In California, the governor’s office reacts to hearing of a vulgar message hidden vertically in the first row of letters in this gubernatorial veto. As The Swamp puts it: “My goodness. What a coincidence,” a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “I suppose when you do so…
What can be learned from Fitzgerald’s tax returns? To start with, his popular reputation as a careless spendthrift is untrue. Fitzgerald was always trying to follow conservative financial principles. Until 1937 he kept a ledger–as if he were a grocer–a meticulous record of his earnings from each short story, play, and novel he sold. The…
A few years ago, my daughter was thrilled to receive a hand-me-down fanny pack. (See the price tag hanging on my spiffy new one?)Earlier this month, when my wife took the kids on a family visit for about 10 days, my daughter cried for me at night. Similar:Actors Fail to Distract Audience from Prop Newspaper…
Will I miss Geocities? No, not really. In 1998 or possibly 1999, I was teaching web authorship as part of a freshman composition class, and this page from a student project made me keep the “make a Geocities home page” and “make a creative hypertext” project around, even though every semester, a certain chunk of…
Looking forward to this promising resource. I’ve wrapped the blogs up, tidied them up, corrected & updated them and put them into 1 handy ebook for you to download and take home. It means you have have an all-in-one desktop reference to giving your multimedia journalism more spark, and getting in the entrepreneurial mindset. Chapters…
Our decision to homeschool began when we moved from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania with a five-year-old, and found there was no option for half-day kindergarten. We decided the move was stressful enough, and since school attendance wasn’t mandatory until age 7, we decided to handle the afternoon naps, storytimes, and playing-with-blocks ourselves. As long as our…
From Awful Library Books. For more schadenfreud, see Cake Wrecks, Photoshop Disasters, and Fail Blog. Similar:The Woman in BlackLast night’s preview was a layered treat…CultureThe Onion's Supreme Court Briefing on Satire Is StunningFrom October: A man who was arrested ov…AmusingStandardized testing: I opted my kids out. The schools freaked out. Now I know why.And so,…
Great stuff from Mark Marino… not only is the content fascinating, but the blog-sized presentation, for discusison, of a fundamental theoretical concept is a great example of what the blogging medium can do for (and to) scholarship. Item for today: = In Donald Knuth and Luis Trabb Pardo‘s article on the history of computers, the…
I’m gearing up to introduce my journalism students to a news project that requires a basic knowledge of math. I don’t want to make it too frustrating to them, but I do want to emphasize how easy it is to be misled by the math. Margin of Error deserves better than the throw-away line it…
I assigned book one of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale to a “Writing About Literature” class, the designated writing-intensive course for our English majors. The students discussed the abrupt ending, the use of ethnic stereotypes, and of course the comic book medium itself. One student’s “Hearing through Yiddish… Seeing in Ink…” is particularly thoughtful. About a…
Clearly, the computer re-energized Bukowski and gave him new life as a writer. Yet much of Bukowski’s late writing was about old age and death. The computer fit into this. In poems, letters, and in The Captain, Bukowski chronicled his struggles with the computer. The shutdowns, the lost poems, the time at the shop for…
Movie critics are sometimes asked why all movies cost the same to view, even though some may have cost $100 million to make, and others $500,000. It’s a reasonable question. I suppose the reasoning is that you get about two hours of movie either way. Now 3-D has provided exhibitors with a subterfuge to force…
Don’t hate on the TV media just because they helped the nation fall for the Balloon Boy Hoax. Back in the day, the print media were the obvious target. On April 13, 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article in The New York Sun, chronicling how Monck Mason, leaving England for Paris drifted off course…
When Heene appeared, he instead simply displayed a box into which he invited the media to submit questions, to be answered this evening. —CBS Well, he’s managed to extend his fame by another 15 minutes. Similar:Masks serve many purposes. How sad that they’ve become politicized. I’ve seen the original meme on my so…Current_EventsThe Emma Watson…
A fascinating twist to the complex story behind the legal battle behind the iconic Obama “HOPE” poster. New filings to the court, he said, “state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used…and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in…
Jaw-droppingly cool– though it probably helps if you’ve ever worked with Flash. Animator vs. Animation Similar:Kairos: Open Since 1996As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a…AcademiaThe Media Pyramid: “Any content where ideology leads to falsehood is bad for you.”You Are the Media You Eat CultureLighting makes a difference. The officers' pub from the interplanetary…
Although I explained how I track and archive my students’ Twitter activity, I didn’t describe what they actually do on Twitter. That’s because I wasn’t sure myself what they do. I mean, of course I’ve reading their tweets and sending my own, but I hadn’t considered in a systematic way how my students use Twitter.…
Similar:My 20-year-old Java Program Is Was Broken!So a harmless little Java program I wrot…CybercultureRude mechanical sighting! Shakespearing it up with @newrentheatreco.PersonalSix rainbow-colored objects, arranged like THIS?These are shoe-holding racks at a local …AestheticsYour first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you ha…Your first #blender3d retractable #steam…AestheticsIf you win the very…
In a bid to save money, the station is planning to reassign the technicians who operate the electronic prompters that feed scripted news copy to the anchors while they’re on the air. Instead, the station wants its anchors to do the job themselves. […] “Instead of orchestrating coverage, fact-checking, handling breaking news, paying attention to…
When people can more easily fire off all sorts of messages–from updates about their breakfast to questions about the evening’s plans–being able to figure out which messages are truly important, or even which warrant a response, can be difficult. Information overload can lead some people to tune out messages altogether. Such noise makes us even…