WASHINGTON—Following an outpouring of criticism from across the country, the Washington Redskins announced Wednesday that they are officially changing the team’s name to the D.C.

WASHINGTON—Noting that the individuals in question may be extremely mentally disturbed or suffering from a serious psychological illness, the nation’s psychiatrists announced Wednesday that they are deeply concerned for the estimated 5 percent...

Official Map: Public Transport Network of Debrecen, Hungary

Sent my way via a comment left on the website regarding the woeful map of Szeged, Hungary (Sept. 2013, 0.5 stars), here’s another truly awful transit map from Hungary: this one from its second-largest city, Debrecen.

In short, it’s an absolute disaster.

Route lines branch off in any direction (no constraining angles to 45-degree increments for this bad boy!), while labels are jammed in wherever they can fit, at any old angle. The labelling is so bad, that the map has a large part of the legend at the bottom left devoted to defining abbreviations that are used in an attempt to shorten names to make them fit! At least none of the labels cut through route lines, but the means don’t justify the ends here.

Technically, even the curved parts of the route lines are actually short sections of straight paths that simulate a curve (badly), making me think that this has been put together in CAD software, rather than a design/illustration application.

The strangely subdued colour scheme (a lot of pastel pinks, purples and greys) doesn’t help matters either: there’s very little contrast between a lot of adjacent route lines, which makes following them difficult.

Almost apologetically, the text above the legend states: “Attention! Map not to scale.”

Our rating: An absolute eyesore. This style of map is fairly common for bus/tram networks in Europe, and can work when executed well (see Viteks Bariševs’ unofficial map of Riga, Latvia), but this is definitely not working at all. No stars.

(Source: Official DKV site – also an “interactive” Flash-based version of the same map, and an SVG download if you want to open it up in Illustrator for some laughs)

With much of the US government closed due to a lapse in congressional funding, many of the nation’s food inspectors are off the job. A disproportionate number of the furloughed inspectors work at the Food and Drug Administration—one of the two US government organizations that inspects farms and production facilities—rather than the US Department of Agriculture, where 87% of the food safety staff is still going to work.

So what’s getting inspected, and what isn’t? The answer is far from straightforward. Each agency is responsible for different foods: the USDA generally covers meat, poultry, and products made with egg, while the FDA covers everything else…kind of. As it turns out, their jurisdictions are divided in a way that seems totally arbitrary in some cases. In others, it’s downright farcical.

Chicken noodle soup is monitored by the USDA but vegetable noodle soup is checked by the FDA, even if both soups are made in the same facility.

Cheese pizza is the FDA’s responsibility, but as soon as you add a meat—say, some pepperoni— the USDA has to make sure it’s safe to eat. (Neither of these agencies are checking out your local pizza parlor or deli; their mandate is to monitor facilities and suppliers along the supply chain, not at the end of it.)

Eggs are one of the most complexly regulated items. The chickens that lay them are monitored by the USDA, as is the facility that they lay them in. The processing plant that washes, sorts, and packages the eggs is regulated by the FDA, and so is the carton that they’re sold in. Once that egg is cracked, the USDA is back in charge whether the contents are dried, frozen, or still in liquid form. That is, unless they are used in eggnog mix, french toast, or egg sandwiches; those items are in FDA territory.

Speaking of sandwiches, open-faced meat-filled sandwiches are kept in check by the USDA whereas closed-face meat-filled sandwiches are handled by the FDA.

A hot dog sandwiched inside a bagel falls under the FDA’s authority. But corn dogs are USDA-regulated.

There are a few situations where the FDA and the USDA actually work together to protect the US food supply, like when illegal drugs are found in a dairy cow (pdf) sold for slaughter in California.

Is the shutdown actually stopping inspections? It’s hard to know. When it comes to domestically-made food, the FDA’s main tasks are to enforce its labeling guidelines and approve the ingredients that are used in the products in the first place. It only inspects factories and farms every few years at best—typically only after a tip or suspicion of wrongdoing. The USDA, on the other hand, makes daily visits to production facilities. So if you had to pick one food safety agency to stay open, the USDA is probably the one you want.

