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Showing posts from August, 2016

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 31, 2016 at 09:46PM

It does #boggle the mind... #DailyStickMan #Games #Underrated http://ift.tt/2bWAvg3 Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Review: Locke & Key

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Locke & Key by Joe Hill My rating: 4 of 5 stars This review is for the audio production by AudioComics. This is a fantastic production with a full cast that mixes celebrities and other talented narrators with sound effects and musical score. It's a 13+ hour audio drama that will easily convert new listeners to audio-drama. The story is derived from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's comic series of the same name and follows the Locke family as they deal with a set of strange keys that are found in this family home. Each key unlocks a new ability but there are sinister forces about that are trying to collect the keys for themselves. This production finds way of maximizing the horror through interesting sound effects and solid acting. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by  Lance Eaton  is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 30, 2016 at 08:15PM

That's all it takes! #DailyStickMan #Avocados #StrangeNeeds http://ift.tt/2cd96YD Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 29, 2016 at 07:51PM

What did he have for dinner? #DailyStickMan #PeachCobbler #StrangeDreams http://ift.tt/2bNiT6P Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Short Story #400: What The Moon Brings by H. P. Lovecraft

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Title: What The Moon Brings Author:  H. P. Lovecraft Summary: The narrator declares that he hates the moon and what it brings with its weird lighting.  He then describes a beautiful landscape of garden, woods and ocean that he regularly enjoys during the summer but that has been entirely changed when the moon comes out.  What was once magical and alluring turns decrepit and ugly.   In particular, as he watches the ocean take the tide out he sees increasingly uglier things, until the rescinding sea begins to reveal a city of the dead with horrible and evil things that are enough to drive him mad.  He promptly sticks his head into the water and drowns himself, letting the worms feast on his corpse.   Reflection Another rather short story of Lovecraft, this one seems to go to bad real quick.  The beginning reminded me of Jack London's "Moon-Face" in some ways--just in the way the character seems to have an indescribable hatred of the moon and goes into d

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 28, 2016 at 09:11PM

It's all about the #chickpeas #DailyStickMan http://ift.tt/2btbycb Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 27, 2016 at 06:07PM

Life can be soooo confusing... #DailyStickMan #AintItTheTruth. #TellMeAboutIt  #IisConfused http://ift.tt/2bHi4fP Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Image of the Week #35: Math in the 1910s

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What Is It An article from the Wellesley News, the student newspaper of Wellesley College, from the late 1910s.  Why I Find It Interesting Like many other pieces, this short article reminds me of how much things don't change over the generations.  First, the article is  concerned about rates of success in mathematics; something we still struggle with in colleges.  Then, of course, it raises the question about asking and engaging students about why they may or may not succeed in this area.  We still struggle with relying on what we suspect as instructors to be the issue and hearing what students believe to be the problem.  And then we also often look towards one solution as opposed to multiple solutions when trying to solve how to improve success in a singular area of study.  This submission is  part of the Image of the Week series .  For access to all photos, which are open for reuse under a Creative Commons License, check out the  full album on Flickr . By Any Other Ne

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 26, 2016 at 05:52PM

Cheese...the reason I cannot be vegan... #DailyStickMan #Cheese http://ift.tt/2bqBMJ3 Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Tales of Running: The First 5 Years...1000s of Miles Later

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I find it curious to be writing this post when I have had trouble running for the last two months--ever since I ran 5K and came in around 24:30.  But this post is necessary to write.  It's been five years since I first start running.  Five years since the flip switched and I went from hating running and unwilling to run even a mile to literally running thousands of miles in the last five years (between 1000 and 1200 a year).  What seemed like something that I just couldn't get has now become something I hate the idea of doing without.  Life is indeed funny like that. First marathon completed. Who knew I'd be back for more! I hope that I never lose the amazement that I feel every time I set off on a run because it, in itself, is something that is truly humbling and amazing.  Don't get me wrong, I love the feeling of my body after a good run: the muscles feeling loose but tired, the sweat dripping all over my body, the breathing bringing refreshment to my beating he

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 25, 2016 at 08:48PM

How do you go indepth with two dimensions? #DailyStickMan #Puns http://ift.tt/2bRjPoI Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky My rating: 4 of 5 stars I saw the film adaptation of over the winter and found it to be a very poignant book. I had also heard a lot about it from different people within and around school about its popularity among youth. Sure enough, I did enjoy and appreciate the nature of the book and the ways it tackles the challenges and sense-making that young adults grapple with as they try to find themselves. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by  Lance Eaton  is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 25, 2016 at 05:27AM

Bartleby says... #DailyStickMan http://ift.tt/2bhVgWm Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Review: Ghost Wife: A Memoir of Love and Defiance

