Similar:Safety is a good thing.PersonalAmong today’s major professional accomplishments: installing this hook. #springbreakMy office door feels more complete now. …AcademiaUsing a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media HistoryWorking on the syllabus for my “Media an…CultureLooking forward to what looks like an exciting evening of dance.PersonalThe Cosmic Brownie fairy has visited my office. Is “brownie fairy” redundant?…
When my son was about five, I sat him on my lap and let him explore the world of Riven (the sequel to the point-and-click adventure Myst). I remember feeling his back muscles tense up when he approached a cave and the music got creepy. “Can I go in?” he asked. I told him he…
I prefer reading and listening to the news rather than watching it, but I’m glad to know that some TV news is focusing on depth. While cable news and online reporters struggle to report on Kellyanne Conway’s most recent TV appearance or fact-check the latest Sean Spicer press conference, Oliver and his team of four…
When I initially wrote this introduction to hypertext essays in 2000, my assumption was that readers would be experienced writers who already knew what an essay was, so that I could use that knowledge to differentiate between an ordinary essay and a hypertext essay. By 2017, we are teaching “multimodal composition” in our freshman writing classes.…
While our daughter is performing in Stage Right’s Pippin across town at the Greensburg Garden & Civic Center Friday, my wife and I will be portraying characters in works of art as part of a “SweetArt Dance” at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. I’m digging out my pirate eyepatch and learning about glass-blowing for…
As my father [Neil Postman] pointed out, a written sentence has a level of verifiability to it: it is true or not true – or, at the very least, we can have a meaningful discussion over its truth. (This was pre-truthiness, pre-“alternative facts”.) But an image? One never says a picture is true or false.…
The difference between PR and journalism is that journalists aren’t doing their jobs unless they tick somebody off by reporting news that at least some of the people involved wish had never been reported. Facts matter. I have no doubt [Trump] truly believes the only reason people have criticized his executive order imposing a travel…
The easily-disproved surface-level claim, that the media have not “adequately” reported on terror, is nerd-baiting. What’s more important to the White House seems to be that the public fear imminent and ongoing attacks by Muslims, and now journalists around the world are reminding the public that they covered all these incidents (including minor ones, such…
Make that dime-a-dozen business degree more marketable. Study the humanities or the arts, too! Learn how to develop critical thinking, self-reflection, compassion and wisdom that will help you decide what to count or measure or build, and why. And, hey, artsy people! Take a statistics or grant-writing or computer programming class. The world needs more balanced…
So this “Muslim ban” thing… is a ban or not? Does it even have to do with Muslims or not? In the Washington Post, scholar Tom Nichols writes: Trump promised a Muslim ban during the campaign. But the executive order now running into multiple challenges is not actually a Muslim ban: It affects the citizens,…
Now all the powerful visual rhetoric of a staged Oval Office photo opp is yours to deploy as you choose. Create your own Trump executive order!
Clearly the pesky reporters whom the powerful keep insulting and belittling in oder to diminish their impact aren’t doing their pesky insulted belittled and diminished jobs. Isn’t there celebrity cleavage to report on? Because that cleavage won’t cover itself! President Trump’s eldest daughter said she’d give up management of her businesses. We checked. … “I will…
A gifted graphic design major in my World Drama class loved a passage in The Importance of Being Earnest so much she blogged it as a six-panel comic. Similar:State officials: Bushy Run staff must consult with Native groups before staging reenactmen…When my kids were younger, trips to Busy…CultureNon-Euclidean Doom, where the value of pi is…
The techniques that are unfolding are hard to manage and combat. Some of them look like harassment, prompting people to self-censor out of fear. Others look like “fake news”, highlighting the messiness surrounding bias, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. There is hate speech that is explicit, but there’s also suggestive content that prompts people to frame…
Jerz > Writing > Journalism Similar:Me Checking into My #4C19 Conference Hotel RoomI’ll just mark a few more papers before …AcademiaIt started with a ride down an escalator and ended with a press conference at Four Seasons…Earlier today Trump tweeted that his cam…BooksThe Future of College Is Facebook Meme GroupsInteresting to see how large groups of c…AcademiaThe Internet Is…
Another digital artifact lives. The York Corpus Christi Pageant Simulator was my first serious accomplishment in digital humanities. After I learned all the medieval drama content from a class with Andrea Johnston at the University of Toronto, I made the computer program as part of a humanities computing course with Willard McCarthy in 1994, and…
So a harmless little Java program I wrote in 1997 no longer works, due to security updates in modern browsers. It’s a simulation of medieval pageant wagons in the town of York, England. I wish I’d recorded a screencast of myself demonstrating it while it worked. I imagine it will be possible to get it…
Interesting reflection on the collapse of the USSR, from the vantage point of a cosmonaut who returned to a completely different world. After blasting off from Baikonur, Krikalev wouldn’t inhale earthly air for 312 days. In that time, the soft-spoken cosmonaut would watch his country crumble from 200 miles up. Presidents would change. His hometown…
Yup, seeing “1 of 21” at the top of your thin paragraph of prose makes me hate myself because I fell for your damn listicle clickbait. #goback Similar:More world-building props for a fantasy #steampunk #Blender3D project.DesignVibing to a park saxophonist as I code for an upcoming conference presentation, and wait t…Vibing to a park saxophonist…
Measuring the impact of fake news spread through Facebook or Twitter is more difficult. Did made-up reports of pre-election ballot-stuffing for Hillary Clinton in Ohio before the election change any votes? Perhaps not, but it did lead the story’s original author, a Republican legislative aide in Maryland, to lose his job last week On many…