The Skin of Our Teeth Panel Discussion (Seton Hill University, October 2021; Carolyn Jerz, moderator)
Media Bias Chart 8.0 (Liberal / Moderate / Conservative on the X axis; Factual / Opinion / Misinformation on the Y axis)
Don’t reject a news source just because it slants against your own slant, and don’t accept a news source just because it slants the same way you do. If you find a news source where you agree with all the content all the time, that doesn’t mean the source is 100% reliable. It just 100% shares your bias.
Missouri governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website • Missouri Independent
I’m shocked… shocked that a reporter published a newsworthy story about a rookie cyber-blunder made by a powerful government agency. A reporter viewed the HTML code (a one-click process on many web browsers) and noticed that the social security numbers of school teachers and administrators were embedded in web pages served up by Missouri’s department of education. The reporter contacted the agency, and held the story until the problem was…
Shatner’s live, extemporaneous post-touchdown monologue on mortality was better than Kirk’s death scene
After returning to Earth in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin private spacecraft, Shatner is delivering an extemporaneous monologue about viewing Mother Earth and reflecting on death. “I hope I never recover from this,” he says, of the emotions he experienced. Much better than Kirk’s death scene in Star Trek: Generations. Someone (I was listening, not watching… I think it was Bezos) says “Beautiful,” and Shatner thinks he’s commenting about the view…
If I don’t design the sign for the pub on my #steampunk space cruiser, who will? #priorities
Time in AP Style: The exact time is rarely important.
Journalism > AP Style If you need to use the exact time in a news story, AP has a specific way to do it. However, according to the AP Stylebook, the exact time of an event is rarely important in a news story. How you use the time in an AP Style story. 8 a.m. (not 8am, eight in the morning, 8 o’clock, 8AM, or 8:00 a.m.) 10:25 p.m. (not…
Cause and Effect (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 18) time loop. Ka-boom. The Enterprise is trapped in a
Rewatching ST:TNG A smart, character-driven story that follows the crew of the Enterprise-D through a short time loop (about a year before Bill Murray did something similar in “Groundhog Day”). After a chaotic teaser that ends with the Enterprise-D blowing to smithereens, we get a routine Captain’s Log, a relaxed poker game where Crusher impressively calls Riker’s bluff, a dizzy LaForge visiting sickbay, a humming Crusher hearing odd voices at…
The Outcast (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 17) Genderless civilization oppresses deviance
Rewatching ST:TNG Members of a genderless civilization (portrayed by female actors with bowl haircuts and dour expressions) seek help from the Federation after one of their shuttles disappears in a Space Thing. The fact that Picard’s opening log goes out of its way to identify the J’Naii as “an adrogynous race” is a pretty obvious cue that this episode isn’t about the random space thing, it’s all about gender. After…
COVID denial: ‘You are welcome to leave, but you will be dead before you get to your car’
“If you’ve got a gunshot wound or stab wound, or you’re having a heart attack, you want to see me in the emergency department,” Coffman says. “But as soon as we start talking about a vaccine, all of a sudden I’ve lost all credibility.”
The sped-up culture that delivers that novel to your doorstep overnight is the same culture that deprives you of the time to read it.
This ambiguity—fiction as virtue and vice—sheds light on a larger truth about all the components of Amazon’s administration of literary life just enumerated: as state of the art as they may be, they are to some degree self-contradictory, or at least conflicted. For instance, if what fiction most essentially is for us is a volume of commodified time, one of the most notorious facts of contemporary literary life is that…
Trying to Tame Huck Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most frequently banned books in America. I regularly teach it in my American Lit class. I never use “the n-word” in lectures, and I remind my (mostly white) students of the power of the word, but the version of the text I assign doesn’t edit that word out. I also have students listen to an audio interpretation of Pap’s tirade, in order…
MisSpelled: Premiering Oct 1
In this podcast series, I voice a mage whose thirst for power leads him down surprising paths. A fully voiced fantasy/comedy audio series, with original music and sound effects. From WAOB Audio Theatre. We recorded much of this before the pandemic, and I have only heard a rough cut of the first scene. (I created the poster in Blender3D.)
Ethics (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 16) Leaky cargo barrel-1, Worf-0.
Rewatching ST:TNG Worf is paralyzed in a freak cargo bay accident. When visiting neurospecialist Dr. Russell suggests an experimental “genetronic replication” therapy, Dr. Crusher fears the risk is too great. A very composed Worf deals with his injury by asking Riker to assist him in a suicide ritual. Worf’s young son Alexander doesn’t share his father’s Klingon values, and Troi tries to mediate. With help from Picard, Riker must weigh…
In journalism, the speech is more important than any speaker. (Put newsworthy quotes first. The name of the speaker can wait.)
‘Babylon 5’ Reboot in Development at The CW From Original Series Creator J. Michael Straczynski
The Variety story breaking this news doesn’t cite a source, and gives no further news beyond what I’ve quoted here. The rest of the article is padded with details about the 1990s franchise. B5 was ground-breaking in many ways, including telling season-long arcs within a coherent, over-arching series-long story, at a time when most TV was purely episodic. The series also pioneered the use of 3D computer graphics instead of…
“Your resume is not about you:” Insights from a journalism hiring manager on how to succeed in applying for internships and jobs
Your resume is not about you. It’s about ME, the hiring manager. If I move your resume through the stack, I am attaching my reputation to yours. I am being judged in large part by my hires. Don’t ever forget that. When I am looking at a resume, cover letter and portfolio, I am not looking at what you’ve done. Frankly, I don’t care. What I care about is how…
Appreciating the production values and so-stupid-it-might-be-brilliant comedy in Avatar: The Last Airbender
The daughter is showing my wife and me “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” It’s not easy to find a time when we can all sit down together, but we’re managing to watch one a week. (Today we watched two. Not exactly binge-watching, I know.) I’m not particularly a fan of the weird blend of American comics and Japanimation, but I do like the charming hand-drawn feel. I find myself getting a…
“We hate math,” says 4 in 10 – a majority of Americans
If 30% love math, and 30% are neutral about math, then the 40% that hate it could be the largest group, hence the majority. If so, then the headline might actually be brilliant. EDIT: Or not. A “majority” means “more than half.” The word I was thinking of is “plurality.” For the record, editors often write their own headlines to fit the available space, or to generate more traffic. Here’s…
That time three-year-old me spotted a Mary Cassatt painting at the Art Institute of Chicago
My mother had a framed print of Mary Cassatt’s “The Child’s Bath” in our home. When I was about three, she took the family to a Cassatt exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. As she pushed my stroller through the museum, I suddenly perked up and started shouting, “Mary Cassatt! Mary Cassatt!” I had spotted the original picture hanging on the wall. I probably thought Mary Cassatt was the…
Blinking Tube Sci-Fi Prop Compilation
This compilation is a work of beauty. I’ve been aware of this prop since the early 80s, but I didn’t realize it was in the Incredible Hulk and Buck Roger TV shows from the late 70s.