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

Similar:9 Photography Tips (Steve McCurry) 9 Photography TipsAestheticsThe chief engineer has a forward-facing station, on a platform above the technical staff c…PersonalNo one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to… Everyone who is reading this article…CybercultureWe ask 3 Broadway photographers: How do you turn a live show into a…

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:Does the phrase "based off of" make you shudder… or shrug?Jerz > Writing >&nb…AcademiaNo, Dr. Anthony Fauci did not write the "How dare…

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:Crazy-looking…

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:Motivation Amid Crisis (Autotrophic Bat)As part of an independent study project,…BooksAI-generated essays are nothing to worry about (opinion)After reviewing 22 AI essays I asked my…

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

0 Similar:My tween found this creative use for an extra iPad stylus AestheticsDr Jerz I think your microphone glitchedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPqnXF7A…AcademiaNo, Trump's tweet about "Heritage, History, and Greatness" is not a quote from a speech Hi… Trump really did tweet “This is a ba…EthicsTexture WriterI’ve only glanced at TextureWriter, but …CybercultureWhat to Do With a B.A. in English?Some…

The Most Awesome 450 Page Presentation Ever

Similar:How PatrioticAmusingChoose wisely… you have the power to turn this wrap into a sandwich or a candy bar… or…AestheticsUNC student newspaper goes viral for coverage of campus shooting As Emmy Martin was locked down Monday …AcademiaOne Teacher’s Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School ShootingsEvery Friday since Columbine, one school…CultureTrainer and Sea Lion Tango: "He Had…

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

  Similar:Techno-greebles. Geometrically these are identical plain cubes, with custom shaders that s…DesignRestoring the first websiteVery important bit of history. For a st…CybercultureAlways Bet on TextGraydon Hoare offers a rousing hymn to t…CybercultureUnderstanding The Fake News Universe The fake news universe is vast and eph…CultureWhy the King’s Quest demo reignited my love for adventure gamesI…

Link Attribution, the Early Blogosphere and the Arts & Letters Daily

Fascinating discussion of the evolution (and violation) of the emerging blogosphere convention for citing links, in the late 90s. A few years ago, I was exploring what happened to the canonical first blogs, a short list of frequently updated web pages that  Jesse James Garret identified as weblogs, and I mentioned in passing that I…