Breaking Story So New Reporter Literally Has No Information

Great satire from The Onion. Breaking Story So New Reporter Literally Has No Information Similar:Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of controlA thoughtful analysis. Problem-solver…CultureThose #fakenews people are at it again. #freepress #journalism #payattentionJournalist Sam Husseini, who had been ho…CultureMy understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingKnee-jerk sharing of memes denigrates the truth.Trump never told…

Gamasutra: Keith Nemitz’s Blog – The Enduring Orphan of the IGF

Writing, however, was a part of the game industry in the beginning. It’s most faithful legacy is now considered niche. Great game writers like Steve Meretzky and Tim Schafer are as memorable as writers in comparable genres; Robert Heinlein, Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft. Today, you have to dig deep into the circles of game…

University of Virginia Reinstates Ousted President

Ms. Sullivan emerged on the steps of the university’s white-columned rotunda afterward to address a whooping crowd gathered on the central lawn, and quoted something that Thomas Jefferson, designer of the building and founder of the university, wrote upon being elected president: “It is pleasant for those who have just escaped threatened shipwreck to hail…

Reviews of Sorkin’s The Newsroom look interesting.

I’m not kidding when I say I haven’t even thought about planning to watch a TV show since Babylon 5 concluded in 1998. I don’t say this to be an anti-TV snob — we watch broadcast TV and plenty of DVDs, and I got kind of hooked on websites devoted to Lost (even though I…

Med Student Rescues Body Part From Airport Security

Good example of journalistic storytelling, delaying the ending of the story a bit to keep you reading, without appearing to be deliberately coy. (We know from the headline that the story ends happily.) This is a medical container. Inside is a trachea, a carefully constructed human windpipe, seeded with 60 million stem cells from a…

Local Veteran Revisits USS Requin At Carnegie Science Center

In November of 1964, Frank Plaskon, of McKeesport, was a 24-year-old Special Forces Ranger out of Fort Bragg, N.C. Frank was part of a team dispatched to the USS Requin now berthed on the Ohio River at the Carnegie Science Center. “And I can’t believe that 48 years later it’s right here in my hometown,”…

Soap: How Much Cleaner Does It Actually Make Your Hands?

This is not encouraging. The scientists tested three types of soap dispenser, in both lab and real-world settings. Of the three variants, the dispensers that were refillable from a giant bottle of liquid soap were by far the filthiest, leading to a 26-fold increase in handwashers’ bacteria levels. —Health – Brian Fung – Soap: How…

Do people still see blogs as networks? | jill/txt

I’m not reallye sure if the blogosphere works like that any more, though. I find blog posts in my rss reader or on twitter or Facebook and only rarely by following links from other blogs as I used to do. Maybe I exaggerate – but it seems to me that blogs link to each other…

Sandusky lawyers may use NBC tape error in appeal

Close enough is not good enough in journalism. One of those versions, which was broadcast on the ‘Today’ show, contained an erroneous repetition of a key question and answer – about whether Sandusky was sexually attracted to young boys, Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general said on Sunday. The repetition, Sandusky’s lawyers…

Westmoreland County Air Show 2012 (Video)

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Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books?

What happens to our books when we die? Many books disappear before we do, of course; they fall apart, or we put them out on the stoop for scavengers. A book like this one, however — a text that is still read and reprinted, that has played a notable role in the 20th-century imagination, and…

Westmoreland County Air Show 2012 (Photos)

Traffic leaving the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport was awful. People who came late, and parked farther away from the airport, ended up with the advantage, as we sat in gridlock for 1.5 hours while people wheeled their strollers and coolers right past us, pulling out of their parking spaces way ahead of us, putting more…

The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria

From “global warming” to “climate change” to “ecosystem management,” the buzzwords have changed, but the issue remains: enthusiasm and hype are part of the PR machine that drives the public perception of science. When well-meaning activists rely on emotions as a shortcut to get the cooperation of the public, the fabric of civic discourse is…

Feelies: The Lost Art of Immersing the Narrative

This paper discusses the materializations of story world entities that are distributed with game packaging, here referred to as feelies, as props that support narrative elements in story-driven digital games. The narrative support is suggested to function on global and local levels, where the first one refers to the immersive effects concerning the story world,…

Science: It’s a Girl Thing

I won’t be showing this to my daughter. I might instead show it as part of a media studies unit, as an example of a self-made PR disaster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtMmt5rC6g Update: I didn’t think that would stay up for long in its original location. Here’s a copy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA Similar:Pittsburgh in the Round review of The Outsiders”It’s…

Carnegie Science Center’s Guitar Exhibit

This summer, I’m a “CSC Insider” — meaning that I’m getting some VIP treatment, in return for blogging twice a month about the Carnegie Science Center. First off, I attended the opening night gala for Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World. I also went back with my family the next day. (The video shows…

Bullied Bus Monitor Karen Klein Sees the Best and Worst of Humanity in 24 Hours

A shocking video of middle schoolers verbally abusing a poorly-paid, hearing-impaired grandmother of eight hired to keep them safe on the school bus went viral on Wednesday. Over 5,700 online strangers rallied to Karen’s side, donating $110,000 to fund a vacation and maybe even an early retirement!

My 14yo Helps Teach a Vacation Bible School Class

In character as “Pontius Pilate,” washing his hands of the fate of Jesus, Peter asked one of the kids a rhetorical question. When the kid responded with, “Duh!” my son quipped, “One does not say ‘duh’ to the prefect of Judea. I think we’re gonna need another cross here.” Similar:Detailed Articulation of Feet in Unity3DI’m…

My 10yo Launches a Soda Bottle Rocket

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“Excuse me just a second…” Microsoft product showcase features a frozen ‘Surface’ tablet

Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky jogs to the side of the stage to replace a frozen Surface tablet computer, during an otherwise slick product demo in Los Angeles. Video: Microsoft’s Surface tablet ‘fails’ during Los Angeles showcase – Telegraph. Similar:Introduction to Twine (Tutorials by Vegetarian Zombie) I will always love Inform 7, but I c…AcademiaPipe Trouble’s…