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Ghost Wife: A Memoir of Love and Defiance by Michelle Dicinoski My rating: 4 of 5 stars Dicinoski writes a great memoir that contrasts her family's history with her pursuit to legitimate (at least in the eyes of the public) her relationship with her life-long partner and wife, Heather. The story revolves around Dicinoski and Heather traveling to Canada from Australia to get married in part to celebrate their love and in part to spite the bigotted policies of Australia. However, the narrative is more than just a "let's go to the chapel" story. Instead, Dicinoski explores how the failure for the culture to acknowledge her relationship is part of a story played out many times before with her family members who disappear in one way, shape, or form and it's this story--the story of invisibility--that is as moving as seeing Dicinoski and her partner solidify their love. In many ways, it parallels Dan Savage's memoir, The Commitment but has a very distinct flav

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 23, 2016 at 08:29PM

Is it a full moon? It must be a full moon. #JustSaying #DailyStickMan #rawr http://ift.tt/2bAlLWp Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 22, 2016 at 09:44PM

Stickpeeps got no curves...#TheStruggleIsReal #DailyStickMan http://ift.tt/2bKReT2 Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

Short Story #399: The History of the Necronomicon by H. P. Lovecraft

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Title: The History of the Necronomicon Author:  H. P. Lovecraft Summary: The title says it all, this piece traces the history of the creation of and reproduction of the Necronomicon (also known as Al Azif) from its original creation by Abdul Alhazred, "a mad poet" to where the modern copies exist.  The narrator explains that the book came about when Alhazred visits certain dark places like the ruins of  Babylon and Memphis as well as spending ten years in the Arabian desert.  He finally settled in Damascus to write the book.  He then moves into explaining how different translations escaped, what some of the differences were and where the most current versions sit.  Interestingly, the narrative part finishes on discussing how R. W. Chambers (a real author) was supposedly influenced by the rumors of the book when he wrote The King in Yellow (which talks about a fictional play in book form).  The story then finished with a straight chronology of century changes for the

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 22, 2016

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So welcome to another new series of posts I will be embarking upon in this blog.  These will be among the most simple but also the most useful for me.  They are very simple stick-figure images or as I will call them, The Daily StickMan.  Don't expect much from these in terms of heavy content.  Rather, they are an opportunity for me to try my hand at simple daily creativity as just a means to get outside my own head.  I have not clue how long this will last.  I hope it will go on for a while, but I really don't know. So why am I doing it?  Well, I am horrible at drawing.  Horrible.  And I'm largely ok with that but I still like the idea of using drawing to processing or think or share.  I think if I am given the challenge to spend 2-4 minutes a day trying to draw something and then share it out, it will push me to think about things in different ways or to present them in different ways.  And honestly, it's just fun.  So, welcome to the first edition of The Daily Stick

The Daily StickMan Adventures - August 21, 2016 at 06:11PM

Some days, no one can make sense of what you're doing...even you. #RideThatInvisibleHorse #DailyStickMan http://ift.tt/2bafVpe Check out other editions of The Daily Stickman Adventures . If you are receiving this via email and do not see the image posted, please click the link to The Daily Stickman Adventures .

The Daily StickMan Adventures 8/21/2016

Image of the Week #34: More Bonwit Teller & Co

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What Is It An advertisement from the Wellesley News, the student newspaper of Wellesley College, from the late 1910s.  Why I Find It Interesting One of the earliest images in this project looked at a Bonwit, Teller, & Co image and this one is in a similar vein  in terms of its content.  Again, the imagery surrounding the ad is striking in terms of the representation of elite white women being wooed by elite white men with cupid smack-dab in the middle, while the entire scene is held up by either Africans, Middle-Eastern or Southeast Asian workers. It's such a strong message about how the Bonwit Teller & Co as well as the society at large view race. I know this was fairly common for the time, but it is striking to how clear of a message such an image communicates about the nature of race in American society.   This submission is  part of the Image of the Week series .  For access to all photos, which are open for reuse under a Creative Commons License, check out the 

July's Gratitude - NSCC Edition

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Another month and so much to be grateful for.  I thought for this post though, I would focus on one thing in particular.  For those that don't know, I left North Shore Community College at the end of July for a new position at Regis College.  It was a hard decision but the right decision.  So I want to spend this reflection thinking about how grateful I am to the many people at NSCC that have made so much difference in my life. North Shore Community College changed my life in so many ways.  After I attained my bachelor's degree, I ended up getting an associate's degree at NSCC in Criminal Justice.  I did this because I was a year out of college and still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  I knew I wanted to go back to grad school but I didn't know for what.  So in the meantime, I wanted to continue to be intellectually engaged and because the place that I worked at after college paid a certain amount to go to college, so long as you were in a degr

Review: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb My rating: 4 of 5 stars I began listening to The Black Swan in my car as I was finishing up Thinking Fast and Slow on my iPod. They are deeply interconnected (and the authors regularly reference one another) so where one ends and the other begins is extremely hard for me to remember. However, they were both powerful tomes on the nature of certainty, knowledge, and decision making. In both cases, the authors do much to reconsider the ways in which we conceive of ourselves in the decision-making process that undermines "common sense." I find this increasingly important and relevant because I often see the call to rely on "common sense" for something that usually requires anything but common sense. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by  Lance Eaton  is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

