The way we teach it at Seton Hill, as a process that leads to a researched term paper, I think it’s safe to add freshman comp to the good list. We continue to operate on the basis that knowledge is stored in repositories, usually a book or an teacher. This dependence on textbooks has distorted…
The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. […] Our call is to promote interdisciplinary research to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed. Failures of the U.S. news media in…
Hat tip to my former student Kiley Fischer, who brought this story to my attention saying “Good example of ‘do NOT remove things from photos.’” Longtime City Paper reader Edward King-Smith, 37, of Pittsburgh’s Stanton Heights neighborhood was among those who alerted Deitch that his publication included a photo of a woman tattoo artist wearing…
You Are the Media You Eat Similar:Police Department, Fire Department Tell Different Versions of Same Richmond IncidentA Richmond police official and a fire of…Current_EventsUPDATE: BREAKING: 'Star Wars' Returns — 'Episode 7' Slated For 2015 And More Movies Plann…The moment in Attack of the Clones when …BusinessThank you, male ballet dancers everywhere, for making moments like…
Farhad Manjoo says he’s a better, more-informed person thanks to his decision to try getting his news only from print sources. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.…
I try to go to Planet Fitness or chess with my son each day. Did not get to either yesterday. Similar:Arsenic and Old Lace. I haven't seen this show since I played the lead as a high school ju…CultureSon took out trash w/o being asked; daughter wore papercraft tophat to grocery store. Life…I took my…
I’ve chauffeured the girl into Pittsburgh for the first rehearsal for PICT’s Jane Eyre. She’ll be playing Leah (Mr. Rochester’s servant at Thornfield Hall), Barbara (a different servant at Lowood school), Georgiana (one of Jane’s girlhood tormentors in the Reed household), and “Girl 1″ (maybe one of the adult Jane’s pupils, or perhaps a classmate…
I enjoyed watching this chess-themed coming-of-age, based-on-a-true-story movie with my son today. Good storytelling and cinematography. I liked the bit during the closing credits when we saw the real people alongside the actors who portrayed them. Similar:Snape is not amused at this year's Hogwarts Feast.PersonalCarnegie Science Center: Roboworld (and a bit of SportsWorks)Here’s a brief…
My office door feels more complete now. Similar:A #neovictorian #steampunk ship-of-the-line needs a dramatic flag and a conveniently locat…AestheticsClose Reading: Introduction to a College English SkillI’ve been meaning to create a screencast…AcademiaFrozen opens tonight. (All shows have been sold out for over a month.)DramaGoogle’s healthcare AI made up a body part — what happens when…
Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.” The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan…
A few weeks ago, I had students in my upper-level media class collaborate on a Google Docs study guide for The Name of the Rose. In my freshman writing class yesterday, I did something else with Google Docs… I created a page with three columns, and asked students to type their preliminary thesis statements on…
Today was the last day of the manuscript unit in my “History and Future of the Book” course. I wish I had come across this article a little sooner! “As calligraphers, we feel like we’re playing an integral role. The invitation sets the stage for the whole event. Calligraphers are helping, simply, to set the…
I ran into this problem several times in the last set of student papers, so it’s time for another illustration. When you’re talking about making a change, you mean the verb “affect,” and when you’re talking about something that results from a cause, you mean the noun “effect.” It’s rare to encounter “effect” as a…
I needed this prayer yesterday. I checked the source today. Quote Investigator The frequent ascription to Mother Teresa stems from the misreading of a book about the famous Catholic charity worker called “A Simple Path” that was compiled by Lucinda Vardey and released in 1995. The page preceding the appendices was titled “ANYWAY”, and it…
When I was in middle school, I developed a permanent red bump on my right middle finger, usually stained with the blue ink from a PaperMate erasable pen. Though I shifted to typing when I was in high school, I still wrote with a pen enough to turn that bump into a permanent feature on…
Another fun show! Great job, cast and crew. Similar:One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Internet MemesWhen we envisioned a journal of visual c…AcademiaAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. Trying to add a subtle pattern to the light-…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsThe Horror… The Horror! How Music…
I’ve given an in-class presentation on “The Shape of an Academic Paper” enough times that I’m ready to turn it into a stand-alone web page, which I’ll ask my students to read for homework, in order to save more class time for writing workshops. Musical friends, I’d welcome your feedback on point #5, “Think of…
I don’t particularly miss the splash landing pages, rotating animated logos, and “click here” web design of the 1990s. But one of the great things about it was that people experimented, sometimes doing crazy things. Rob LoCascio, who in 1995 “came up with the technology for those chat windows that pop up on websites,” notes…
Thanks(?) to social media, it’s very easy for us to learn, in a personal context, all about bad things happening far away from us. And the impressions left by people grieving and pointing fingers at each other leaves a toll. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always…
When I’m looking for a picture I’m going to use in an academic project, I typically search Creative Commons; however, Google’s image search is quite useful. The interface is changing to make it easier to view a picture in context (and a little harder to download an image without visiting the source page). The the…