Current_Events: September 2007 Archive Page

http://ifcomp.org/comp07/download.html

This editorial from Pepperdine shows good, clear writing, unlike the four-word CSU editorial that has been in the news recently. It emphasizes the fact that the editorial does not simply contain a vulgar charge aimed at the president, but that...

When students at Colorado State University in Front Collins opened the Sept. 24 issue of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, their student newspaper, an oversized and attention-grabbing headline shouted at them:

"Taser this ... F*** BUSH."

In the space where a 600-word editorial should be, this ambiguous (and asterisk-less) phrase was printed instead. It was recklessly displayed with no accompanying story, no explanation of the editorial board's intentions and no rationale for the gratuitous display of profanity.

The editor's statements about wanting to support free speech would hold more weight if some of those arguments had been included in the 596-word lacuna.

I haven't looked into the charter for the CSU student paper, but if someone does have the authority to fire the editor, then he or she should seriously consider it. I would seriously question the journalistic integrity of an editor who not only passes off a four-word bumper sticker as an editorial, but who also manages to make it look like the editorial is somehow blaming Bush for the tasering incident. (If Bush were somehow exercising his diabolical influence on that security officer, wouldn't he have gotten the guy to taser Kerry?)  So this is either a Michael Moore-style implication that two different facts are related just because they are true (a kid got tasered and lots of people hate Bush), or the author does not have the basic compositional skills necessary to notice the seriousness of such a logical fallacy.

More likely, those responsible for the editorial were just, well, irresponsible.

Those were an expensive four words, in terms of advertising money lost, credibility damage to the paper, and to the editor's future career plans.

NYT: a student helps a security guard tackle a student carrying a rifle:

The scene at the university yesterday underlined how campus security has been rethought in this country since April, when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. Instead of fleeing out of classrooms and onto the street, students at St. John's were instructed, via text message to their cellphones, to stay where they were.

The messages went out so rapidly that Mr. Benson, a 21-year-old criminal justice major and police cadet, who held Mr. Hiraman against the wall, said he felt his cellphone vibrate with the information while he was restraining the gunman.

Fantastic little detail really helps give this "happy-ending" story some punch.

Full transcript, the very end of which is Columbia's Bollinger having the last word:

I'm sorry that President Ahmadinejad's schedule makes it necessary for him to leave before he's been able to answer many of the questions that we have or even answer some of the ones that we posed to him. (Laughter, applause.) But I think we can all be pleased that his appearance here demonstrates Columbia's deep commitment to free expression and debate. I want to thank you all for coming to participate. (Applause.) Thank you.

I understand that by inviting the leader of Iraq to speak in a public forum, Columbia's Bollinger risked fallout that could have affected his career. I was not surprised that he began with a speech that put Ahmadinejad on the defensive. And I was not surprised that Ahmadinejad twisted and dodged so much.

I am hardly an expert on linguistics, but I used to teach a freshman engineering writing course when I was in Toronto as a grad student,and from time to time, I had to teach students who had gone to high school in another language how to write college English. I remember learning that one way to translate the concept "learn" into Chinese is the concept "copy," so when I saw Mandarin speakers (many of whom were second-generation immigrants to Canada) struggling until I gave them the model, and then respectfully reproducing my work and expecting to be praised, I had to ask someone if there was a different word for Chinese "watch all the little components of what I do, so that you can improvise and do different things  as circumstances require". Oddly enough, when the students wrote their first personal paragraphs, they often wouldn't actually state the main point -- they thought it would be an insult to the reader's intelligence for a memo to spell out exactly what the client should do. (I told those students, if you don't insult your North American clients that way, you'll lose their business."  ("North America" is friendly Canadian slang referring to "Canada and that country south of us".)

Ahmadinejad's speech reminds me of so many different freshman papers I got from students with a Middle Eastern background. I don't want to start making generalizations, because I never really made a serious academic study of this (there is a whole field of English as a Second Language acquisition, so I'm sure this is nothing new), but the facial expressions that Ahmadinejad gave, the way he cheerfully evaded answers, even the way he responded (after behind reminded) to a the question of gender discrimination by saying "But as for women, maybe you think that being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman." On the surface, coming right after his insistence that at there are no homosexuals in Iran, he looked intolerant and ridiculous -- how could he possibly think that the question accused him of thinking that being a woman is a crime? (Of course, he backed up his statement by giving only examples of traditional female roles, though elsewhere he did emphasize the role of women in science and government.)

I've been scanning the online coverage of the MIT student who caused a bomb scare when she walked into an airport wearing a blinking circuit board on her sweatshirt.

I'm dismayed by the number of headlines that unquestioningly repeat the authorities' line that she was wearing a "fake bomb."  Several headlines at least put the term in quotation marks, and a good number of them describe the device more neutrally (as a circuit board) or they avoid mentioning the object at all (with a headline that emphasizes that an MIT student caused a bomb scare, but leaving the cause of the scare for the body of the article).

The LA Times pulls no punches in this column on the aftermath of Dan Rather's pathetic defense of a slipshod story alleging Bush weaseled his way out of his military duties.

Now, if you once had thought of yourself as situated at the heart of the journalistic universe for nearly half a century, and suddenly found yourself 75 and toiling for an obscure cable operation that seemed to generate more press releases than viewers, it probably would be much more satisfying to see yourself as the victim of an intricate, high-level conspiracy than as someone undone by the kind of personal screw-up that would make a first-year reporter blush.

The problem is that there's more than one guy's injured vanity at play here. In fact, the adjectives that come to mind as you assess the substance of what Rather now has done are wanton, reckless and irresponsible. Let's put aside the fact that Rather has no evidence that the network's owners were anything but understandably embarrassed and angry at having their single most recognizable journalist air something as incompetently put together as the "60 Minutes" segment in question. Let's ignore any questions over why Thornburg and Boccardi -- two men with unimpeachable reputations in their respective fields -- would join a conspiracy to "get Dan Rather."

Wired's Threat Level:

Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.

Words fail me. The LA Times is among many sources reporting that...

Longtime CBS anchor Dan Rather filed a $70-million lawsuit today against his former employer, alleging that executives at the broadcast network broke the terms of his contract by marginalizing him in his final days at CBS News and forcing him to retire early.

In Texas, spiders have learned to cooperate. And I, for one, salute our new arachnid overlords.

But Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Texas spiders were back at it, working to rebuild an immense spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park that at one time stretched about 200 yards, covering bushes and trees to create a creepy canopy. Researchers say they now believe thousands of spiders from different species worked together to make one huge web -- much different from the traditional individual webs that would normally be woven. Together, they've built and rebuilt a web that has caught countless bugs and the attention of people nationwide. "These spiders seem to be working together to build it back," said Zach Lewis, an office clerk at the park. "It's really something to see.

Metro.co.uk

A trio of vandals are facing trouble after posting a video of themselves smashing up a Lotus Elise on the internet. The three filmed themselves leaping and jumping on the bonnet and roof of the £20,000 sports car, parked in Marylebone, Central London. After originally posting the video on their MySpace pages, the group quickly withdrew it after learning of a witchhunt by angry internet Lotus fans.