Category Archives: Life

The individual vs. society – Joseph Campbell, Gandhi, and JFK weigh in

Posted on June 14, 2019 by

I’m cleaning out my office today, throwing out old student papers and old lecture notes from courses I no longer teach. One of the files I came across was from a one-off class on mythology that I taught in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and reading, History, Learning, Life, Political Analysis, WPLongform (posts of 1000 words or longer) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Not so much costumes as a bit of plumbing and general automobile engineering”

Posted on May 15, 2019 by

So said John Mollo in his acceptance speech at the Oscars after winning the Academy Award for Costume Design in 1978 for his work on Star Wars. What reminded me of this marvelous quote was a vehicle I walked past … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Movies and film | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Bicycle with Shadow Sharrow

Posted on May 14, 2019 by

Today I learned the official name for a certain ubiquitous graphic painted on the bike lanes of city streets: “sharrow.” A “sharrow”— in case you also didn’t know what to call this thing you’ve surely seen many times—is the “signage” … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Milwaukee, Photography | Tagged | 4 Comments

CypherCon 4.0, the Milwaukee River dyed green, and three homes of the Milwaukee Bucks

Posted on April 12, 2019 by

Taught my morning class today and then walked over to the convention center (maybe 20 minutes away) to attend CypherCon, billed as “Wisconsin’s Hacker Conference” mostly centered on network security but also containing bigger-picture sessions on societal implications of data … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture, Art, Life, Milwaukee | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Atrium staircase, late afternoon

Posted on April 8, 2019 by

I am in the middle of grading midterms today. That involves lots of sitting, punctuated by the need to get up and stretch my legs more often than I usually think to remember. There is lots of late afternoon sunshine … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture, Higher education, Life, Milwaukee, Photography, Teaching | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Radiant

Posted on April 5, 2019 by

I liked the circles of light reflecting off the waste can at the elevator late this afternoon 😄

Posted in Life, Photography | Tagged | 3 Comments

What’s in a tagline? My blog’s identity: Version 4.0

Posted on April 4, 2019 by

I’m developing a new course at MSOE called “SS 3700 Digital Society.” To say I’m excited is to understate my enthusiasm for this topic. As a political science major who took computer programming classes in the late 1970s using a … Continue reading →

Posted in Higher education, Learning, Life, Popular culture, Science, Teaching, Technology, Writing, blogging | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments