I logged onto Yahoo and found that my profile had been changed. The first of Yahoo’s “Top Questions” is “What happened to my profile?” but the link just goes to the aggressively cheerful “Welcome to the Profiles Tutorials!” page, which does not actually answer the question. Another question is “What happened to my alias profile?“,…
A few weeks ago, my editors were bummed when I pointed out that an unusually large number of typos had slipped through the proofreading net and popped up in the headlines. For the most recent issue, the headlines were fine, but I found three typos in bylines. So the student paper isn’t perfect. Even Homer…
Via Karissa: Mr. McCarraher defended his client by revealing his ingenious trump card- the victim’s Facebook page. On that page was a picture of her at a fancy dress party. She was smiling. Here are some of the lawyer’s touching words in describing the victim: “What we have is a person who has post traumatic…
Teaching: Midterm Grades (w00t!) LA100 (14 Oct) EL200 (16 Oct) EL236 (16 Oct) EL405 (16 Oct) Administration/Advising Submit two recommendations (Oct 15) Program Review Executive Summary (Draft Oct 17; awaiting reviews) Advising Grids Internal proposal for a summer outreach project Research Submit co-authored article (been sitting on it for months) Finish article for anthology (probably…
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html I’d like to be able to link to specific details on the map, but I don’t think it’s possible. I’d never heard of the “Argument Slide” before. The “concept visualization” cluster is probably most useful for teaching my freshman writing students. I’m taking a quick break from marking midterms, and I only glanced at…
During play, the screen background was solid black with a white border, with one color line representing each player. We displayed the game score in a horizontal strip at the bottom of the screen. It wasn’t the most graphically advanced program, but it was simple and fun. It looked something like this: […] “Both the…
A few weeks ago, one of my local papers, the Tribune-Review, implemented a little JavaScript magic to try to hide its advertisements from the ad-blocking software I use. That means my ad-blocker didn’t recognize some of the advertising cruft, so it let it pass through the filter, and the news pages suddenly started skipping and…
Men at fortyLearn to close softlyThe doors to rooms they will not beComing back to. At rest on a stair landing,They feel it movingBeneath them now like the deck of a ship,Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrorsThey rediscoverThe face of the boy as he practises tyingHis father’s tie there in secret And…
You already know a different way of looking at the familiar. Similar:Meet the guys who tape Trump's papers back togetherI tell this old newsroom tale to my stud…CultureDaughter doing a thing. Interviewing the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s Randall Miller for Bur… AcademiaTaking Harassment Seriously Requires Serious DistinctionsEditor and columnist Jonah Goldberg ques…CultureOnline dating is a method…
Thanks to Nick Montfort for posting this gem: Posted by Stephen Totilo on 10/8/08 at 12:00 pm. “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams may not have have felt like explaining the smoke monster to MTV News movies reporter Josh Horowitz during an interview taped a few feet from my desk last week. But he both offered to…
Seton Hill recently won a multimillion dollar instruction technology grant, part of which includes funding for a new technology specialist (which will become a permanent job when the grant ends). In helping to write the job notice, I drafted the “you-attitude” paragraphs, with the references to Bioshock and lolcats. Our grant will fund the creation…
I’m saving this for the next time I talk to my journalism students about surveys. Language Log. Do you think surveys asking for people’s opinions about the way things are, rather than verifiable things they have done, are an even more extreme form of stupidity, resulting in nonsense like “43% of employees believe managers may…
In a Ph.D. thesis called “The Paradox of the Guided User,” a dutch researcher examined the productivity of users who were dependent on computers, and users who had a pen-and-paper alternative. The article doesn’t link to the full dissertation, so it’s risky to extrapolate beyond the quotes in the article, so I’ll just repeat a…
That’s the story that’s been set up for the player to experience, and he travels along that path like a tourist on a Disneyland ride. However much choice the player seems to have in between these story checkpoints, the overall path of the game is geometrically equivalent to those of film or theater or books.…
My provost just sent some of my colleagues a link to this article on games and literacy: But doubtful teachers and literacy experts question how effective it is to use an overwhelmingly visual medium to connect youngsters to the written word. They suggest that while a handful of players might be motivated to pick up…
Beautiful, beautiful 1980s introduction to “sophisticated word-processor” technology. Similar:Devil's Due (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 13) Picard vs. sexy devil ArdraRewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingIn Defense of DistractionIf you’re a fan of lifehacking, you’ll a…CultureSCUBA Diving at the PoolBecause a beautiful sunny day at the poo…CultureI’m fairly satisfied with this version of a…
My student Dani Choynowski, a double-major in new media journalism and theatre, is a very busy woman. She’s getting top-notch grades in two challenging majors, her hand is usually the first one up during workshops or discussions, and she’s always ready with some connection to the world of theater or Harry Potter. Last semester, as…
I just attended an inspiring talk by Benjamin Ajak (one of the Sudanese “Lost Boys”) and Judy Bernstein, who collaborated with Alephonsion Deng and Benson Deng to write They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, which was SHU’s summer reading book. “Education is the power of the world.” “When I tell my story,…
A journalism student at NYU published a Generation Y-ney piece on PBS’s MediaShift. The first thing I notice when I walk into the class is that there are 14 girls and two boys. Already NYU is dominated by females, but the journalism department is exceptionally estrogen-infested. Professor Quigley begins by explaining how blogs are becoming…
I turned into a bobble-head doll, nodding, nodding, nodding, while reading this excerpt. I’ve already requested it for the library. We are at a crossroads. There are two possible paths before us–one in which we destroy what is great about the Internet and about how young people use it, and one in which we make…