For my journalism class, I have already created some fake press releases and other documents and created a scenario that simulates how a student reporter might cover an incident involving a member of the campus. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that there’s been a real-world incident. I’ve been freshening up what I…
Associated Press The Associated Press has added a new entry on retweeting to its social media guidelines. Staffers are reminded to keep their opinions to themselves. Retweets, like tweets, should not be written in a way that looks like you’re expressing a personal opinion on the issues of the day. Disclaimers — like “retweets do…
Designed exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers who own a Kindle (sorry, iPad users – the Kindle App alone will not suffice), the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows consumers to borrow one book per month without any due dates. Amazon can only offer this option because the books are digital; the company isn’t loaning consumers much…
Testing out the new WordPress iOS app on my iPod Touch. Improved authoring tools, very much appreciated. Similar:And the People of the Book of Face Were Deceived “And I looked up and saw a sign, and…AestheticsNewly acquired technology for teaching writing in the age of AI. (Not for high stakes test…AcademiaLiberal Arts Majors Are the…
One of the most popular pages on my site — a single page that earns about 20% of my hits — started out as a class assignment for a technical writing student whose project for a real-world client ran into a snag. In Fall 2002, I showed my student Kathy Kennedy a model of a…
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I believe I feel like a pribbling idle-headed mumble-news. (Thanks for the link, Jessica!) Tastefully Offensive | Premium Funny: Shakespeare Insult Kit – StumbleUpon. Similar:Post Gazette Corrects Headline of Seton Hill iPad FollowupEveryone makes mistakes. As a student jo…AcademiaCrabby 10yo Ties Self to Pole to Protest InjusticeMy wife confiscated my preteen daughter’…CultureTerm grades submitted. Homeschool…
My 13yo son plays through chapter 2 of my 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition entry, Fine Tuned. Similar:Stick to facts, but write news your readers will actually want to read. Students who put a lot of effort int…AcademiaHappy Easter 2022PersonalLittle Women (Thurs-Sun)PersonalIf you care about things like acting, or people, go see "Orphans." I'm over…PersonalOne Man's…
The local paper’s headline spins the news a bit more negatively than it probably deserves. I rather enjoy the opportunity to look at some familiar words in a fresh light. Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: (Current Text) Priest: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us. (New text)…
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While teaching Richard II in a Shakespeare class, I had to get up to speed on the rules and customs of succession, as Shakespeare knew them, so that my students and I could understand and explore the political issues that Elizabethan audiences would find in the play. News from England today bears word of some…
Students collaborate on a breaking news journalism assignment. I wrote a mock police report, an official statement from a university official, and some personal info from various simulated sources, and gave students 45 minutes to churn out a news story. Here, students collaborate on a Google doc while consulting their textbook on a iPad. My…
In the mid-1950s mathematician John McCarthy issued a call for research on “Automata Studies,” but the phrase was so bland that few people understood what he meant. So he came up with a more provocative description of the idea he was promoting. He called it artificial intelligence. via John McCarthy, the father of artificial intelligence,…
A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
The problem is that Google is killing off the current crop of social functions from Reader – and in doing so, they’re fundamentally altering the way most of us use Reader, and in the process they’re sending a huge archive of curated posts and shares and comments down into the void. And this is a…
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Of Archimedes, he who allegedly popularized the word “Eureka!”: “His cleverness is beautiful. Understanding Archimedes is like understanding the most elegant joke in the world.” The researchers paid their respects to the 10th-century scribe who copied down works by Archimedes of lasting importance. The palimpsest contains the only version of “On Floating Islands” in Greek…
The value of this essay is not specifically in the nostalgia for ye goode ole days of bloggynge, but rather the combination of work-ethic angst and the recognition of the value of investing effort in long-term projects, as opposed to seeking immediate rewards for clear-cut, predetermined actions. The philosophical reflections of the shovel-wielding ditch-digger are…
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[J]ournals ceased being a means of communication a long time ago – more than 20 years ago for sure. New research would be unveiled in seminars, circulated as NBER Working Papers, long before anything showed up in a journal. Whole literatures could flourish, mature, and grow decadent before the first article got properly published…. The…