Nerval's Lobster writes "The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has awarded as much as $48 million to researchers trying to build computer-security systems that can identify even the most subtle human-exploit attacks and respond without human intervention. The more difficult part of the research will be to develop models of human behavior that allow security systems decide, accurately and on their own, whether actions by humans are part of an attack (whether the humans involved realize it or not). The Army Research Lab (ARL) announced Oct. 8 a grant of $23.2 million to fund a five-year cooperative effort among a team of researchers at Penn State University, the University of California, Davis, Univ. California, Riverside and Indiana University. The five-year program comes with the option to extend it to 10 years with the addition of another $25 million in funding. As part of the project, researchers will need to systematize the criteria and tools used for security analysis, making sure the code detects malicious intrusions rather than legitimate access, all while preserving enough data about any breach for later forensic analysis, according to Alexander Kott, associate director for science and technology at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Identifying whether the behavior of humans is malicious or not is difficult even for other humans, especially when it's not clear whether users who open a door to attackers knew what they were doing or, conversely, whether the "attackers" are perfectly legitimate and it's the security monitoring staff who are overreacting. Twenty-nine percent of attacks tracked in the April 23 2013 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report could be traced to social-engineering or phishing tactics whose goal is to manipulate humans into giving attackers access to secured systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

	rachel shared this story from It's Okay To Be Smart:
	Wow.

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via there-will-be-toast:

Behold my chem project: model of the nickel atom, or as I like to call it, Nickel-ous Cage.

And that’s how you win the internet, folks. This post is a National Treasure.

RT

Obama, NSA dissed by report as Edward Snowden reappears CNET NSA surveillance and Obama administration policies are putting a damper on freedom of the press, says a report. Meanwhile, Prism leaker Edward Snowden accepts an award in Moscow. Edward Moyer. by Edward Moyer. October 10, 2013 6:41 PM PDT. Edward Snowden's dad visits him in MoscowThe Age Lon Snowden, Father Of NSA Leaker, Arrives In Russia To See SonHuffington Post all 278 news articles »

China Builds Flats in Path of Highway | Via

Chinese officials were forced to cut a motorway in half to go around a block of flats after they accidentally erected the building in its proposed path then realized it would cost too much to relocate the tenants.

Construction workers had to squeeze the eight-lane highway into four and subsequently left furious residents stuck in the middle of a busy road. They had just been moved from their previous homes to make way for a park so refused to move again unless they were heavily compensated.

So the council decided to save a small fortune by leaving the flats in place.

An updated version of Final Fantasy VI will make its mobile debut on iOS and Android this year, according to Square Enix producer Takashi Tokita.

"The battle systems have been altered for the other [mobile remakes] for Final Fantasy and VI will be the same," Tokita tells Kotaku. For instance grinding was an issue and people had to spend a lot of time leveling up. Now on the mobile devices the battle systems have been adjusted so you don't have to fight as much and can enjoy the game for what it is." Tokita says the graphics will get a touch-up for the mobile release.

Final Fantasy VI, which was originally launched in 1994 as Final Fantasy III in North America, takes place within a steampunk world that changes based on player choice. No pricing was mentioned for Final Fantasy VI on mobile but, if previous Square Enix games are any indication, it'll fetch a tidy sum of Gil.

Report: Enhanced Final Fantasy 6 coming to iOS, Android originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Democracy Corps wanted to get to know today’s Republican party. They posted their findings: Inside the GOP: Report on focus groups with Evangelical, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans.

They describe the three main groups:

Evangelicals. Social issues are central for Evangelicals and they feel a deep sense of cultural and political loss. They believe their towns, communities, and schools are suffering from a deep “culture rot” that has invaded from the outside. The central focus here is homosexuality, but also the decline of homogenous small towns. They like the Tea Party because they stand up to the Democrats.

Tea Party. Big government, Obama, the loss of liberty, and decline of responsibility are central to the Tea Party worldview. Obama’s America is an unmitigated evil based on big government, regulations, and dependency. They are not focused on social issues at all. They like the Tea Party because it is getting “back to basics” and believe it has the potential to reshape the GOP.

Moderates. Moderates are deeply concerned with the direction of the country and believe Obama has taken it down the wrong path economically. They are centrally focused on market-based economics, small government, and eliminating waste and inefficiency. They are largely open to progressive social policies, including on gay marriage and immigration. They disdain the Tea Party and have a hard time taking Fox News seriously.

aaronhillahyeeaah:

You had me at Zoot…

Me too.

