Email (finding the right tone as a writer)

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The Out-of-Control Author

When you’re writing just for yourself, you’re in control. Of everything. You control what your characters do, what they say and think and wear, what happens to them, where their story begins and ends. Every aspect of the story is completely in your hands. It’s your book. All yours. When you work with a publisher,…

Robots Are Coming for Our Poems

The robots are quickly and surely coming for our jobs, and we’ve comforted ourselves thus far with a palliative that goes something like this: They can’t do our creative work. They won’t do our journalism or make our art or write our poetry. Except that the startup Narrative Science has $6 million to execute its…

TSA Agent Confession

It was May 2007. I was living with a bohemian set on Chicago’s north side, a crowd ranging from Foucault-fixated college kids to middle-aged Bukowski-bred alcoholics. We drank and talked politics on the balcony in the evenings, pausing only to sneer at hipsters strumming back-porch Beatles sing-a-longs. By night, I took part in barbed criticism…

Replaying Childhood: On Gifting my Video Games to the Library of Congress

Tevor Owens writes: Giving up my games ended up being a bit of an emotional experience. I think the emotion of that experience underscores why it matters for the Library to collect games. The box of games and systems had sat in our basement for the last five years, and my mother’s basement for a…

Alice in Quantumland: A Charming Illustrated Allegory of Quantum Mechanics by a CERN Physicist

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics is absolutely fantastic in its entirety, certain to engage the simultaneous states of entertainment and education with unequaled grace. Complement it with scientists’ answers to little kids’ questions about how the world works, then bend your mind by considering what it’s like to live in a universe…

On teaching coding to English studies students

Because this is a practical, hands-on, interdisciplinary class, the students all need to be on roughly the same page early on. And that is how I end up back with teaching English studies students how to code – we are starting with really basic Unix commands to understand how computers work, and build on these…

International Studies Association proposes to bar editors from blogging

“I think it’s a really strange proposal in 2014,” said Stephen M. Saideman, a professor at Carleton University in Canada and one of many political science scholars who assailed the policy on social media. “I would have expected it in 2006.” Faculty members, several outside the field of international studies, said the proposal is simultaneously…

Space Shuttle Challenger (Destroyed 28 Years Ago Today)

I was in my final semester of high school. I remember Principal Burch came over the loudspeaker to announce that the Challenger “blew up on the pad,” which I knew wasn’t true because I was watching a TV… probably in the library. Years later, I was teaching an advanced technical writing class, and we studied…

No Black Holes Exist, Says Stephen Hawking—At Least Not Like We Think

Black holes do not exist—at least, not as we know them, says renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, potentially provoking a rethink of one of space’s most mysterious objects. A new study from Hawking also says that black holes may not possess “firewalls,” destructive belts of radiation that some researchers have proposed would incinerate anything that passes…

School ditches rules and loses bullies

Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play. However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said.When the university study wrapped up…

Facebook, really? More people liked the picture in my post than saw the post that includes the picture?

I don’t pretend to understand. Similar:Maybe Star Wars 7 won't suck, but I'm not holding my breath.I was burned in 1999 when I saw The Phan…HomeClassroom Project: Students Get 1 Hour to Propose, Shoot, Edit, Publish DocumentaryStudents created this in 60 minutes. …HomeThe Dadliest DecadeThe eighties, at least, were drenched in…HomeMore split-screen actinghttp://youtu.be/EGgeZWskEs8DesignComputers and Writing…

I sometimes snark at the @Turnitin interface, but…

I sometimes snark at the @Turnitin interface, but I love the new ability to tie comments to rubric items. Well done! http://t.co/InHGMWpDkZ Similar:Happy retirement celebration to two dear colleagues.AcademiaNewly acquired technology for teaching writing in the age of AI. (Not for high stakes test…AcademiaSlate: "Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide" | Notice how writing style frames…

Should the AP Really Have Fired This Pulitzer-Prize War Photographer?

The original shot caught a Syrian rebel fighter moving from his position, his AK-47 in hand. It also showed something else: “a colleague’s video camera” in “the lower left corner of the frame,” according to the AP’s investigation. Before filing the image to his editors, Contreras used digital software to take the camera out of…

RT @PhilKomarny: A floppy disc… In #context htt…

RT @PhilKomarny: A floppy disc… In #context http://t.co/5HjNls404X Similar:In Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureI'm no longer surprised, but still want to document.This is really noteworthy. Today the Pre…Current_EventsShe doesn't have keys or a phone or an ID. Why does my tween need a purse?To stash her Lemonheads…

@MichaelSimsBook @mkonnikova “When a blogger uses…

@MichaelSimsBook @mkonnikova “When a blogger uses hyperbole while recommending an article on viral media, you won’t believe what happens!” Similar:Proto iPads and Paper Coexist in Classic Star TrekRewatching the classic Trek episode “The…CybercultureParallel Structure vs. Faulty ParallelismI just touched up a handout on Parallel …HumanitiesParallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue…

The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You

Overblown Headline of New Yorker Article on Memes Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You In 350 B.C., Aristotle was already wondering what could make content—in his case, a speech—persuasive and memorable, so that its ideas would pass from person to person. The answer, he argued, was three principles: ethos, pathos, and logos. Content should have…

Not Bad for an English Major

I didn’t have much choice when it came to picking a background for some publicity shots for Stage Right’s production of a new musical, “Little Red.” At the time, this background seemed better than all the alternatives, but when it came time to design a Facebook ad, I ended up very unsatisfied. Fortunately, I have…

Trees (an “Interpretive Travesty”)

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast, Can hardly look at God all day, While lifting leafy arms to pray. Where are her eyes, mouth, arms, and head? Perhaps she lifts her legs instead. Read Kilmer’s original, and David L. Hoover’s wonderful spoof at Representative Poetry Online. Similar:Tevye from…

The Rise of Curiosity Journalism

Katz and his kindred might just as well call themselves “curiosity journalists.” Curiosities draw the most attention when the story about the story exceeds the story itself. In this case, the question of why American dialects even matter as a topic of public knowledge and citizen debate has been abandoned, for better or worse, in…