This week, I have some links that relate to much of what is going on in the world including how you can build a great home office for these working from home times. I continue to recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader (and, again, I am not getting any payment for recommending this product – I just really like it as a replacement for the old Google Reader). If you already have a Feedly account, then you can follow my blog by clicking here.
This very quick read was published way back in 2014 and gives five great tips for improving your home office. I agree with – and follow – all of these but one. They recommend painting the home office red because that color helps you focus more on your work. I just couldn’t imagine my workspace being red (my entire home office is shades of gray and black). Also, they suggest not having a television in your home office. Though I have a small television mounted to one of the corners of my home office, I do not keep it on unless there is a major, historic event going on (incredibly rare these days).
Civic Engagement: Teaching Students to Be Partisan Activists, Minding the Campus
This is another old link, from 2013, where a professor of political science indicates his concern about the enthusiasm around civic engagement education. Before he passed away, Dr. Lawler was a professor at Berry College and, in addition to writing about political science, he would occasionally write about higher education (one of my favorite topics to study). Reading about his perspective on how earning credit for civic engagement should be avoided.
Higher ed faces pressure from students to cut tuition, Axios
Just a quick aside, these days I use Axios as my primary news source. They are a low-glitz, web-based platform that is designed to give you a story quickly and efficiently without embedding an opinion. In this story, they talk about how some colleges are cutting tuition due to the COVID-19 pandemic and others are actually raising their costs. I know some of the colleges here in New Jersey are upping their tuition… and I know that their students are angry about it.
Brian Fargo on a Pending Golden Age for RPGs, Tides of Numenera Dev Blog
Years ago, I used to scour sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo looking for new and exciting projects to support. I typically supported projects related to writing (new pencil styles, notebooks, pens, etc.) and those related to classic Japanese Role Playing Game (RPG) video games. With hindsight being 20/20, I now know that I got infinitely more use out of the writing projects (I write in a journal every day) versus the video game projects (I rarely play video games and have not played them regularly in 20+ years). With that out of the way, this link takes you to a very short developer blog entry where one of the folks behind the Tides of Numenera game suggest that we may have been entering a golden age for RPGs. This was posted 7 years ago and while I do not know if the video game industry entered a new golden age, I do know that video games seem to be as popular as ever.
Seven Surprising Truths About the World, Reason
Seven years ago, the folks at Reason put together a great little article about seven surprisingly good things going on in the world… at the time. Among the surprising “good news” stories: cancer rates were on the decline, average IQs were increasing, and local biodiversity was increasing. I wonder how those stories hold up 7 years later, especially with everything going on in the world today.
A random note before I end this one, folks. As I went through my old links for this entry, I noticed that a lot of them from what used to be bodybuilding-styled websites were gone and that those websites had all closed up. In fact, some of those now-former writers have become born again Christians because they suggest that they led horrendous, sinful lives for far too long. That, in itself, is an interesting development and if someone ever writes about it, then that story may find itself as a link on a future edition of this series. Anyway, though I would share that commonality since it was so, well, uncommon in my experience.
Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!
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