All is not well in the luxury world. Stalwart luxury buyers in China are cutting back, according to recent statements from Burberry and Richemont, among others. New data from research firm Euromonitor International confirms that the industry is in a bit of a slump. Global luxury sales are on track to grow by 3% this year, the slowest rate in four years.

Euromonitor reckons that growth will pick up next year, though, driven by its strongest segment in recent years: accessories, specifically men’s accessories. The luxury goods industry has been “manning up” of late, says Fflur Roberts of Euromonitor. A host of luxury brands are opening men’s only stores, tapping a less saturated market undergoing significant shifts in tastes.

In part, the focus on men’s luxury lines reflects the push into fast-growing emerging markets, where the disparity in purchasing power between men and women is wider than in the West, Roberts says. Chinese men are famously keen luxury shoppers, for example.

But one of the hottest luxury items with global appeal is the men’s handbag—the “man bag,” “man purse,” or, simply, “murse“. Euromonitor dug into its data for Quartz to help quantify the murse’s meteoric rise.

Once a source of mockery, over the past five years men’s handbags have seen sales grow at nearly twice the rate of the overall luxury industry. The man-bag market in Asia has doubled since 2008, with murses in the Middle East growing by two-thirds over the same period. The global market for men’s luxury bags will reach just under $9 billion this year, according to Euromonitor.

The factors driving men’s handbag sales are also fueling luxury accessory sales more generally; accessories have been the fastest-growing luxury segment over the past five years, worth some $50 billion this year. “You might not be able to buy a Zegna coat, but you can have a Zegna bag,” says Roberts. “It’s got the brand but you are not parting with thousands and thousands. Accessories are big because they are a stepping stone into luxury.”

The propensity of men to sport flashier purses is down to changing trends. “Years ago, your average man wouldn’t be caught dead walking down the street with a Mulberry bag,” says Roberts. “It’s becoming a more accepted trend.” Indeed, in explaining its recent industry-bucking jump in sales, the boss of Longchamp noted that the brand benefited from its broader range of men’s bags as they “become part of a gentleman’s outfit.”

Euromonitor expects sales of men’s handbags to moderate in the next five years. This doesn’t mean that blokes won’t still bling it up: Luxury man-bags will continue to grow faster than women’s purses in many parts of the world.

Argh.

M-Blocks are a new breed of self-assembling robot currently in development at MIT. It's only a matter of time before they rise up against us.

As President Obama steps up his declarations about the dire consequences of not raising the debt limit, increasing numbers of Congressional Republicans are disputing that forecast, as well as the timing of when the Treasury might run out of money and the implications of a default.

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Pittsburgh public schools (attn: @tyler) but worth reading no matter where you are. #everythingisterrible

Here’s a detailed account from a teacher about the troubling experience she had giving her middle-school class of 11-year-old students a standardized reading diagnostic test, with both oral and written questions.

This appeared on Jessie B. Ramey‘s Yinzercation blog. She teaches women’s studies and history at the University of Pittsburgh.  The test that is being described in this post is Pearson Education’s The GRADE™, or Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation. The Pearson website describes it as

 a diagnostic reading test that determines what developmental skills students Pre-K through 12th grade have mastered and where they need instruction or intervention. And GRADE helps educators with the recommended instruction through correlated follow-up materials. GRADE is group-administered, norm-referenced, and based on scientific research. GRADE provides the components educators need to accurately and efficiently assess reading competencies.

Because the test is a reading diagnostic exam, it does not necessarily carry “high stakes” with it as many other standardized tests do. But, as this teacher describes, there are problems that come with giving kids a slew of standardized tests, whatever the kind.

Here’s the post.

By Jessie B. Ramey

We’re just a month into school and already the testing madness has begun. Many Pittsburgh Public School students have just taken their first round of standardized tests, and it’s time to ask some serious questions about their purpose, the ever-increasing number of tests, and the impact on our children.

Let’s start with this troubling account from a middle-school language arts and social studies teacher, who just gave the “GRADE” reading test to her students. This is a diagnostic assessment designed by the education corporate giant, Pearson, and the district is using grant money to pay for it. (More on both of these points after you have read this teacher’s story).

———–

The teacher’s account:

 Say you’re a teacher with a diverse and exciting group of students who have found learning together an exciting prospect. You have had ups and downs, but each day has ended with more students feeling positive about their ability to learn, and each day investing more in the process. Then, a couple of weeks into the school year, you have to make the first stop in this process. The first Pearson-created standardized test has landed on your desk.

