By Brian Mathews. I’ve been experiencing the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon lately. This is when you discover a new word, concept, song, book, product or whatever and then it seemingly appears everywhere. In my case this has been related to maps and global communications. More...
By Allan Metcalf. Monday is the anniversary of the birth of the expression OK, 176 years ago, on the second page of the Boston Morning Post for Saturday, March 23, 1839. OK began as a joke, a deliberately misspelled abbreviation of “all correct.” And it remained a joke for the better part of a century, even as it was being put to serious use in OK-ing documents, train departures and arrivals, and wholesome products like Pyle’s O.K. Soap. More...
By William Germano. The recent controversy over the young composer Jonas Tarm turns on the eleventh-hour discovery, or recognition, that his “March to Oblivion” (“Marsh u Nebuttya,” in a transliteration from Ukrainian) incorporates unplayable music — unplayable not because of its difficulty but because of its use of musical quotation. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. The Chronicle’s strict profanity policies, as I explained last year, bar mentioning offensive or obscene words, even in linguistic discussions where the details are crucial. Asterisk-respelling tricks are unapproved under the New York Times style guidelines that we follow. More...
By Lucy Ferriss. I’m always coming late to the party. Over the weekend, traveling through Arizona with a clogged computer, I stopped in at the Apple store, 12 minutes late for my appointment at the Genius Bar. They hold the appointments for 10 minutes, after which you go into the queue. More...
By Ben Yagoda. The most popular answer was this: “There’s nothing grammatically or syntactically wrong with starting a sentence with ‘this.’ It’s essential, however, that it’s clear what the ‘this’ is referring to.” More...
By Erin E. Templeton. I came across a post this week titled “A Parents’ Guide to All That Ed Tech in the Classroom: What to ask when your school says the iPads are coming.” Obviously intended for parents, this post is actually a helpful starting point for anyone who is considering incorporating more technology into an educational environment, whether parent, student, faculty member or administrator. Read more...By Amy Cavender. I love the list in this photo. The kindergarten teacher who asked her class what they wanted to learn about got a list of fantastic answers. I’m sure being asked that question so early in their formal educational process is something that will stick with them. Read more...By Natalie Houston. Many readers probably answered “check email.” Checking email has become the default work-ish activity for many professionals. I said work-ish because while checking email may be work-related, for most people it is not a central activity of their work. Read more...By Ryan Cordell. We write about fitness quite a bit here at ProfHacker. I must confess, though, that until quite recently I was all excuses. Beginning in grad school and through my first post-grad-school job, I was far, far “too busy” to work out. I had excuses every day—writing, teaching, grading, and family—all good priorities, to be sure, but none that truly took over my life so as to make exercise literally impossible. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
