J2 Content – Perspectives

A varied collection of thoughts on education and parenting

Harry Who?

Wait a minute. This Harry Potter movie is going to be the last one? Why didn’t somebody say anything? I need to hurry and make plans to NOT go see this movie just like I did the other Harry Potter films. While I’m at it, I should find some time in my schedule to NOT…. read more

Pop Culture Required Reading

Last week, I took my kids to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins (they liked it).  During the previews, we saw this trailer… My kids laughed and became excited for the new Chipmunks movie, but I had to wonder – did the studio really expect fans of the Chipmunks to be familiar with Titanic? It turns out…. read more

A Father’s Day Gift – The Green Lantern

In July 1983, at the age of 12, I bought my first comic book: Green Lantern #166. It was a great introduction to comics for me. Earth’s Green Lantern was summoned to combat three renegade lanterns: equal vs. equal. The same year, Flash vs. Reverse Flash and Batman vs. Manbat were going on in other…. read more

Is Our Childhood Coming Back to Haunt Us?

The other night, I was at the movies with my girlfriend and she stopped to peruse a poster for the new Smurfs movie. She expressed concern that the Smurfs were drawn to look fuzzy, as if they were covered by  short blue fur. I said to her, “That’s what concerns you? Not the fact that…. read more

Anakin is not the Hero of Star Wars!

On any list of the top movie villans of all time, Darth Vader routinely places among the top 5. For example, Vader  is #3 in AFI’s top 50 villians, #1 in the Sunday Times’ top 50, and #2 at listverse.com. According to many sources, Darth Vader was conceived by George Lucas “as the epitomy of…. read more

Math Movie Pictograms

This image is one of three quizzes asking you to figure out movie titles expressed as math pictograms among the comics at spikedmath.com. The other quizzes can be accessed by clicking these links: Quiz 2 Quiz 3. If you aren’t already familiar with the site, Spikedmath.com hosts regularly updated math themed comics and is well…. read more

A Most unScientific Study: R-rated Movies

An informal survey of 5 parents revealed that at least 4 of the 5 had allowed a child under the age of 13 to watch an R-rated movie on cable or DVD (the fifth parent could not recall whether any of the films their child watched before age 13 had been rated “R”). We found…. read more

A Most unScientific Study: Substitute Teacher Movie Days

We conducted an informal survey of 3 children in Grades 1 and 2 from two different school districts. All three of them reported watching a movie in school the last time they had a substitute teacher in class. Further investigation revealed some distressing data, even when taken with a grain of salt in that these…. read more

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