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The Transformation of American Journalism Is Unavoidable

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There will always be a public appetite for reporting on baseball, movie stars, gardening and cooking, but it’s of no great moment for the country if all of that work were taken over by amateurs or done by machine. What is of great moment is reporting on important and true stories that can change society. [...]

Business | Culture | Media | PopCult | Rhetoric

At The Movies, The Women Are Gone

In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself [...]

Aesthetics | Culture | Design | Modding | PopCult | Rhetoric

Lego faces are getting angrier, study finds

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The headline is hype. How about “Lego faces are getting more diverse?” That would be just as true, and less misleading. Many of the recent sets come with heads that you can rotate — a happy face on one side, a scared or angry face on the other side. So it’s also true that Lego [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Media | Rhetoric | Social_Software | Technology | Weblogs

Positive Feedback on a Blogging Assignment

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A former student who is now excelling in grad school took a moment to share her thoughts about my blogging portfolio assignment, which is usually 25-40% of a student’s grade.

In April, a different former student who had blogged for me in several classes, whom I invited as a career workshop guest, surprised me [...]

Essays | History | Humanities | Rhetoric | Writing

The Essayification of Everything

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The word Michel de Montaigne chose to describe his prose ruminations published in 1580 was “Essais,” which, at the time, meant merely “Attempts,” as no such genre had yet been codified. This etymology is significant, as it points toward the experimental nature of essayistic writing: it involves the nuanced process of trying something out. Later [...]

Academia | Culture | Design | Education | History | Humanities | Literature | Philosophy | Rhetoric

Ave atque vale

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What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero’s artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Media | Rhetoric | Social_Software

It’s Not What You Say; It’s What Google Says

“More people will learn about your institution from Wikipedia than from your own site,” the panelist said. “And in a crisis, more people will learn about what happened from Facebook and Twitter than from your own press releases.” That was a sobering assessment to many of us in the room. –It's Not What You Say; [...]

Culture | Philosophy | Rhetoric

Does Math Exist?

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Millions of high-school students might wish math did not exist, but, alas, it does, at least as a human creation. The question, however, of whether math exists independent of humans is a much deeper one, and PBS’s Mike Rugnetta gives a fun, brief overview of the age-old philosophical debate in the video above.

via [...]

Culture | History | Rhetoric | Writing

The Speech Eisenhower Never Gave On The Normandy Invasion

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A fascinating text from an alternate history.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” Eisenhower wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery [...]

Academia | Culture | Ethics | Games | Journalism | Media | Rhetoric

One Author Breaks Down the Reality of Violent Games in the Media

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Chris Person posts a link to this very clear critique of news reporting that blames violent video games and movies for real-world violence.

One Author Breaks Down the Reality of Violent Games in the Media.