In school, we expect our professors to answer our questions, to return our emails, to invite us in for a consultation, to pay attention what we say and read carefully what we write. One of the important lessons of being a student journalist is learning how to deal with the unexpected. Unfair things happen in…
On a shelf in the slanty room under the stairs, next to her college textbooks, my mother kept a stash of inexpensive Peanuts paperbacks — dozens of them, which reprinted the newspaper strips, perhaps on a yearly basis, maybe more frequently. I spent many a summer afternoon reading through those books, and I remember sorting…
Similar:I went down fighting.PersonalMaking more retro props for a #blender3d project. The way to get better at a thing is to d…PersonalAnd yes, that's her picture in the program (from the PPT Shakespeare contest).At PPT’s The Diary of Anne Frank. …CultureI was perhaps a bit more conversational and chipper than usual during class today. A…
My laptop drive is full & my comfort-food shelf is empty; however, that package slip was for a new external hard drive and a case of Clif Bars. #winning! Similar:Twitter changes strategy in battle against internet 'trolls'Reducing the reach of abusive tweets is …BusinessAn open letter to Trump from the US press corpsThis is the…
Last week, I had a hardware emergency. A kid in a small-town hardware store spent about 15 minutes helping me find the right nut. I had the troublesome part with me, and used a vise on their worktable and their wrench to twist it in place. The nut cost 50 cents. I asked the kid if…
Similar:#setonhill remembers 9/11/2001.AcademiaSHU Commemoration of September 11 Terrorism Attacks — Looking Back After 10 YearsCome to listen. Come to share. Come toge…CultureSesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is CrushingI’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of …BusinessA Time magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake. #fakenewsDonald Trump has…
The trick is that most people think they are getting a good deal out of Facebook; we think of Facebook to be “free,” and, as marketing professors explain, “consumers overreact to free.” Most people don’t feel like they are actually paying when the payment is personal data and when there is no specific sensation of…
3,486 words, 120 links, 57 lexias, and currently this is the only ending.
Social media services have put writing tools into the hands of people who probably don’t think of themselves as writers, but there they are, captioning photos and picking hashtags and maybe even pausing just a few seconds to edit before they hit “post.” This radio interview offers a good, informal overview of why people who…
I’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of headlines surrounding the “Sesame Street moves to HBO” story. * HBO gentrifies ‘Sesame Street’ –VentureBeat * Sesame Street Episodes Will Shrink to Half an Hour –Time * Sesame Street Is Heading to HBO, and Getting Even Bigger –Esquire * This episode of Sesame Street brought to you by…
Similar:Motivation Amid Crisis (Autotrophic Bat)As part of an independent study project,…BooksA Merry Look at Journalism in "The Year Without a Santa Claus"In the classic stop-action TV special “T…AestheticsThe daughter opens another show. This weekend only.The daughter opens another show. This we…PersonalAnother day, another 10 square centimeters of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blende…AestheticsWhat is a CRT…
Once classes start again, we will all have less time for the game of life. Let’s do some serious playing while we still can. Similar:NYC sent non-police teams to respond to mental health calls for a month. Data shows that m…Remember that meme that shows two cops s…CultureThose shoggoths hacked from lungs unspeakable1) Last night,…
Use the command-alt functions to add sexual tension, plot twists, or a humorous interlude. —The New Yorker Similar:[E-Mail is for Old People] –[E-Mail is for Old People] (User Frie…AmusingCode of Honor (ST:TNG Rewatch — Season 1, Episode 3) Rehashed Amok Time plot that gets ra…Rewatching TNG after almost 20 years. (Y…CultureOpening night. They've got magic to…
Jerz > Writing > Journalism I’ve spent the afternoon touching up some older journalism handouts, seeing which are still in good shape, which need some work, and which new ones I’ll need to create from scratch. I realize I’ve never actually written a handout on the inverted pyramid, writing leads, writing headlines, punctuating quotes from sources… of course there…
I have experimented with rewarding students for embracing complexity, taking risks, and for celebrating their failures. Returning to musical theater after a 25-year break has been a valuable lesson in humility for me, and a reminder of just how scary it is — exciting and scary — to do something new. The truth—for this parent…
I will always love Inform 7, but I chose to develop a journalism training game in Twine (because it will be much easier to teach Twine to my students). To prepare for my game, I spent about 6 hours (during my son’s last chess tournament) roughing out about 20 lexias. Since then, I’ve spent about 6…
The camera’s first good image came back a month ago, which was cutting things a little close for the July 16 moon crossing (NASA released the images on Wednesday), according to Szabo. “We were very much aware that the moon would be passing in view, and we worked very hard for it,” he says. The…
Several times I assigned Brenda Laurel’s Utopian Entrepreneur, which described the rise and heartbreaking fall of her girl-centered, girl-positive gaming company, Purple Moon during the 1990s. My own daughter (who is 13) has enjoyed man more opportunities to be both girly and nerdy — something that seems to have been a lot harder 20 years…
History is complex and baffling and fascinating. Reading this (an explanation that the stiff-arm salute that we now identify with the Nazis was a general gesture that was common in America before WWII) made my head spin almost as much as reading about the myth of 8 unbroken hours of sleep. A group of about…
Wondering how to write a personal essay? Is your personal essay due tomorrow morning? If so, here are some quick tips. Good luck! Your instructor is not going to grade you on how much you loved your deceased family member, how wonderfully you played in the big game, or how narrowly you escaped death. Your…