Now, it’s worth noting that Brisbane’s question makes perfect sense, considered from the newsroom’s perspective. Romney’s claim that Obama makes speeches “apologising” for America isn’t readily amenable to fact-checking. Instead, Romney relied on what are sometimes called “weasel words”, in which an allegation is alluded to, without being made head-on. (Romney, for instance, never quotes…
Not quite as dramatic as the creation of the evil robotess Maria (in the 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis), but more educational. Kids and some dads from my son’s FIRST Robotics Competition club discuss strategy. I’m blogging the process; soon I hope to get the kids involved, but for understandable reasons, they are mostly interested…
They gathered professional violinists in a hotel room in Indianapolis. They had six violins — two Strads, a Guarneri and three modern instruments. Everybody wore dark goggles so they couldn’t see which violin was which. Then the researchers told the musicians: These are all fine violins and at least one is a Stradivarius. Play, then…
Nobody’s perfect, but this proofreading error is embarrassing in a serious story about an accident that involves suffering and potentially death. Panic, confusion aboard sinking cruise chip – CNN.com. Okay, well done, CNN. Similar:The crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother, father sa…The original was a stunning image,…
The sermon was so powerful that the designers of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington selected those lines to be inscribed on the memorial’s towering statue of the civil rights leader. But because of a design change during the statue’s creation, the exact quotes had to be paraphrased, and now one of the…
A dozen atoms have been made to store a bit of data magnetically – a feat normally performed by a million atoms. The work could one day help shrink the devices that store computer data. —Smallest magnetic memory uses just 12 atoms – physics-math – 12 January 2012 – New Scientist. Similar:Will Journalism Be a…
The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They’ll be able to edit textbooks that don’t fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits…
Leo Tolstoy is scribbling furiously in the light of a dimly burning candle. At such close quarters, its searing heat has covered his forehead in a permanent patina of sweat, making the great novel a true work of toil. Suddenly, in the middle of a particularly vivid war scene, he curses out loud and blows…
If you can’t code, can critique produce new knowledge in digital humanities? Like the PowerPoint templates that emulate chalkboards, or the 3.5-inch diskette that often still decorates the “save” button in apps used by people who never touch floppy disks, the very term “digital humanities” exemplifies the debate. It’s a transitory term, like “electric icebox,”…
Despite the fact that some computer games are clearly a site of narrative production and consumption, the relationship between narrative, on the one hand, and games, on the other, has remained somewhat uneasy, if not contentious, within the critical literature for both game studies & narrative theory. —Emerging Genres, Progressive Readings: Games, Fiction, and Narrative…
An end to bad heir days: The posthumous power of the literary estate – Features – Books – The Independent. Similar:Watching Shakespeare With Your KidsMy retired parents and bachelor engineer…CultureSpace Shuttle Challenger (Destroyed 28 Years Ago Today)I was in my final semester of high schoo…EducationShe was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to…
Using the iPad requires more than just a change in mindset; it involves a cultural change, one that can be painful. One of the drawbacks I found this semester was that students used and discussed the iPad only in my class. That made my class unique, but it also meant that students defaulted to familiar…
In the FIRST Robotics competition, individual teams of kids have six weeks to assemble a robot from a collection of loose parts. Here is our kit, just before we started inspecting the inventory. In March, FIRST team members around the country and in other parts of the world will play a game (the exact details…
“The hardest fun you’ll ever have.” — FIRST Robotics slogan At Carnegie Mellon, waiting for the FIRST Robotics Competition 2012 Kickoff to start. I’m one of the mentors of our new club, the JCP 4H Gears. Today we will get a box of parts, and we’ll be told the rules of the game that will…
To be sure, such optimism must be tempered in today’s bleak economy, where hardly any form of education is a sure ticket to a job and where many in the private sector may still look with indifference or even disdain on a humanities degree. But as David Brooks himself went on to point out in…
Class. All the way. The Times’ rule is, we correct anything that is wrong, no matter how small or seemingly silly. And I don’t know any of my colleagues who would want to do differently. I hate to get any detail wrong, and when I do, I often have a moment of fantasizing about just…
To date, few studies have been undertaken to make explicit how microblogging technologies are used by and can benefit scholars. This paper investigates the use of Twitter by an academic community in various conference settings, and poses the following questions: does the use of a Twitter enabled backchannel enhance the conference experience, collaboration and the…
I don’t know the original source… Saw it on Facebook. Similar:Media Bias Chart version 11 — Journalism sorted by bias (Left / Center / Right), reliabili…The very useful “media bias chart” is on…CultureIPads in the classroom: The right way to use them, demonstrated by a Swiss school.The devices are not really valued as por…CybercultureAlmost Flat…
Kairos uses a three-stage review process. First, editors decide if a submission makes sense for a review. Then, the entire editorial board discusses the submission (online) for two weeks, and reaches a consensus that is communicated to the author with detailed letters from the board. (Board members’ identities are public, so there is no secrecy…
Corrections – December 30 – NYTimes.com. Yes, that was a pretty good correction… …but not as good as this one. Similar:Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The Colleg…Great example of investigative journalis…Current_EventsLine breaks are really, really importantI’m sure that whoever wrote this headlin…Current_EventsDatalore (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 12) Data's…