March 29, 2020

Sonnet Corona

from Post Position
by @ 10:26 am

“Sonnet Corona” is a computer-generated sonnet, or if you look at it differently, a sonnet cycle or very extensive crown of sonnets.

The sonnets generated are in monometer. That is, each line is of a single foot, and in this case, is of strictly two syllables.

They are linked not by the last line of one becoming the first line of the next, but by being generated from the same underlying code: A very short web page with a simple, embedded JavaScript program.

Because there are three options for each line, there are 314 = 4,782,969 possible sonnets.

March 23, 2020

Against “Epicenter”

from Post Position
by @ 10:24 am

New York City, we are continually told, is now the “epicenter” of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Italy is the world’s “epicenter.” This term is used all the time in the news and was recently deployed by our mayor here in NYC.

I’m following up on a February 15 Language Log post by Mark Liberman about why this term is being used in this way. Rather than asking why people are using the term, I’m going to discuss how this word influences our thinking. “Epicenter” leads us to think about the current global pandemic in some unhelpful ways. Although less exciting, simply saying something like “New York City has the worst outbreak” would actually improve our conceptual understanding of this crisis.

March 3, 2020

Cutting Through the Bias!

We’re excited to announce the release of the report on our large research project on bias and women in STEM! Check out Cutting Through the Bias: Using Games and Interactive Experiences to Transform Bias Against Women in STEM is now available on Amazon! This book is an indispensable document of our innovative research and study findings. The book also outlines interventions and prototypes that can be used by educators to reduce the impact of bias in the classroom.

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