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Showing posts from November, 2016

Review: Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania

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Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania by Frank Bruni My rating: 5 of 5 stars The most important statement I can say about this book is that every student should read this book in their freshmen or sophomore year of high school--yes, high school. Bruni's exploration into 3-Card Monte structure that is higher education when it comes to seducing students should be understood by all students as it has many long-term implications for them. Throughout the book, Bruni systematically breaks down the traditional mindset to aspire to elite colleges, noting how success in getting into them and success as a result of attending them is drastically overrated and over-played. He highlights a range of approaches and strategies that students should use to determine what form of higher education is best for them. View all my reviews

The PhD Chronicles: Zeroing in on Research

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Research, the centerpiece of work in graduate work is always a tricky beast.  Ideally, it should be a time in which students are able to focus solely on their topic, find meaningful and relevant literature to inform their approach, process it, conduct field research (if possible or relevant), and pull it altogether into a meaningful product known wide and far as the "term paper."  But alas, that's pretty much how it never goes.  Papers are always composed in media res of the semester while we are busy with trying to keep up with the course work, keep up with our own work, and have some semblance of a life.  Like Facebook says our relationship with research is complicated.  But we press on.  In a well-designed course, the professor is likely to be a useful and ongoing guide in our research, providing a few opportunities to check in, provide feedback, and when necessar, course correct.  Other times, we're tossed to the wolves, praying we come through with something co

We Can Do Better; I Can Do Better

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So where am I with all this? The swirling hurt, disappointment, and rage still swirls deeply in my soul.  I knew it was possible, but just like cancer and death, it is not something I conceive of happening until it's too late.  I had hoped the country would not go down the path toward a Trump presidency in the weeks since his election, I'm more scared for this country's future and in particular, those made more vulnerable by his hateful rhetoric.  At the time of composing this post, t he count was at over 700 reports of harassment .  And I'm mad at a lot of things, people and places--all the forces the colluded to make this election the barely-conceived win that it became--not for Republicans so much but how much the messages of Trump's campaign mixed together a message of hope that was deeply seeded in hatred, anger, fear and frustration.  I get and want change in our government like so many others;   I get and want change in our politics like so many others;

Review: With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830

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With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830 by LeRoy Ashby My rating: 5 of 5 stars Ashby's mammoth text (700 pages long; 33+ hours of listening on audiobook) was a fascinating and excellent discussing of popular culture that was great in terms of timing as I listening to it just as I was revising my online Popular Culture in the US course (You can see the course preview here or the course playlist here). Ashby covers a whole lot of content, arenas of popular culture, and events within popular culture. But equally important, he ties it together well as he drifts in each chapter from sports to reading to radio to television to other arenas. In reading it, you get a much fuller sense of mesh of intersections within popular culture while also a framework for understanding how it connects to the culture at large and history. Now, I just need to find a way to integrate the book within my own course. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by 

Review: Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives

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Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives by Howard J. Ross My rating: 5 of 5 stars I feel like this is a book I need to read at least once a year because as much as I agree, understand, and deeply appreciate its message, I also know it's horribly easy to ignore. The message is that we--all of us--you, me, the author, and everyone--are innately biased in ways that are not clear to us. Unfortunately, many of these biases are arbitrary and many of them may incline us to think and act in ways that are against our actual beliefs. Ross traces the many different ways in which we are blind to our biases and the various ways we succumb to our biases. He also illustrates ways of overcoming some of our biases some of the time but makes clear it's probably impossible (and probably for the best) to overcome all of our biases all of the time. Rather, the goal is to reduce it in places and situations where it undermines our sense of fairne

The Daily StickMan Adventures - November 20, 2016 at 06:49PM

Why is he so petty and who finds that appealing? #DailyCat #DailyStickMan #CatLife #catstagram #cats #catsofinstagram http://ift.tt/2fIQu3Z 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 - November 19, 2016 at 06:33PM

An increased in hate crimes, offering up a "registry"...all part of the 8 steps. #DailyCat #DailyStickMan #CatLife #catstagram #catsofinstagram #Cats http://ift.tt/2gvE9SM 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 .

My Most Recent Reads - October 2016

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No physical books read this month and that's no surprise.  We're in month two of the semester and that I'm writing coherent sentences is considered a win, right?  However, this month was an amazing month for some powerful and impressive books.   I talk about a couple here, but I would encourage you to check out my full Goodreads list to see the others as many of them were powerful and worth the read!  Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century by Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow  continues to impress me and many others with his thoughts on what it means to be a creator in the 21st century.  This collection of essays (which you can download for free on his website) brings together a lot of his different works that he's written for his blog and elsewhere about the nature of copyright, open source living, and censorship.  At its center are questions about how do we as a culture decide to empower creators ne

Review: The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability--Designing for Abundance

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The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability--Designing for Abundance by William McDonough My rating: 5 of 5 stars McDonough and Braungart's follow up to their previous book, Cradle to Cradle, is a solid book to help think more critically and creatively about developing a more sustainable world through human efforts. They highlight a variety of work that is already being done with regards to upcycling and where more work can be done. At its core is the argument is that there isn't a "waste" problem insomuch as there is a design problem that we must think more proactively about design with the full cycle of the products resources and their long-lasting implications. From furniture to clothing to waste management (or more appropriately renamed, nutrient management), they show pathways to making human practices more sustainable. View all my reviews By Any Other Nerd Blog  by  Lance Eaton  is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareA

The Daily StickMan Adventures - November 16, 2016 at 08:44PM

This cat ain't sitting on the sidelines. #DailyCat #DailyStickMan #CatLife #catstagram #cats #catsofinstagram http://ift.tt/2f65kR6 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 Horror of It All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead...

