From Daisy Dunn’s review of Puchner’s The Written World: Socrates envisaged a time when we would forget how to remember. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Indian epic Ramayanahad been preserved through an oral tradition that seemed destined to perish through overreliance on papyrus. Akhmatova remembered because she had to but Socrates simply chose to. He…
I recently came across a box of old writing, including a binder where I had saved some undergraduate papers. When returning a Beowulf paper for a Brit Lit survey, my instructor had stapled a page of hand-written notes that began, “You come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here, much closer than…
Isn’t the news pointless and boring? Haven’t powerful people who have no personal stake in the matter and obviously have nothing whatsoever to hide called the lying fake mainstream news media the enemy of the American people?Why would anyone want to study journalism? Oh, wait… Former sports doctor Larry Nassar likely still would be sexually…
In English grammar, we use the definite article in front of a noun when we believe the listener knows exactly what we are referring to. Further, use of the word “the” suggests singular, as in The Pope. When you meet The Pope, then you’ve met The Pope. When you meet “the elderly” you’ve really only…
Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists. We are sharing a famous prayer that #PopeFrancis has adapted: a prayer to fight #fakenews. If you know a journalist, give them some love today, and feel free to share this prayer. (CNS illustration/Joanna Korhorst) —Catholic News Service Similar:Choice of the Journo: A Branching-path Phone-friendly…
A multimodal news package simply means “using more than one mode,” typically the written word + some other medium. Exactly what goes into a multimodal news package is negotiable. Editors and journalism instructors will each have their own expectations.
Students who are new to college literature classes often value literary biography very highly, expecting that one of their tasks is to spot one-to-one relationships between the literary texts and the personal lives of the authors. For instance, from the two Sylvia Plath poems that use Nazi imagery to describe troubled relationships with paternal figures,…
Similar:Nature walks 2012 and 2018.AestheticsMore 18th Century fun @fortligonierMore 18th Century fun @fortligonierPersonalOn the spiral staircase that leads from the top deck down to the officers' pub and wa…AestheticsOur family has seen David Whalen in the persona of Sherlock in five or six different shows…Our family has seen David Whalen in the …CultureTo my…
A student in my “American Literature: 1915-Present” class used the medium of a 2D graphic adventure game to deliver her multimodal final project. (Students also wrote a traditional term paper.) You are the cameraman of a new TV show based on Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.” But things quickly go downhill when a…
Reagan recognized that as leader of the free world, his words carried enormous weight, and he used them to inspire the unprecedented spread of democracy around the world. | President Trump does not seem to understand that his rhetoric and actions reverberate in the same way. He has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit…
A mechanism description analyzes (that is, subdivides into components for further scrutiny) an object in space. When you try to organize your major subsections, if no other obvious pattern seems appropriate, you can always fall back on the more-important-to-less-important strategy. Don’t sell the object. A technical writer is not required to persuade the reader that the object is wonderful,…
Don’t spend three pages establishing that some people burn to death, some people freeze to death, and some people drown. Start by saying what we need to do now that the iceberg we are stranded on has caught fire. Similar:Opinion: Don’t Be Fooled by America’s Flattening CurveAnother example of effective new media d…Current_EventsClassroom collaboration…
The car shop wanted to charge over $300. I found the part online for under $40. With the help of a YouTube video, the job took about 45 minutes. (Much of that time I spent wandering around my house looking for tools. Grateful that my father-in-law gave me a ratchet set as a wedding present.)…
Similar:The chief engineer does not know where the floating lamps are coming from, but he looks gr…AestheticsThe boy is visiting the Prohibition exhibit @HistoryCenter while I continue at NeMLA.PersonalOverheard: "This is the best show I've ever seen at the Geyer" and "Who IS that girl playi…Gasps from the audience, shouts of “No!”…CultureSeriously, clouds? Now?PersonalThe…
That’s a prop knife in my right hand. Similar:A study in breaking news headlines.For the UK Guardian, the news is the wor…CultureAnother visit to downtown Pittsburgh with my history-loving son.CultureViral App FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People's Faces And NamesViral app FaceApp has been giving people…Business"Oliver Twist" is a story of…
I have no reason to trust Facebook to filter my news for me. However, so many people get their news by social media, maybe this will be an easy way for people to check whether a viral meme is a hoax. Maybe an option marked “Look up vetted news reports related to this post.” Yes,…
In general, I avoid clicking on any headline with the weasel words “can” or “might.” However, I did enjoy this reflection on the positive impact of literary reading. I’m teaching a compressed online literature course, so that involves re-reading the literary works I assigned, as well as engaging with what my students write about those…
Similar:When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a MoraySomewhere today a headline writer is wea…AwesomeI am slightly ahead of the boy. Rare.PersonalDan Rather reflects critically on the so-called "Heroic Age" of TV newsCBS’s Dan Rather infamously dismissed bl…CultureChatGPT Can Be Broken by Entering These Strange Words, And Nobody Is…
Similar:Monsters are People Too Study used D & D characters to…AcademiaAngel One (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 13) Sexist Amazon chief flips Riker leitmotif, t…Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…AmusingYes, this is my 11yo daughter yodeling on stage.http://youtu.be/reyclH7zuHIAmusingJury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentAfter the haircut. The girl seems to like it.PersonalStarship Down…
Similar:Breakfast Battle from "The Miracle Worker" (Pamela Lee as Annie Sullivan and Carolyn Jerz …Update: Here’s a clip of the whole break…CultureNational Headline Contest 2011Great headlines from winner David Bowman…AestheticsKinetic Theatre's "Hound of the Baskervilles" was hilarious. Kinetic Theatre’s production was ful…BooksIn Pittsburgh, science gets playfulImagine: sharing a secret with a friend …AestheticsLooking forward in the…