 

Teaching/learning has to stop. You hide your face from your students as you grit your teeth. You tell them, as always, not to worry. You tell them no one expects them to get all of the answers right, but you do expect them to do their very best. You know they will, as they will want to show everyone how smart they are, just as they’ve shown you in so many ways. But inside you cringe . . .

 

You stand in front of the class and read a sentence to the children. You are allowed to repeat the sentence only once. Then the students select one of four pictures that they think most reflects what the sentence says. The children look determined; they are ready; you begin.

 

The first question seems harmless enough. The students look okay. Then you get to the second question. Of 106 questions.

The sentence you read says something like, “Luis draws a blank when he is asked to solve a math problem on the board.” The students have four drawings to choose from. In the second drawing, a student is drawing the kind of blank one would see on a paper on which students are directed to “fill in the blanks.” It is a blank. He is drawing it.

 

You start to feel stomach pangs as you look around the room at 11 year olds, many of whom come from non-English-speaking families, or families for whom this type of idiomatic expression is not common, and you realize that you have never come across this expression in any of the literature you have taught students over the years. You know it is unlikely that many of these children will recognize the puzzled expression on the face in one of these pictures as the “right” answer. For many of these kids, “blanks” have to do with guns.

 

But you go on, and hope this is an exception, this bad question. Then there is Question No. 4: “Roger told her that he would have changed the oil himself in a couple of weeks.” What? Changed what oil, you think, as you look around at your class of children for whom having a car in the family is far from a given. Children for whom having a parent who changes oil in a car is even less likely. Then you look at the drawings, and you see why the children are looking confused – but still trying hard.

 

All four drawings include a car. Three of them include a man doing something under a car. Two of them include a girl sitting in a wheel chair watching the man (this, perhaps, makes this test culturally responsible?). One of them shows a car driving down the road with smoke coming from under the hood. I — a long-time car owner and driver and oil-change customer — had to look at this set of pictures several times, over a couple of days, to figure out which answer they were looking for. (Really, if you waited a couple of weeks to change the oil, wouldn’t it be possible that the engine would smoke?) But the children had only a short period of time to figure out – or guess – what the answer was.

 

By now my students were getting a bit restless. The confidence with which they had gone into this testing situation was beginning to dispel. Just a bit. There were still 102 questions left to answer.

 

We went on. Question No. 6 referred to “a pair of drumsticks” and included as choices a boy eating two chicken-type drumsticks along with others of the musical kind. This is almost funny, but the students are supposed to choose the “right” answer. Number seven brought my stomach pangs back. The expression in this question was “brushed up on art history.” “Brushed up.” The first choice showed a man with a paint brush and an easel – the only one of the pictures clearly about art. The “correct” choice was a man looking through a stack of books, one of which had a tiny, crude and hard-to-see drawing of a female which one could interpret as the Mona Lisa, if one were familiar with her….

 

Question No. 8 had two possible answers, each of which was equally justifiable. Oh, but our students never would have the chance to justify their answers on this type of test. Take that, you kids who are daring to think . . .

 

Question No. 12 put me over the top. But I continued my outward calm, even as I watched the kids squirm, and as some began to lose their focus and their positive demeanor.

 

The mumbling had begun. The sentence I read to the class said something like “she realized she could store her belongings in the bureau.” “Bureau.” There were four pictures to choose from. One was a building that looked like a public “bureau” of the government to me, but I doubted my students would think of that. One was of a tractor. Scratch that. But I looked at my students whose families speak Spanish at home. And I looked at the burro in picture “C.”

 

Then I looked at the picture of what my family calls a chest-of-drawers. And I thought about how we have never used that word, “bureau,” for a piece of furniture. And I have never heard that word in the homes of my students’ families. And I thought, how crude, how cruel, how ignorant, how disrespectful of these children. What a set-up. Who would do that to kids?

 

Question 16 was . . . well, you decide. The sentence is something like “Carl approached a friendly wave as he walked onto the beach.” You guessed it. Only worse. One drawing has boys looking at what looks to me like a very friendly wave of water. Another has a boy walking toward two boys, one of whom gives a friendly hand wave. Another has two boys walking toward one boy who gives a friendly wave. Who is Carl? No one has told the student. And the last one has a boy riding a friendly-looking wave with a smile on his face. Wha . . .?

