This editorial from Pepperdine shows good, clear writing, unlike the four-word CSU editorial that has been in the news recently. It emphasizes the fact that the editorial does not simply contain a vulgar charge aimed at the president, but that… When students at Colorado State University in Front Collins opened the Sept. 24 issue of…
A scene from Ridley Scott’s youth, via Wired: The air smelled like toast. Toast is quite nice, but when you realize it’s steel, and it’s probably particles, it’s not very good. Crossing the footbridge at night, you’d be walking above the steel mill, crossing through the smoke, dirt, and crap, looking down into the fire.…
Wired teases a bit, so that the ending is actually kind of anti-climactic, but it’s a wonderfully geeky puzzle. From ISS, orbiting 220 miles above the surface of the Earth, the qibla (an Arabic word meaning the direction a Muslim should pray toward Mecca) changes from second to second. During some parts of the space…
AP | Guardian The morgue scene couldn’t have been more grim: As doctors worked to retrieve evidence from 33 bodies riddled with gunshots, they were unnerved by the ringing of victims’ cell phones, signaling loved ones seeking reassurance they would never get. This haunting detail offers, after several months, a fresh perspective on the VA…
NYT: a student helps a security guard tackle a student carrying a rifle: The scene at the university yesterday underlined how campus security has been rethought in this country since April, when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. Instead of fleeing out of classrooms and onto the street, students at St. John’s were…
Full transcript, the very end of which is Columbia’s Bollinger having the last word: I’m sorry that President Ahmadinejad’s schedule makes it necessary for him to leave before he’s been able to answer many of the questions that we have or even answer some of the ones that we posed to him. (Laughter, applause.) But…
I missed this when it came out during a recent rush of newshole fodder about Anna Nicole Smith. It is predictable yet slightly amusing for the first minute and a half, but be sure to watch past that point — I’m still recovering from my coughing fit. Similar:Hermann Zapf, the font designer behind Palatino and…
For me, this was the money quote in this Chronicle article about a study on the college admissions process: I have never wanted anything in my life as badly as I wanted to get into that college. … That is not how it should be.” Similar:Maybe it wasn’t a sensible idea to hold 5 hours…
The New Atlantis The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each site has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is “managing.” The Pew survey mentioned earlier found that “teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships.” There is something Orwellian about the…
From the AP, via Editor and Publisher: Colorado State University’s student newspaper has lost $30,000 in advertising and had to cut pay and other budgets by 10 percent because of fallout from the use of a four-letter word in an editorial about President Bush, the Coloradoan reported Saturday. In large type, the editorial included the…
Images of Journalists in Popular Culture (PDF) A newsroom is always filled with fast-talking, bright people whose main work is to speak to strangers, investigate a situation, get answers, develop a story. Since reporters are always finding out something about someone, they create countless stories with good beginnings, middles, and endings. The newspaper gave the…
I’ve been scanning the online coverage of the MIT student who caused a bomb scare when she walked into an airport wearing a blinking circuit board on her sweatshirt. I’m dismayed by the number of headlines that unquestioningly repeat the authorities’ line that she was wearing a “fake bomb.” Several headlines at least put the…
I’ve been laid up in sick all weekend, mostly drifting in and out of sleep. I started getting chills Friday afternoon at work. I zipped up my jacket and put the heater on in the car to keep the chills under control, went to the couch in the basement (where my wife banished me) and…
aibohphobia The irrational fear of palindromes (words that read the same forwards and backwards). Dude 1: Hey, what’s your name? Dude 2: Bob. Dude 1: AAAAAAAAAAH! *Runs and hides behind sofa* Bob: Wow. Dude 1: AAAAAAAAAAH! *Runs away and falls down stairs* This completely stupid fauxbia made me laugh for some reason. There appears to…
Great Zork map. Similar:The Storyteller (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 14) A Bajoran village mystic na…Rewatching ST:DS9 O’Brien tries to we…BusinessCarolyn portrays Maria in West Side Story, Aug 9-12. #ifeelpretty #tonight #somewhereAt the Geyer Peforming Arts Center in Sc…AestheticsStar Wars Han Solo in Carbonite Silicon Ice Tray Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonit…AestheticsHow Star…
The Walls are Closing In  It’s all my fault that now I hear their death – their screams of pain within their final breath. No, we are alive. And thanks to you, we’ll get out. A whole song about such a literal event? Songs in musicals, even if they are showpiece numbers attached closely…
Language Log offers a thorough discussion of the real story of the emoticon. Before seeing the Google Books page image, I had thought that Bierce’s suggested punctuation looked like this: \___/. That’s how it appears in a footnote to Andrew Graham’s online essay, “Forked Tongue: The Language of Serpent in the Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary of…
The LA Times pulls no punches in this column on the aftermath of Dan Rather’s pathetic defense of a slipshod story alleging Bush weaseled his way out of his military duties. Now, if you once had thought of yourself as situated at the heart of the journalistic universe for nearly half a century, and suddenly…
Emily Short reviews a game that tries to make a point: While I sympathize with the message of the game, it didn’t really work for me, for two reasons. First, the game is irritating to play. It’s impossible to undo mistakes (if you accidentally confiscate someone’s pants instead of his shoes, for instance, as I…
Wired’s Threat Level: Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon. Similar:I am very happy for these folks, who spent 20 or so years tweaking an insanely complex, co… AwesomeThe Emissary (ST:TNG Rewatch: Season…