With each other as validation, we began to articulate the real, dismal and frightening story of life in The O, which had as its unlikely recruiting grounds the 1970s food co-ops of the US Midwest. After a dramatic exit, I wrote the memoir Inside Out (2002). The book was an effort to understand how I,…
How does our 21st century understanding of mental health affect our understanding of Hamlet? As a teacher, I have for decades approached the play like this: If everyone in the audience agrees that Hamlet was sane or Hamlet was mad, then the production was a failure; Shakespeare’s text was ambiguous, and a good production should…
My sister the computer programmer benefitted early in her career because she was an excellent writer. She was so good at taking notes that people would invite to her important meetings so there would be a good record, and people would consult her about important topics covered during those meetings. My brother the electrical engineer…
Peter spent the day at a chess tournament — the biggest he’s participated in yet. He won three games and lost one, and won a trophy for “Under 800” — but the trophy plaque has a curious misprint. Similar:A Book Itself Is a Little Machine: Emily Short's Interactive FictionWords do some things much better than…
I already have some handouts on writing titles for web pages and writing titles for college papers. I don’t (at the moment) have a full handout on writing headlines for news stories. In this age of clickbait (“Clickbait Tactics Drive the Writing of Headlines on ABC News,” 2015), revisiting Poynter’s advice on writing traditional news…
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This is a challenging writing task. Presidential biographies are a staple of children’s book publishing, and of classrooms across the country. Nonfiction for children is a surging category, particularly in light of a Common Core mandate that schools put greater emphasis on it in their curriculum. Publishers like Penguin Young Readers, Scholastic and Time for…
All of us with Facebook accounts do work for Mark Zuckerberg. Our tagging, sharing, and liking gives Facebook valuable information that advertisers use to reach us. This article describes how Facebook has been courting news organizations, asking them to provide content tailored to Facebook’s needs. Facebook is not interested in an informed, educated public that…
My kids have never seen The Princess Bride. (This is an odd pop culture gap for my 80s-obsessed girl.) Similar:Text, Speech, Machine: Metaphors for Computer Code in the Law : Computational CultureOn my to-read list once I post midterm g…BusinessNYT: G.W. Bush is "super-overexposed" and "so far to our right" — so they omitted his…
A literary work is a powerful tool for simulating what it’s like to inhabit someone else’s life. Not just tolerating difference, or grudgingly giving “the other side” equal time; but generating real empathy for the diversity of humanity. There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a…
It’s extremely important to understand what a wide range of people are thinking about, and that includes being exposed to influential ideas that I disagree with. I’d rather not hide from an idea that has power, especially if it turns out I can do something about the issue. The headline is a little misleading… there…
NASDAQ.com throws shade via Reuters: Snapchat is popular among people under 30 who enjoy applying bunny faces and vomiting rainbows onto their selfies, but man yon Wall Street are critical of its high valuation, slowing user growth and lack of profitability. Joel Randewich, NASDAQ.com Similar:Updated Syllabus for Journalism 101By the end of the semester you…
Free speech is valuable. It’s dangerous to set the precedent that it’s okay to censor speech as long as you side with the censor and against the position being silenced. A New Jersey school district has suspended a teacher after yearbook photos of two high school students were altered to remove President Donald Trump’s name…
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Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. Best case scenario? A virtual reality game that is either based around Portal or Half-Life, or unites the franchises into one experience. Valve has invested heavily in VR and clearly values the technology as an entertainment phenomenon – the Portal demo for Vive is one of the…
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MTV recently ditched the “Best Actor/Actress” awards in favor of “Best Actor,” which suggests the gender-specific term “actress” is less popular among MTV’s target audience. I added that detail, fixed some broken links, and updated the graphic. See Writing Tips: Gender Neutral Language. Similar:When is Donald Trump kidding? When is he being sarcastic? When is…