Ethics: September 2005 Archive Page

--'NY Times' Retracts John Roberts Memo Story  (Editor & Publisher)

So the paper publishes false information, in a story about a memo critiquing a court case involving a newspaper that published false information. The court case ruled that a newspaper could only be found libelous if the paper published the false information with actual malice. The New York Times said that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts authored the memo, which criticized the ruling. But now the Times has retracted the authorship claim.

That's a lot of dots. Connect them and they spell "irony."

Newspapers make mistakes all the time. Kudos to the NYT for publishing its retraction in appoximately the same location as the orignial mistake (rather than leaving it buried in a back page). And to all the editors of the world who are struggling to put all this stuff in order, without reducing it to the point where it looks like a conspiracy.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. --Lorem Ipsum

I was preparing a new handout, where I want to use colored text in order to demonstrate several possible ways to organize an essay. I don't want the students to get focused on the particulars of the text, so I reached for this filler, which has been used by printers for hundreds of years.

Translation (according to this site): "On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains."

Hmm. My Latin's a bit rusty, but I don't see exactly where the words match up. Ah, well.

Gotta get some lorem ipsum?

Check out the lorem ipsm generator.

Political Cartoon Prompts Racist Accusations against Student Paper (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Exhibit A: Political cartoon, edited. Funny?
Exhibit B: Political cartoon, original version. Funny?
Exhibit C: Editorial.
Exhibit D: The controversy, in context.
Exhibit E: Debate, in situ.
Exhibit F: Your thoughts?

An infant born last month to a severely brain-damaged woman has died after emergency surgery to repair a perforated intestine, the family said Monday. --Matthew Barakat --Baby Born to Brain-Dead Va. Woman Dies (AP|MyWay)

Very sad.

Two secretaries at one of Sydney's top law firms have been sacked after a catty email exchange that was circulated around the city's legal and financial district. --Secretaries sacked after cyber brawl (News.com.au)

Think before you push "send". Think before you blog. Think before you write. Think before you talk.

Different technologies, same lesson.

Talk to teachers, review messages posted on e-mail groups and browse professional journals, and you'll find high school assignments that are long on fun and remarkably short on actual writing.

For example, someone who teaches an honors class for high school freshmen posts a short-story project that allows students 13 options, only a handful of which involve actual writing. Among the choices students are offered: create a map to illustrate the story's setting, make a game to show the story's theme, put together a collage from magazine photographs, or assemble a scrapbook or photograph album for the character.

Teaching Arthurian literature? Have your students design a coat of arms. Need an alternative to a book report? Have students draw the design for a book jacket.

While such activities may be more entertaining for students, and less work for the teachers in terms of grading the projects, kids are often showing up at college unable to write. --Donna Harrington-Lueker --'Crayola curriculum' takes over (USA Today)

This essay is from 2002. I tracked it down from a comment on JoanneJacobs.com.

In one of my classes, when I teach Margaret Edson's play Wit, I read from a copy of The Runaway Bunny, a children's book which is mentioned in the play. It's the last week of the class, and many of the students are just starting to get the hang of studying literature at the college level; so they seem happy and nostalgic for a time when teachers did most of the work for them. But I don't do this in place of asking them to do serious work. And since many of our English majors are double-majoring in education, it helps us talk about the playwright's full-time job as a kindergarten teacher, and the play's implicit anti-intellectualism.

Of course, high school teachers simply don't have the time to get students to write and revise college-length papers. So naturally, I don't expect all college freshmen to arrive on campus already competent in college-level work. But I'd really prefer that more arrive on campus ready to do such things as read and follow assignment instructions, and read a syllabus on their own.

Best response to this whole thing, from a commenter: "I'm so angry at this crap I feel like making a poster."

The Riverwalk may be on fire (shopping mall at the river at end of CBD/Quarter). Everytime we talk to the police, we hear about sniper fire at the fire scenes. I cannot confirm that there is any. This is all hearsay, but it's coming from the police. The police we talk to, while consistent about claiming there is sniper fire, are conflicted about whether it's police sniper fire trying to take out arsonists or criminal sniper fire trying to take out police and fire rescue teams. Again, this is rumor for now, but we're hearing a lot of this rumor.

Now this is something that requires tact, and I do not have much experience with reporting, but I think the world needs to know how overwhelmed the police are out here: I have reports from 3 different police sources that 2 police officers have committed suicide. Out of respect for their families, I will not name them or go into detail. Truly tragic how bad things are. I sincerely hope I did the right thing in reporting this. --interdictor --News [NOLA Aftermath Blogger] (Interdictor)

Why every citizen should take a journalism course. You never know when suddenly you'll have an eyewitness view on events that will be debated by politicians and historians and what-have-yous for years. Via PhDaisy.

As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.

If that's bad news, I'm sorry. But would it really be better if no one bothered to mention it? --"Ivan Tribble" --They Shoot Messengers, Don't They? (Chronicle)

Tribble responds to the outcry against a column in which he warned academic bloggers that the search committees on which he has served have all considered blogging to be a negative in the hiring process.

Tribble commends Matt Kirschenbaum for inviting bloggers to assemble evidence for a rebuttal.