 

After the 17th “listening comprehension” question, the students went on to the rest of the 106 questions on their own. They still wanted to do well. Some, however, had already given up. Among them were the tell-take signs of anger and frustration (broken pencil; slumped back in the chair; head down on the table; making eye contact across the room with another student and laughing; calling out “this is stupid!” – and other indications of labeling themselves as “stupid”). The work to build that community of self-confident learners had been undercut.

 

But the test went on. And the next section had students doing something all teachers know does not make sense.

 

They were trying to guess among five choices the meaning of a word all by itself, out of context. This section was called “Vocabulary.” The words included such certain-to-be-missed-by-most-students words such as “whimsical,” “supple,” “guile,” “resplendent,” “broach,” and on and on.

 

By the end of the Vocabulary section these children had been through 57 of the 106 questions. They were more than half way done. But the double period was almost over. They were about to go home, having entered the classroom feeling strong and ready to learn, about to leave feeling, in their words, “stupid.” They had lost two full periods of real teaching/learning. What had they gained? Really, what?…

 

 

Like them, I left for the weekend feeling defeated. What happens when our beautiful children face this kind of situation over, and over, and over again. The phrase, “first do no harm,” consumed me. I was leaving school for the weekend on the wrong side of that admonition.

 

Isn’t it time to stop this ever-increasing testing cabal, which puts our children, and their enthusiastic and devoted teachers, into these untenable situations? Can we remain compliant when our children and our teachers are judged by performance on such abominations parading (and being paid for) as “assessments?” Is this how we want our children, and our teachers, to spend the precious hours they have together in our schools? When does this situation become untenable enough for us to stand up, together, on their behalf?

————–

This teacher asks critical questions that we should all be trying to answer. This isn’t a rhetorical exercise. Really – when do we make it stop? To her list, I add the following for consideration:

 What is the purpose of these tests? Some assessments such as the GRADE test are meant to be diagnostic tools, to help teachers figure out where students are in their learning. But if giving poorly designed tests actually interferes with students’ learning process, and takes away from actual instructional time in the classroom, are they helping or hurting overall teaching? If tests are poorly designed, are they really effective as diagnostic tools? Even if such tests are well designed, are they providing the kind of information that our teachers need to shape learning?

 Are they culturally biased? A 2002 review of the research literature concluded that the GRADE assessment is developmentally appropriate, reliable and valid. That’s reassuring, though this teacher’s personal experience would seem to challenge these findings and I would love to learn more from our educational research colleagues out there. However, that same study found that there was “no evidence” that the GRADE test was “sensitive and appropriate for differing cultures and needs.” [Collaborative Center for Literacy Development] That was in 2002, 11 years ago, and seems to be true still today. How long does Pearson need to correct the obvious cultural biases in its tests?

Are they useful for teaching and learning? Pittsburgh parent Pam Harbin started looking into the GRADE assessment last year when it was introduced into the district and discovered that students do not have the opportunity to review and learn the material they got wrong. “For too long we have taken for granted that the tests our kids are taking are for their benefit,” Pam says. “I’m really having a hard time understanding why the District is requiring so many assessments where kids don’t have a chance to learn from their mistakes. … It doesn’t make any sense to test kids in this way.” Whether it’s formal District policy or not, it appears that many schools are working under the belief that teachers are not permitted to discuss anything on the GRADE test, in particular, with students before or after giving it. On other tests, such as the PSSAs and Keystones, teachers are explicitly forbidden to see the actual test questions or provide feedback to the students.

 How has the frequency and quantity of testing increased? The GRADE test is given three different times during the year. That alone might not sound so bad, but consider that the District is now giving up to 17 different standardized tests to students each year, depending on grade level, and many of them are given more than once a year. For instance, my 7th grader will take 21 standardized tests this year. [PPS 2013-14 Assessment Calendar]

Does testing reduce learning opportunities? All of that test-taking robs students of real learning time. This teacher reports that her students lost four class periods alone taking the GRADE. Even worse, her students are about to take another round of tests, the CDT’s, which are given on computers. Because the school’s classes are too large to fit in the computer lab, and there are so many classes that need to schedule testing, the lab won’t be available for anything other than testing for quite some time. She explains, “My Social Studies students need that lab to do the research that is a part of our curriculum and can’t be locked out during this period.” She also worries about “giving this test to three of my classes, losing yet more instructional time for yet another non-curriculum-based test.”

