Today’s image is a tableau titled “Classroom with Three Figures” by Lavern Kelley, painted white pine, plywood, brass, and plastic, 1979, 1984–87. I originally had something else in mind for this space, but when I came across it in my Creative Commons searching, I couldn’t not use it.
TGIF ProfHackers! This was the first week (back?) for many of us, and we hope it went well for you. For those of you who start after Labor Day, savor these final hours of freedom.
Like many of you, my social media feeds have been full of ice water for the last two weeks. It’s not news to say that the Ice Bucket Challenge has gone viral, but here are some other ways of looking at the phenomenon. “The ALS Foundation has tried to trademark the Ice Bucket Challenge despite having nothing to do with it originally.” Forbes reports “The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised $100 Million but is finally cooling off.” Here are “6 Viral-Marketing Lessons to learn from the Ice Bucket Challenge” from Entrepreneur. But the challenge is especially controversial in drought-strickened places like California, Texas, and China. Others like Matt Damon used the challenge to advocate for clean drinking water worldwide. If you haven’t seen enough of people dumping ice water on their heads, scroll down for the videos of the week.
The world now has it’s first emoji only messaging app. Emojili has no letters or words--just emoji images. If you are even a little bit interested in the history of emoji, check out this essay in The New Inquiry. Or you might check out an inspired experiment, “My Week on the Emoji Diet” which tries to answer the question: can someone set only those food items that exist as emoji? 9to5Mac pulls no punches with “Ridiculous Emoji only network launches.” If you find emoji confusing or would like a translation, here’s your cheat-sheet, or a web-based equivalent.
If you aren’t yet following LegoAcademics on Twitter, you don’t know what you’re missing. On a related note, The Guardian reported this week on an 11 year-old who has translated Infinite Jest (as in David Foster Wallace’s behemoth novel Infinite Jest) into Lego.
As promised: Dolly Parton:
Benedict Cumberbatch:
and David Lynch:
[Creative Commons licensed image by Flickr user Cliff]