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The Horror of It All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead... by Adam Rockoff My rating: 3 of 5 stars I tend to be a fan of film critic memoirs mostly because they provide me with insight into the mind of the critic about key moments in their cinematic-taste development. I always appreciate when a film critic can crystallize their viewing experience and that's what Rockoff does a lot of in this book, mixing his life with a great deal of horror films--some good, some bad, and some we should probably not talk about. Sprinkled among his films and reflections are sometimes political or theoretical views that I personally disagree with but can see how and why he has inserted them. But the main reason I enjoyed this book is to see the great many horror films that I may know nothing about and wish to learn. Indeed, a book like this makes me go and add a bajillion (yes, that's an accurate count) new titles to my Netflix qu

The Daily StickMan Adventures - November 15, 2016 at 05:05PM

Well, he does have 9 lives.... #DailyCat #DailyStickMan #CatLife ##catstagram #catsofinstagram http://ift.tt/2fSrCEN 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 PhD Chronicles: Negotiating Privilege in Higher Education

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So here is something that I've been grappling with in my work for my PhD in Higher Education.  We've taken two classes that have strongly focused on institutional and structural privileging and discrimination, which as a white male from a middle class family, has me doing a whole lot of thinking and reflecting.   During the discussion on the issue of how limited higher education is to racial minorities for a variety for structural issues, the professor emphasized (as did someone else) that it is important to have white allies (for the lack of a better word) in positions of power that can signal institutional priorities, especially as it relates to race.  That is, white and male allies can be highly effective in improving the diversity of their colleges by vocalizing (and following through) that it is a clear priority.   I found it incredibly useful to hear this as a someone who is a white male practitioner/scholar because it helped me to better understand how I can help str

Politics in Social Media: Memes, Public Talk, and Snacking

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As you know from previous posts centered on politics , I'm doing a lot of thinking and reflecting about courses of action that are important to me.  Within that, it means I am also starting to think differently about how I engage and act politically in social media.  I will always contend that social media is a powerful and important tool; one that has inevitably changed my life for the better, making me a better communicator, more thoughtful and sensitive person, and better aware of the world around me.  But it has me thinking differently about certain aspects of it that I need to change my approach on.  Here are some of those different approaches that are currently on my mind. Memes Moving forward--I'm largely done with memes.  Neutral memes that may be amusing and interesting are probably not off the table but memes in general, I'm done using.  We all like memes because they are perfect analogy machines, distilling our issue into something that is a picture and handf

The Daily StickMan Adventures - November 13, 2016 at 09:00PM

This lil #kitty is acting up... #DailyCat #DailyStickMan #CatLife #catstagram #cats #catsofinstagram http://ift.tt/2fQnPIy 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 .

What Am I Doing...Actions Taken

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So in my last post , I said that the election for me and anyone else that was not something they liked in terms of its execution needs to do something to avoid it happening in the many problematic ways that it played out.  How's that going for all of us?  What are some of the action items you've taken up in the last few days? Here's my run-down of what I've done thus far: November 8: Election Day I voted, of course but I also wrote the initial post from the other day that has got me going down this path of thinking about what to do next. November 9:  A Day of Mourning & Reflection I stayed up through most of Election night and had trouble sleeping (maybe 2 hours that night).  Wednesday was a really hard day for me.  It was spent in a bit of a haze.  It was spent shedding public and private tears and commiserating with friends.  I cried because the loss to me represented so much that was wrong--wrong with how the election was fought and the differing re

October's Gratitude

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So this month got a bit busier than I would have liked.  I managed to stay on top of my daily gratitudes and am only slightly behind in my thank-you notes, but I have not started the process of thanking authors as I wanted to do.  So I've got my work cut out for me for November but that makes sense as well since November does include Thanksgiving, right? In looking at the total count of gratitude notes that I've logged, I'm somewhere in 1000s which is nice to see and I'm curious what the word cloud will look like at the end of the year.  What will stick out as my biggest themes?  I've got a few guesses (certainly, my cats, my partner, my body, and access to essentials always rank high).   In this month's cloud, I notice that learning, partner, body, opportunities, friends, and life stick out rather strongly.  Given the opportunities I had to spend with friends and professional colleagues this month, that doesn't seem so surprising.  I also realize tha