Blogging yet another story that reminds young fans of social networking sites that their profiles may be more public than they think. WashPo “I know for a fact that when a superintendent in Missouri was interviewing potential teachers last year, he would ask, ‘Do you have a Facebook or MySpace page?’ ” said Todd Fuller,…
Thanks, Becca, for forwarding this link about how the American newspaper has changed in the past three years. Last semester my journalism students did a unit on community journalism, and they wrote long features that were destined for our new summer-orientation and fall welcome-back issues. So I was aware of some of the changes observed…
Steampunk is one of my guilty pleasures… I think of it more of an asthetic than a literary movement, and I own neither a pair of aviator goggles nor a wind-up pocketwatch. Nevertheless, it happens that at this moment in another window I’m rendering a 3D view of an brass-and-glass spaceship ethership that features in…
As traditional news organizations face increasing pressure to cut back on investigative reporting and depend more heavily on celebrity and puff pieces (cheap to produce, attractive to advertisers, accessible to a mass audience), Dan Gillmor suggests that advocacy groups such as the ACLU have an opportunity to fill the gap. If only they were fairer…
Does anybody today say — without shame — that their hobby is watching TV? Or listening to the radio? These media are so deeply entrenched in our society that we barely think of them. According to Ian Bogost, a time will come when the concept of “the gamer” is obsolete. Not because games will be…
How did WarGames become the geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy? Related question: Shall we play a game? —Wired Similar:A Man, a Plan, a Pointless(?) ProgramI readily admit that my accomplishment h…AmusingAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this meme because…
Former editors protest and lament the discontinuation of a literary staple: The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section. To be sure, no section of any newspaper…
Thanks for the link, Neha. Inside Higher Ed has a good article on the place of composition within the field of English studies. I have no interest in the now clichéd grumblings over English departments and their esoteric if not onanistic engagement in high-octane literary theory. I will only say that there is merit to…
A 2001 article from the Columbia Journalism Review… blogging it because one of my journalism courses this fall will focus on election coverage. What’s sure is that TV’s election night practices are in for significant reupholstery well before the 2002 races. Several networks promise they’ll project winners in the future only when all polls have…
I tell my free-verse-loving creative writing majors that Picasso learned to paint traditional portraits before he chose to put two eyes on one side of a figure’s nose. Likewise, learning the traditional rules of grammar will make your writing more powerful, since if you choose to ignore a convention, it will be a deliberate action,…
Rather than link directly to the article, which was published by the Associated Press (an organization that tries to charge bloggers for quoting excerpts of more than a few words), I’ll link to the Slashdot discussion of the article. Similar:Coming of Age (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 18)Rewatching ST:TNG A character-heavy e…MediaNot bad for a…
The other day at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, I attended a brown bag talk given by my Seton Hill colleague, Maureen Vissat, The Art of the 1940s: Styles and Influences. I had seen her present as part of a series of teaching demonstrations, so I knew her talk would be excellent. She wove…
Fascinating stuff… according to CNN, the story is, in order to secure the release of 15 hostages, the Colombian military set up a fake website that borrowed heavily from a real organization’s identity. The organization’s logo — a stylized red bird on a white background in the centermost of three concentric circles, with blue leaves…
From the L Magazine. Some are actually just unfortunate art, but the whole list was worth it for this one:In addition to the usage error, I particularly like how the highlights on the drops of blood seem to be made by a light shining *up* from the lower right. Okay, and this next one is…
A great introduction to some of the reasons why I love studying the English language. From John McIntyre’s You Don’t Say. The malapropism: This venerable category of errors derives from the delicious and eponymous Mrs. Malaprop from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals of 1775. Mrs. Malaprop (from the French mal a propos) pretentiously and unknowingly…
ZDNet: Researchers at software vendor CA have discovered that social networking site Facebook is able to track the buying habits of its users on affiliated third-party sites even when they are logged out of their account or have opted out of its controversial “Beacon” tracking service. Similar:Created a new graphic for an existing handout on…
On a listserv of which I’m a member, Jerome McDonough points out that Tennis for Two is an analog game, so not only does it not require a computer, the medium itself — an oscilloscope — is an analog, so the information being represented on the screen isn’t digital at all. An even earlier game,…
Every year, the Army recruits, at great expense, tens of thousands of young men and women. Given the costs of recruitment (and the dearth of eligible recruits), the Army cannot afford to lose many of these new soldiers. Army training is designed to take recruits who may know nothing about military life, discipline, or maneuvers,…
Threat Level has a story on the McCain campaign’s tracking of the Obama website. Nothing really new about the practice, and nothing stunning about the revelation that the Obama camp sometimes updates its website (gasp!), but what’s unusual is that instead of independent pundits doing this in their pajamas from their living rooms, this is…
One of my favorite things — a photograph of a mistake on a sign. From Language Log. Similar:NYPD's Lt. Cattani offers heartfelt apology for "wrong decision" that threw his reputation…Cops are trained to make snap decisions …Current_EventsAxios journalism style delivers traditional news content in scannable formatIn addition to the fact that it’s good n…Current_EventsUnearthing a…