A teenager who posted a death threat on Facebook, yesterday became the first person in Britain to be jailed for bullying on a social networking site. Keeley Houghton, 18, said she would kill Emily Moore, whom she had bullied for four years since they were at school together. —Daily Mail Similar:Unpopular grammar rulesLanguage is a…
A reprint of a good article that has since disappeared behind the Technology Review subscription firewall. Probably too dated to assign to my news writing students this year, so I guess I’ll just refer to it in lecture. The informational edge was perilous, it was unpredictable, and it required the news audience to be willing…
Any college professor knows the depressing feeling that comes when you stay up late marking a stack of papers, and a high percentage of students don’t even bother to pick them up. One instructor made an art installation out of abandoned student essays. As an instructor of art for the past 7 years, I have…
Zombie math. Yay! (PDF. Boo!) Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and…
Many specific things come to mind when I ponder writing a 200 word paragraph on my identity as a writer. First of all, when I think of producing that many words about my writing identity, I think of my ability to start immediately writing, using the first thing that pops into my head, since the…
Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., recently introduced a grade called FD to deal with cheaters. The letters stand for failure with academic dishonesty. —Calgary Herald FD for cheaters? Why not FU? (Thanks for the suggestion, Josh.) Similar:Opinion | Alec Baldwin Didn’t Have to Talk to the Police. Neither Do You. “[Police] will lie to…
Interesting pair of essays in The Chronicle Review. I may use this in my journalism class for a unit on statistics, advocacy, and the importance of open-minded skepticism in the reporting of the news. Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay “Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship” (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D.…
TV news emphasizes the immediate and the emotional. This screen shot shows how the NBC news affiliate in Miami allows readers to rate stories by emotions. Notice that this mechanism does not reward stories for being fair, informative, accurate, or even newsworthy. I stumbled across this feature while reading a story about the 11-year-old reporter…
Teale Fristoe reviews The Great Flu. In the game, the player acts as the head of the World Pandemic Control during the outbreak of an unknown flu. As the game progresses, the player must take actions, such as dispatching research teams, dispensing medication and face masks, and closing schools and airports, in an attempt to…
If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can’t cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then — before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia…
I just noticed that Jason Scott has redesigned the home page for his film website. Good things are worth the wait. I’m content to wait. Similar:Short Reports: How To Write Routine Technical DocumentsI don’t get to teach technical writing m…BusinessAddressing Our Biases: Medieval BathingDid medieval people bathe? If you alr…CultureDogmeat and I may yet win…
One reason why I continue to resist putting much effort into Facebook and Twitter is that, when I do so, my work disappears into someone else’s database. If someone else decides to start charging me to view my own archives, or the links other people create to my content, then the visibility of my work…
I was on the road (and away from a computer) for the past few days, on a little family outing. My wife brought along a copy of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure #4 that she picked up cheap at a library sale. The cover of this book, originally published in 1979, features a big-jawed space hero in a suit…
[The] story is told of a music critic who was sent to a concert hall in Chicago to review a performance. When he found the hall burning down, he went home and went to bed. In the morning he explained, “There was no story. The concert hall burned down.” I trust these stories are apocryphal,…
Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours — and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is…
Here’s how Ebert ended a review he wrote yesterday: It’s said that Richard Harding Davis was dispatched by William Randolph Hearst to cover the Johnstown flood. Here was his lead: “God stood on a mountaintop here and looked at what his waters had wrought.” Hearst cabled back: “Forget flood. Interview God.” A wonderful story. Checking out the quote online,…
Good luck with that, Rupert. “We intend to charge for all our news websites,” Mr Murdoch said. “If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media,” he added, predicting “significant revenues” from charging for differentiated news online. I think it probably makes sense to charge a bit in order to get unique content early, before…
My latest Blender 3D experiment. Similar:Adding random objects to the bookshelves for a fantasy #steampunk project. #blender3dAestheticsThe Period, Our Simplest Punctuation Mark, Has Become a Sign of AngerYou text your girlfriend: “I know we mad…CybercultureLet's face it, it's time to give up on those Portal and Half-Life sequelsReserving judgments is a matter of infin…BusinessThe Religious…
I’m all for training students in fact-gathering, clear writing, and getting a sense of the outside world. But I’m wondering if the time-honored student newspaper is still the best way to do that. Has your campus found a more contemporary way to get students the benefits that newspapers used to offer? Maybe a way that…
Political message? You decide. Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo. Similar:Journalism Isn't Dying. It's Returning to Its Roots.An important reminder that “objective” j…CultureNow Is the Perfect Time to Memorize a PoemPowerful writing, by Matthew Schneier. …AestheticsShe doesn't have keys or a phone or an ID. Why does my tween need a purse?To stash her Lemonheads…