By Any Other Nerd

What Is It An advertisement from the Wellesley News, the student newspaper of Wellesley College, from the late 1910s.  Why I Find It Interesting Another ad from General Electric that seems to offer up a fantastic world of machines to the newly graduated student.  Though why the student is male when the newspaper is published at an all-women college leaves much to be questioned (such as was this an ad to direct women to direct their love interests where to go or work or purchase from?).  But it's curious how much General Electric emphasizes the world is as the feet of those who spend money on its many appliances. 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 . Did you enjoy this read? Let me know your thoughts down below or feel free to browse around and  check out some of my other posts! . You might also want to ...

March proved to be another slow month of reading and I'm guessing it's something I have to get used to while being in the program--there will be no more months where I read some 40 books or so.  But it was an enjoyable month of reading and I found some great things to read/listen to this month.  I won't formally review them but I found myself listening to two great non-Western science-fiction novels that I strongly recommend for sci-fi peoples:    Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor &  The Three-Body Problem (The Three-Body Problem, #1) by Cixin Liu.  Definitely check them out!  But there are a few other books I want to spend more time talking about today! Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont Beaumont is a fantastic teller of tales and many may already be familiar with him.  A good chunk of his short stories eventually ended up as episodes on The Twilight Zone.  This collection is filled with a great mixture of stories, many o...

A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd My rating: 4 of 5 stars The less serious pick of the month is one that I'm betting most people did not even know was a book first. Most people know A Christmas Story for the classic 1983 film that many of us relish watching around the holidays. Some may even know that it's a musical now too. But most, never knew it was a book first. I really enjoyed the book. It's a collection of short stories rather than one singular text like the film and it's easy to see how they turned it into a film so seamlessly. It's not a case of the book is better, though I wouldn't say the film is better either. They each do things that the others cannot and complement one another quite well. The only significant difference between the two ends up being the time of the stories. In the film, the story is situated in the 1950s, while in the book, the stories are situated in the 1930s. Otherwise, they capture the epic adventure that is chil...

David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words by David Foster Wallace My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've never read much of David Foster Wallace, so when I was given this as an audiobook to review, I was a bit curious because I had heard plenty about him and have several literary friends who big fans of his. This collection of essays and interviews was a great introduction to his work. I listened to the audiobook, which had the added benefit of having him narrate all of the works himself (or fully recorded interviews). My favorite was "This Is The Water," which I have incorporated into my American Literature course as well as "Consider the Lobster." However, many of the pieces were quite fascinating, especially to hear him discuss the significant of Infinite Jest as well as his commentary on suicide given how he died. Having never read his fiction, I'm not rather inspired to which speaks well to this collection of essays. View all my re...

Citation : Tynes, B. M., Rose, C. A., & Markoe, S. L. (2013). Extending Campus Life to the Internet: Social Media, Discrimination, and Perceptions of Racial Climate. Journal Of Diversity In Higher Education, 6(2), 102-114. Summary : This article explained the results of an online survey of 217 students (directed towards African American and European American students) with particular attention to attitudes and perceptions around racial groups, discrimination, and tension in the online and offline worlds and how such experiences and perceptions relate to campus racial climate.  The survey collected data on ethnicity, social media usage, school-related social media usage, network diversity in online and offline environments, online racial discrimination and stress, and racial climate. The survey revealed that European Americans had smaller degree of ethnically diverse interactions (14%).  African American students also engaged more intensely and with a wider ran...

Title:  The Cats of Uthar Author:  H. P. Lovecraft Summary: The narrator explains that in Uthar, there is a strange law in which no one is permitted to kill a cat.  The reason relates back to the past when there was an eccentric and odd old couple who lived on the periphery of the town.  They were regularly known to kill cats or at least this was assumed since one would often hear the wild screams of cats from their cottage.  The cottage and folk were spooky enough that they were left alone.  However, one time, a traveling band of dark merchants visited the town.  Among the caravan, there was a child who had recently been orphaned and had nothing to his name except that of a black kitten whom he adored.  While in the town,  the kitten disappeared and it was explained that it most likely had been killed.  Enraged by the death, the boy said a prayer to the sky, which promptly darkened with strange clouds.  Shortly after this, ...

What Is It An advertisement from the Wellesley News, the student newspaper of Wellesley College, from the late 1910s.  Why I Find It Interesting Apparently, it was General Electric that helped women accomplish so much. This advertisement wowed me in all the wrong ways.  It's smart in that Mad Men sort of way.  It claims to be the liberator of women--granting them freedom to do things like get an education.  It makes me wonder how many women--particularly at Welllesley saw through this facade and how many of them seemed to buy the narrative (and later invest in General Electric products).  Again, it's ads like these that show me few new things exist and that in this case, advertisers have been storytelling for a very long time.   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 . Did you enjoy this read? ...

As many know, I am an advocate of social media, particular as a space to develop professionally.  I use it a lot and encourage others to do the same.  I also regularly teach workshops on how to use social media for personal, professional, and organizational uses.  I enjoy the opportunity to help others with social media and connecting with others.  I also enjoy helping people increase their professional opportunities through social media and have done workshops on that as well (as can be seen by the SlideShare below).  Recently, while on LinkedIn, I realized that there was some good advice that I could pass along to people looking to maximize their profile impact and it had little to do with most of the content.  I am going to take this blog post to discuss the most important part of your LinkedIn Profile: your profile photo. Job Searching in an Online World: Curating Your Digital Identity from Lance Eaton Before we start...

Like One: Poems for Boston by Deborah Finkelstein My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm not a big fan of poetry, which is why I find it amusing that two of my big picks for this month have a strong poetry component (the other being Ensler's book). Like One: Poems for Boston is a great anthology filled with contemporary and classic poets (e.g. Walt Whitman and Robert Frost) that celebrates togetherness. Editor, Deborah Finkelstein was inspired to edit this anthology in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings--not to put the focus on the tragedy, but to capture the unity that emerged in its aftermath. The collection's proceeds go to help victims of the bombing. Overall, I surprisingly liked this collection. That's not because I expected less from it but mostly because I'm not usually as captured by poetry as other forms of writing. I appreciate it, but am just not driven to read it. However, Finkelstein not only selected a great and accessible collection of poems,...

Hyde by Daniel Levine My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've always been fascinated by the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic and since reading the original novella several years ago, I am increasingly fascinated by all things related. I loved the BBC version of Jekyll with James Nesbitt and enjoyed both the movie and novel by Valerie Martin of Mary Reilly. I've seen lots of versions of Jekyll and Hyde and my favorite still remains to be the 1932 version with Frederic March. Hyde now gets added to that list of favorite renderings of Jekyll and Hyde that I've read or viewed over the years. It's a well-told tale that provides some fascinating layers to the Jekyll and Hyde dynamic while offering the point of view of Hyde which is so often neglected or rarely humanized in the ways that Levine does. Levine raises some fascinating questions about Jekyll that I appreciate since they are ones I often raised when I have taught the text within a class. Additionally, Levine has cl...