I’ve been contacted by editors who would just love for me to publish in international relations journals (I’m trained as an American literature specialist), or write a textbook on pretty much any topic I suggest. I’ve also seen my own web pages reproduced word-for-word, except for the removal of my name, in books other people…
We caught a gent last Christmas with £400-worth of stolen books in his trousers and elsewhere. We grabbed all of the bags back, but he returned about half an hour later to reclaim a half-bottle of whisky and his dream journal, which had been at the bottom of one of the bags of stolen books.…
Similar:So glad to be attending another live theatrical production. @quantumtheatre never disappoi…Projections, live music, sounds, props, …BusinessThank you, anonymous person who left a container of Oreo minis outside my door.PersonalSnow White: The Musical Opens Fridayhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiIRCoHoN…AestheticsThe daughter is performing now Twin Lakes Park.The daughter is performing now Twin Lake…PersonalAnother visit to downtown Pittsburgh with my history-loving…
The dean sends me an email at 9:07pm. Instead of answering, I post about it on social media. Oh yeah, #partylikeaprofessor Similar:That Class Where Stanford Profs Projected Hundreds of Zoom Students on a Video WallOf course, not all institutions happen t…Academia14 questions for new journalists to consider when filing a story – PoynterIf you’re new…
Similar:White House photo access controls public imageRather than permit photojournalists to s…Culture"This Is Probably Going to Kill Us:" How First 'Star Trek' Movie Avoided DisasterThis article left out someone important!…HistoryIntimations of MortalityPlato, Montaigne, Pascal—those were the …CultureAdobe steals your colorWhat a horrible situation. The Adobe mon…AestheticsMythbusting UX design: 7 misconceptions about user experiencePerhaps the…
The Onion reminds us not to normalize Spicer’s behavior. Similar:Beauty and the Beast (St. Vincent Summer Theatre)The girl (blue skirt and pigtails), who …Current_EventsWhen the Reporter Becomes Part of the Story (Aggressive Reporter Covering Pittsburgh Zoo D…Students who are new to journalism often…AcademiaFacebook touts fight on fake news, but struggles to explain why InfoWars isn't…
The only reason Facebook is paying attention to fake news is because it wants to monetize real news. (Monetize = control.) After initially dismissing the idea that Facebook plays a role in disseminating fake news, the company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been working to remedy the problem. Facebook partnered with third-party fact-checkers such as…
Impatiently scanning store shelves while tersely repeating requests for an inventory of clothing and other items that would be taken along, local mother Susan Vernon, 51, channeled her escalating fears regarding her daughter leaving for college later this month into a fight about storage bins, sources reported Saturday. —The Onion Similar:You're Doing It for the…
The pressures on local news outlets have been building for years, driven by the twin devils of recession and the disruption caused by the shift to digital media. The impact was noted in a federal study in 2011. It concluded, “A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed,…
To master a topic, pretend you are teaching it to someone. Use simple language and analogies. If you stumble, study the topic some more, then try again. Richard Feynman was a physicist who received a nobel prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He was notorious for asking his mathematicians to explain concepts in simple…
We’re culturally programmed to admire people who stick to their principles. We want strong leaders, not wishy-washy ones. It’s funny to think of scientists marching in a rally shouting, “What do we want? Evidence-based change! When do we want it? After peer review!” This comic carefully walks through the way the brain accepts or rejects…
Catherine Palmer was already a seasoned student journalist at The Johns Hopkins News-Letter when Freddie Gray, a Baltimore native and black man, died in police custody, provoking protests across the city that swelled into what would be called the Baltimore Uprising. Even so, she was only 19 when she found herself one of the first reporters on…
I fixed the NY Mag’s clickbaity title, “This is what happens to your brain when you read poetry.” In fact the original study was about what happens when you listen to a recitation, not what happens when you read. While people “get chills” when they listen to music or watch movies, their brains seem to…
I would call this “typefacegate,” but then I am an insufferable pedant. The daughter of Pakistan’s prime minister has become subject of ridicule in her home country after forensic experts cast doubts on documents central to her defence against corruption allegations. … Documents claiming that Mariam Nawaz Sharif was only a trustee of the companies that bought…
Interesting to see how large groups of college students are using Facebook, mostly as a forum for sharing memes. About four years ago I asked students in my “News Writing” class to make memes based on AP style / copy-editing principles, but I don’t think the students particularly cared for the assignment. I dropped the…
Show is July 28 at the O’Reilly Theater. (This Spidey selfie for “super hero day” is the pic she wanted me to post.) Similar:No more braces!PersonalGo Ask AliceFrom the tangled tale of mass literacy o…BooksA gangway, flanked by still more #steampunk control panels, leads forward from the chief e…AestheticsPrincipal fires security guards to hire art…
Real or fake? At a time when the reading public daily grapples with the question of fake news, the American University Game Lab/JOLT has created an accessible, easy-to-play game that helps you sort fake news from real. The brainchild of former AU JOLT Fellow Maggie Farley and designed by AU game professor Bob Hone, Factitious is a quick game that can…
CNN is protecting the identity of the Reddit user who made the infamous GIF that depicts Trump wrestling with a man whose face has been replaced with the CNN logo — an image that Trump himself tweeted with the label “FraudNewsCNN.” Journalists are not perfect. They do make mistakes. But they also follow a code…
I’m not sure what I think of this yet. My daughter, who played Hodel in a student production last fall, has lately been expressing more interest in writing. I’ll watch for the reveiws. In the musical, and second eldest daughter, Hodel, makes the bold decision to leave her family and everything she knows to find…
It’s risky to get your news from a social media algorithm. Facebook and Twitter exist to make money for themselves, not inform the public with accurate, fair, and thorough news. Facebook is the big culprit here, and it’s admitted it needs to take steps to improve, but Twitter isn’t far behind. While the company has…