Gender-neutral Language

I recently updated a handout I first created in 1998. A phrase like “a good policeman knows his duty” unnecessarily excludes women. While it would be excessive to read history as if every general use of “man” is sexist, today’s culture calls for alternatives. Using “police officer” instead of “policeman” is easy, but replacing every…

Portal, as Drawn by my Eight-year-old Daughter

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Ngram for "postpartum depression," "rest cure" and "yellow wallpaper"

Filing this for the next time a student proposes a paper that uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” to “prove” something about postpartum depression. Here’s Google’s Ngram for “postpartum depression, “rest cure” and “Yellow Wallpaper” from 1870-2000. Similar:Chapbooks — the latest assignment in my “History and Future of the Book” class.Students have already done a 400-word sp…AcademiaThat…

Time to Sunset Movable Type at Seton Hill University. (Long Live WordPress!)

In 2003, when I chose MovableType for a institutional weblog, WordPress was a plucky but under-powered alternative. Until very recently, WordPress was only able to manage a single blog per installation, which meant that each blog user would also be a blog administrator.   Since I was trying to form a blogging community, not training blog…

The Elements of Clunk

The grammar/punctuation flames from not-all-that-well-informed posters at the end of this article are quite interesting for he or she who likes such things. Four years ago, I wrote an essay for The Chronicle Review cataloging “The Seven Deadly Sins of Student Writers“–the errors and infelicities that cropped up most frequently in my students’ work. Since…

Get Lamp? Just got one, thanks.

Great little story from robohara.com. This morning for Christmas, I got a box from Dad. Inside the box was a treasure chest. The treasure chest was wrapped twice with a chain, and the chain was fastened with a combination lock that uses letters instead of numbers. Also inside the box was this: A map. Similar:How…

Mobile Economics Will Trend Toward Web Economics

Restricting access to content doesn’t work. Someone else’s content will get filtered and curated instead of yours. Scarcity is not a viable business model on the Internet. —Fred Wilson, AVC Similar:Taking the Lid Off the McDonald’s Coffee CaseHave you heard the story about the lady …BusinessUChicago College Admissions, Indiana Jones Mystery PackageWhat we know: The…

Book publishers see their role as gatekeepers shrink

For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and…

"interactive fiction" Trumps "text adventures" in Google Books Corpus

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The Most Awesome 450 Page Presentation Ever

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"It is now 88 followers, and I have just been retweeted. Sweet!"

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