Review: The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II

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The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II by Geiger Roger My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a dense but complete history of higher education from the colonial times to World War II. Sometimes a bit too complete (e.g. spending two pages on the life of George Whitefield). I read it as part of a course on the history of higher education that I am taking and though it feels there were times when there was just so much detail, it also spoke to Geiger's ability to find all these details and use them to craft a very clear and substantial history. He traces the evolution of different components in higher education such as the faculty, the students, extra-curricular activities, curriculum, foundational supports, sports, and the like. Sometimes, he traces these threads chapter by chapter pulling them where necessary and still other times, he focuses an entire chapter on a given chapter. In the end, it's the place to start when yo

Short Story #398: The Silver Key by H. P. Lovecraft

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Title: The Silver Key  Author:  H. P. Lovecraft Summary: This story returns to Randolph Carter, a character who shows up or is mentioend in other stories.  In thsi story, years have passed since Carter "lost the key of the gate of dreams."  He spends years trying to come to terms with this and accepting the commonness of everyday life, but it increasingly is challenging and he looks for ways to touch the world of wonder.  He tries many things like traditional faith, travelling, and even embracing the present world, but nothing seems to stick.  He returns to writing and though successful, he rejects his success as a writer as a sign of being common.  As Carter becomes old, he slips further and further into recollecting on his past rather than deal with the dull present life.  As he descends into his own dreams, he begins to recall family members who have been long dead and he dreams of his grandfather telling him of a silver key that had been passed down through the

Image of the Week #33: "Just Like Brother Wears!"

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What Is It An advertisement from the Wellesley News, the student newspaper of Wellesley College, from the late 1910s.  Why I Find It Interesting It's fascinating to see what shows up in early ads and in this case, "Lady Sealpax" has "Athletic Underwear for Women--Just like brother wears!".  I'm impressed with the aspirations towards being like men (though not in the sense that it is applauding the male idea, but just in the idea that it is saying women can be more than feminine).  I'm also curious how long this particular campaign--women as equal to men--stayed the norm for Sealpax after World War I ended and in which publications such ads were effective.  I'm dubious that such a campaign was as effective in Ladies Home Journal as it might be in this women's college newspaper, wherein readers might actually participate in sports. This submission is  part of the Image of the Week series .  For access to all photos, which are open for reus

My Most Recent Reads - July 2016

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July appeared to be a decent month for reading with twenty-one books under my belt.  Not bad considered I've been reading and writing so much to wrap up my course work.  There were a lot of great books to talk about but unfortunately, many of those I am reviewing so I may have to come back to them.  Regardless, there are definitely a few others that are worth talking about this month. Interactive Open Educational Resources: A Guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What's Out There to Transform College Teaching by John Shank Overall, this book is a good introduction into the world of open educational resources and their implementation. it focuses on interactive open educational resources , which are free materials the require a bit more engagement from students.  It's  definitely a book geared towards instructors or instructional designers that have yet to really engage with OER as there are many sections that those familiar with OER will likely skim over.  But where it

Review: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a colleague said, this is one of those books that becomes an essential text of certain academic fields and often quoted but rarely read. I read it and can understand its value though as the product of an academic culture that has strongly internalized the ideas that he sets forth meant that the book didn't necessarily strike me as impressive as it appears to have been at the time. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by  Lance Eaton  is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

Review: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

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Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Berman provides a comprehensive history of the Voting Rights Act from the challenges to get it passed to the most recent court cases that negatively impacting this monumental and essential legislature that protects voting rights of millions of Americans. I was impressed with Berman's tracing of different political leaders and organizations that were constantly working (some in support, some in attempts to undermine) and equally impressed to see how this explains the significant shifts in politics between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the 20th century. If you're looking to better understand the nature of race-related politics, the inequity of American politics, and the lingering institutional forces that still create a racial divide--this book provides a great lens to examine these issues. View all my reviews By Any Other

Short Story #397: The Outsider by H. P. Lovecraft

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Title: The Outsider Author:  H. P. Lovecraft Summary: The narrator explains that he had lived in a strange castle for as long as he can remember and lived by himself.  The castle is surrounded by a dark forest that never seems to end and sunlight never penetrates the forest to shine upon the castle.  He wonders about the types of people that lived here previously and finds himself lonely.  He regularly thinks about the one dark tower that raises up high enough that he cannot see the top of it.  One day, he decides to climb it and slowly makes his way up inside the toward.  He eventually finds there are no stairs but he must scale the walls inside in order to move up.  He eventually finds a ceiling with a trap-door to climb though.  After briefly resting from utter exhaustion, he explores the room where appears to be some kind of storage room.  He eventually finds his way outside where he is showered in moonlight.  As he explores outside, he realizes that he is on solid ground