Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category:
The Best Article About Homework I’ve Ever Read
The best article about homework that I’ve ever read, and probably the best one ever written, is in the December 17, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, written by Louis Menand.
It begins:
Here is something you probably didn’t know about France: its President has the power to abolish homework.
Nice, right?
And lest you think that le President de la France is doing this to appease the parents who proclaim homework to be history’s greatest education monster:
[French President] M. Hollande, however, is not a progressive educator. He is a socialist. His reason for exercising his powers in this area is to address an inequity. He thinks that homework gives children whose parents are able to help them with it—more educated and affluent parents, presumably—an advantage over children whose parents are not. The President wants to give everyone an equal chance.
Sounds reasonable. If nothing else it’s a different perspective on the so-called homework wars.
As with most education issues, it’s not that simple. Read the whole article, it’s worth it.
Louis Menand: The End of Homework? : The New Yorker
How To Stop Online Gaming From Being a Hellish Pit of Vicious Verbiage
This article about a video game called League of Legends (which I’ve never played or even heard of) intrigued me because the game maker, Riot Games, is attempting to address what is apparently a serious problem within the Legends community.
Apparently many of the players are dickheads.
And as lead game producer Travis George puts it in his interview with Gamasutra, “Nobody wants to play a game with somebody who’s mean.”
Amen to that.
Of course, mean people playing games online is not limited to League of Legends. Which is a problem once your kids want to get involved.
As a parent who grew up playing video games, I’m highly conflicted about the current “social” state of gaming. What used to be a niche element of the gaming world — online play with strangers — has become as ubiquitous as broadband Internet connections. Read more »
DaddyDeal: One Dollar iPad and Tablet Sleeve, Free Shipping
Got an iPad or some other tablet type of computing device? Need a sleeve to put it in? Have we got a deal for you.
Would You Defend Your Son If He Killed a Monkey?
Would you defend your son if he killed a monkey? That’s what Jerry Watkins, father of Michael J. Watkins, is doing. Michael J. is accused of killing a money at Zoo Boise in Idaho.
I’ll take “Questions I Never Considered” for $500, Alex.
Here’s a video report from KiviTV.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uG7_5WtVvc]
To be clear: this is all alleged. Michael J. Watkins has been accused of breaking into Zoo Boise and beating a patas monkey “so severely that it later died,” according to the AP (via the Houston Chronicle). The story originated in the Idaho Statesman.
According to published reports, the father, Jerry Watkins, said that he believes Read more »
DaddyDeal – Disney/Pixar Greatest, 25 Songs For Less Than Four Bucks
Like Pixar movies? Like the music from Pixar movies? Like to save money? Have we got a DaddyDeal for you.
Disney/Pixar Greatest, 25 songs for less than four bucks.
Amazon has a set of 25 songs from Pixar movies for $3.99. Less than four bucks, folks. Instantly downloaded to your computer, or streamed via Amazon Cloud.
If you prefer, you can buy the CD for $4.99. Which is also a very good deal. This way you get the CD, which can easily be ripped onto your computer. And probably stored in Amazon Cloud, and then streamed. Maybe. Haven’t tried that yet.
The truth is at this moment in time I’m more inclined towards downloads. Not that I don’t think there’s a loss of audio quality. There is. And you don’t get a physical product. But that’s a plus right now. Because if there’s anything I don’t need, it’s more stuff.
I know. I’m the one who always says it’s your patriotic duty to buy things. First of all Read more »
MTA Raises Fares, Can’t Spell
It appears that although the MTA is planning on raising fares, they can’t spell.
What do these two things have to do with each other? Nothing really. Except that they are both MTA-related. The MTA has indeed proposed a fare increase, although the details of said fare hike are unclear.
What is clear is that someone at the MTA, either a human or a sentient machine, can’t spell. But it’s bad spelling for a good cause.
The safety of you and your children.
This is from the New York Times Metropolitan Diary and was submitted by a Times reader, who writes that the following text “is a literal transcription of an electronic sign at the Avenue of the Americas-34th Street Downtown subway stop. All spelling, capitalization, line breaks are as found.” The submitter did capitalize the first line to “make it the title.” I’m OK with that.
Here, for your reading (dis)pleasure, is the text, or ur-text, or beat poetry, or whatever you want to call it, of an electronic sign in the service of the MTA. Read more »
Agent Coulson Lives On “S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV Show (NYCC)
Avengers and Clark Gregg fans rejoice — Agent Coulson Lives!
This is listed as breaking news from New York Comic Con (aka NYCC 2012) on Comic Book Resources. We’ll give them the credit because (a) it appears to be deserved and (b) we haven’t seen this news anywhere else. So you go, CBR!
Bottom line — S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, aka “The Son of Coul”, played by actor Clark Gregg, will have a role of some kind on Joss Whedon’s upcoming Marvel-inspired comic book TV show, which we believe is titled “S.H.I.E.L.D.”
What is unclear is how exactly it will be explained that Agent Coulson is still alive. What is clear is that I’m enough of a fanboy about this particular area of Geek Gold Card land that I don’t really care.
For the uninitiated… Well, hell’s bells, there’s no way to explain this bit o’ nerdy news without giving away one of the coolest moments of the Avengers movie. So if you haven’t seen it yet, please do so. We highly recommend the Avengers Blu-Ray Combo Pack which comes with a digital copy, a regular DVD, and lots of nifty geeky extra features. You could buy it from Amazon.com and have it shipped faster than you can say “tesseract”. Well, maybe not quite that fast. But pretty fast. Or watch it on any of the numerous streaming video outlets.
Seriously, if you haven’t seen The Avengers, that’s OK (sort of). But I watched it again recently and it’s a lot of fun.
NYCC: Coulson Lives In Whedon’s “S.H.I.E.L.D.” (Updated with Photos) – Comic Book Resources.
