Thanks for the link, Rosemary. From The Atlantic. Economists and ecologists sometimes speak of the “tragedy of the commons”–the way rational individual actions can collectively reduce the common good when resources are limited. How this applies to traffic safety may not be obvious. It’s easy to understand that although it pays the selfish herdsman to…
Mike Arnzen writes about the thinking behind his decision to revise his syllabus to include a statement on the use of electronic devices in class. In some ways, there’s no difference between a student texting and a student flipping through a magazine in the back row of a class, but there are times when we…
If my old shoebox of Meego Star Trek action figures turns up, I’ll consider myself very happy. Seton Hill’s librarian, David Stanley, reports an even more significant historical find. From the Reeves Library blog. Kelly Addleman, our public services librarian, received an email from a researcher in Germany who has been making a survey of…
Boston.com: A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon. Similar:The lesson of Rolling Stone and UVA: protecting victims means checking their stories It is a depressing certainty…
A good lesson in journalistic humility. FoxNews. One morning, there was a fatal accident. One person died. One lived. As always, I dutifully jotted down the information from the report. And a few hours later, I announced to all of Ohio who died and who survived this crash. But I was wrong. See, the police…
From the BBC… thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. The 3,000-year-old skeletons were in such good condition that anthropologists at the University of Goettingen managed to extract a sample of DNA. That was then matched to two men living nearby: Uwe Lange, a surveyor, and Manfred Huchthausen, a teacher. The two men have now become local…
Facebook’s advertisers in ur feed, annoying ur friends. (Wired) Undeterred by the setbacks with its Beacon platform last year, Facebook is rolling out more advertising that uses your friends to sell you stuff. Similar:Why Do So Many People on YouTube Sound the Same?So it turns out the “YouTube voice” is j…CultureAnyone capitalized in a standard…
Excellent example of effective journalistic use of a striking detail. This made my morning. The gnome, about a foot tall, wore a hat, a blue shirt over a bulging stomach and a wide grin as it sat on a table in open court throughout the two-day trial. Morrison and the weapon were separated by about…
An Ohio State press release discusses how a student’s psychological profile correlates to academic integrity. An interesting study in rhetoric, focusing on promoting a cultural identity for the “academic heroes” who do honest work, rather than hunting and trapping those whose behavior is less exemplary: The students completed measures that examined their bravery, honesty and…
The latest Pew report: Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly (at least three days a week) as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially…
Josh suggest this story. Experimental software now under development can automatically swap eyes and facial expressions from one face to another, and the software is being tested as a way to anonymize faces that appear in Google Maps. This story is about more personal, more targeted, use of image-processing software. (NYT) Ellen Robinson, a volunteer…
Wondermark Similar:In January 2001, I was blogging about Bill Clinton's #WhiteHouse security deposit, anachro…In January 2001, I was blogging about …AcademiaImagine all the people. Just reading their damned syllabus.These are not the rhetorical choices I w…AcademiaEducators approve national campaign to halt high stakes, “toxic tests”Not a news item, but an announcement fro…CultureCould We Just…
I need a new office chair. Similar:That Much-Despised Apple Ad Could Be More Disturbing Than It LooksApple has apologized, but like writer Pe…AestheticsThe Siege (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 3) Sisko defends DS9 while Kira tries…Rewatching ST:DS9 Picking up where s2…CultureSynchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging StudentsEvery time I have taught an online…
It’s hard to believe that the word “hello” entered common discourse so recently, and that an inventor suggested it in a conscious attempt to develop a protocol for using the telephone. (Wired, apparently borrowing heavily from Wikipedia.) Bell’s famous first words spoken over what we now call the telephone — “Mr. Watson, come here. I…
An iPhone is too expensive for my budget, but I’m still happy to see this, from Wired: Open iPhone. Go to App Store. Download Frotz. The classic text adventures from Infocom made us all learn the shortest possible way to write responses, and this brevity of input seems perfectly suited for iPhone use. Similar:A Pox…
I’ve gone underground to finish off a few projects related to Colossal Cave Adventure, so the blogging has been light. But I’m surfacing in order to blog about this poll, which shows that a majority of respondents said that the government should not force bloggers to give equal time to opposing views, some 31% disagreed. …
A short comedy sketch that emphasizes the importance of finding the right editor. Similar:The daughter sings and performs Shakespeare at the Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival t…CultureRubric for the Rubric Concerning Students’ Core Educational Competency In Reading Things I…Sadly, this only barely counts as satire…AcademiaThe Most Epic Demo in Computer History Is Now an…
From The Washington Post: It hit Mark Gruntz all at once, while he was sitting flat-broke in an airport in Greece: He had lost credit for three summer courses, wasted $11,474 in student loans and gotten kicked off a boat. All because he hadn’t cited Wikipedia enough in a paper about a movie. Last week,…
Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students’ atrocious spelling. Aren’t we all!? But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea. University teachers should simply…
A thirteen-year-old girl posing as a record executive on MySpace has lured several bands to Los Angeles with promises of a record contract. — BBspot The concept is good, but the writing doesn’t sustain the joke. The reason The Onion is so good is that the articles not only make the joke, but they do it completely within…