately, and I’ve been amazed at how many of the competitors to Twitterfeed have had to shut down due to being overrun by spammers. And of course Twitterfeed itself is struggling, as anyone that has waited five minutes for the Continue reading

A supposedly scary story about how dumb Facebook users are: Although the 50-something crowd responding to the request from “Dinette Stonily” were less likely to give out a fully-fleshed date of birth, they were three times more apt to hand out their phone number. Relatively few people in either group — just 4% of the Continue reading

I hated grade school. My two daughters love it. I found it, by third grade, to be too arbitrary, too restrictive, too bound up with power. My daughters love the structure. I did poorly grade-wise at school, graduating in the quarter that made the top three quarters possible. I didn’t just refuse to do homework Continue reading

Just some data re: my post the other day, from Gallup, February 2007. Keep in mind the question here is “Would you vote for the person in your political party if they were of belief/orientation/gender/age X?” The difference from 100% represents the number of people that would either not vote at all or vote against Continue reading

I just stole food out of the mouths of Kenneth Fearing’s heirs — I pulled down his The Big Clock today from my new favorite book-sharing site instead of forking over the money for it to my local chain bookstore. I think his heirs will survive, but the $26 I would have had to pay Continue reading

A weird thing happened the other day that I’ve been thinking quite a lot about. Someone asked me when I would run for office. (If you know my political history that makes more sense). I replied offhand what I usually say, which is I wouldn’t have a chance anyway, I’m an atheist. I’ve said that Continue reading