How can testing harm students? For some students, taking a test such as GRADE is a minor annoyance. For others, it can leave them feeling “stupid,” frustrated, and ready to give up on learning. This seems particularly cruel, as this teacher points out, when this is “due in large part to the errors and problems with the test. Students do not need more of that in their lives.” Yet one reason districts might hold on to tests such as GRADE is that they can help to demonstrate “student growth” to state officials, sometimes more accurately than the PSSA results. But this is a misuse of student testing – ostensibly designed to help individual students – to evaluate schools and districts. This is yet another way in which the culture of high-stakes testing is hurting our kids.

 How can testing harm teachers? We know that some tests such as the PSSAs and Keystones have very high-stakes attached to them. [See “The VAM Sham”] But even these lower-stakes tests can harm teachers, as this teacher points out: “Giving the test makes teachers feel like they are abusing their children. We do not need more of this in our lives.”

Do we have to? The district is using grant money to pay for the GRADE test (which was a requirement of the grant) along with professional development for teachers and other worthy things. But what if we refused to accept grants with such strings attached? Imagine if we could use those dollars now going to line the pockets of the international corporate giant, Pearson to buy drumsticks for the Westinghouse Bulldogs marching band or books for the Pittsburgh Manchester K-8 library? Pennsylvania is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to develop more high-stakes tests for students, and requiring local districts to spend hundreds of millions on top of that to get their students ready to take them. [Tribune Review, 6-2-13] (And guess who makes all the test prep materials?) What if we stopped this upward spiral of testing madness and focused on what actually helps students learn?

What if? We can do it, working together. If you are interested in discussing the impact of testing on our schools, kids, and teachers, please drop us a line so we can be in touch. We will be scheduling a session soon!

Original Source

"I respect the opinions of those who disagree. I want them to know that I do hear them, and I will continue to listen and learn," Snyder added. "But we cannot ignore our 81-year history, or the strong feelings of most of our fans as well as Native Americans throughout the country. After 81 years, the team name 'Redskins' continues to hold the memories and meaning of where we came from, who we are, and who we want to be in the years to come. "We are Redskins Nation and we owe it to our fans and coaches and players, past and present, to preserve that heritage."

The United States is behind other developed countries in many key skills, according to a new report.

Life Hacks? More like Lie Hacks.

In the latest episode of Mental Floss, “30 Life Hacks Debunked,” host John Green tests out common Life Hacks to find out which ones work and which ones don’t. For instance, Green discovers that chewing gum to prevent crying while chopping an onion does actually work, but he couldn’t open a bottle of wine using only a hammer and a nail.

It used to be a mainstay of science fiction: the story where we visit a barbarian society that turns out to have been highly technologically advanced in the past. You saw this story all the time on Doctor Who and Star Trek, and in the pulps. And now, it's more or less vanished. What happened?

Read more...

After scoring the incredible scoop that was leaking the script of the movie based on it, WikiLeaks has nabbed another searing exposé, in the form of leaking founder Julian Assange’s own emails. The site has posted what is ominously described as the “first” of several such correspondences, in which Assange explains his frustrations at length to Fifth Estate star and Greenwich-area council estate Benedict Cumberbatch. (Tenants should be advised, batches of cumber are not guaranteed by housing association.) Across 10 pages of correspondence—with each sentence separated by a space, thus making it all the easier for transfer to inspirational cross-stitch—Assange articulates his dismay at the movie’s portrayal of him as a control freak egomaniac by telling the actor to quit the film, because it tarnishes his importance to millions. 

As the letter is very long and repetitive—and missing only the recounting of dying oxen and ...

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This past summer, Ian Doescher took Joseph Campbell’s heavy influence on George Lucas’ finest film and connected it back to William Shakespeare, publishing a five-act stage play adaptation of Star Wars in iambic pentameter. It’s a delightful diversion that should prove a great holiday gift for anyone who falls within that large overlap between Star Wars fan and Shakespeare obsessive. (No doubt there are a lot of college and community theater productions to come—because who doesn’t want to give a soliloquy as Darth Vader, or deliver a Hamlet-inspired monologue as Luke while musing on a Stormtrooper helmet substituted for Yorick’s skull?)

Based on the success of that first play, Quirk has announced that Doescher will finish out the original trilogy in Elizabethan verse. The Empire Striketh Back will debut next March, followed by The Jedi Doth Return in July. Both will translate their respective ...

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