The Pentagon is setting up a civilian Language Corps, a cadre of some 1,000 foreign-language speakers who can help the government in times of war and national emergencies. In a three-year pilot program, the Defense Department will recruit volunteers and do testing to see if such a program would work. If successful, a permanent corps…
They came from all over the world, poles in hand, and feet ready to inch more than half a mile across a high wire strung over the Han River in a spine-tingling battle of balance, speed and high anxiety. —Bo-Mi Lim —Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo (Yahoo! | AP (will espire)) This is a news…
Some linguists are worried that the proliferation of text messaging among students may hurt the development of formal English. Johnson does not agree. “I don’t buy it,” Johnson said. “I think students can distinguish between different contexts. What they would say with their friends is different from what they would say to an instructor.” Text…
Police arrested a college student Tuesday suspected of opening fire in an off-campus apartment during a dispute over a video game console, killing one man and wounding two others. —Calif. Student Arrested in Shooting (AP | MyWay (will expire)) Similar:Clickbait writers hate this English professor's time-saving trick!Defeat clickbaiters with this one weird …Cyberculture1,000-pound rosary sends heavy…
But I should have expected that. The IF Comp, an annual contest to see who can write the best text-based game, offers a vast treasury of interactive fiction, and many of the entries over the past 13 years are truly fantastic. Some, like Vespers, are lit-geek works of art, putting the bulk of commercial games…
Imagine Gilligan’s Island without the Howells and their paper dollars. Without money, commodities exchange directly: coconuts for fish, fish for bamboo, etc. But even with barter, some commodities are more “marketable” than others. Perhaps one of the castaways might eventually buy one of the Professor’s books, but they will more often purchase Mary Ann’s coconut…
Why can’t anything fun ever be slouched toward? I mean, what about Slouching Towards Deliciousness, or Slouching Towards Balloon Animals? —Slouching Toward Something (Why Not Sneeze?) Similar:All of Your Co-Workers are Gone: Story, Substance, and the Empathic PuzzlerHowever, running parallel to the evoluti…AcademiaLet’s Make the Academic Job Market More HumaneIt’s been decades since I’ve had the…
When we refuse to “budge an inch,” excoriate “rotten apples,” or admonish slackers to “sink or swim,” we speak in his voice. Although the arts sections of newspapers teem with products from self-anointed “artists” who will not survive their publicity budgets, Shakespeare after roughly four centuries still pleases general audiences, challenges intellectuals, and provokes academics.…
—atari-and-controllers (jackrabbit.etsy.com) Via join the dots. Similar:Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced…Current_Events‘It’s destroyed me completely’: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI modelsOpenAI has already taken a toll on human…BusinessWhen is the phrase "when asked about…" part of good news writing? Rarely.A new graphic for an existing handout,…
To Do (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) 5: The number of proposals I’ve sent off in the last 24 hours. (Well, one I had drafted weeks ago, and another consisted of me answering the phone and saying “Yes,” but still…. ) Feels like a pretty good day. To do: Share with colleagues draft of revised senior portfolio for…
This article from The Week has statistics that bolster and weaken arguments frequently used by people on both sides of the debate. —How other countries deal with gun control (BoingBoing) Blogging this for future reference. I’ll be teaching a news writing course in the fall, and one of the most challenging units involves getting students to…
Vetting Comments Strangers Post to Class Blogs (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I always enjoy telling my students when I start noticing comments that people who aren’t in our class start posting comments on the course weblog or individual student weblogs. Sometimes the poster is someone who took the course in the past and is recalling with fondness…
“You present an engineering problem, like a fighter plane that’s returned to base shredded by antiaircraft fire, and ask students where they would put extra armor,” said Mr. Tront. Students circle various parts of the plane that took a lot of hits. “You can show their solutions one by one and discuss them,” he said.…
—Stephen Granade —LOL Trek (Live Granades) I was vaguely aware of the lolcats phenomenon, which involves remediating the famous “Hang in there, baby” cat poster as if the cats themselves were writing the captions. Never did I expect it to be unleashed on the beloved Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” (which has earned it…
A Chinese student was transferred from his high school to an “alternative education center” (?) after his parents found he had designed a Counterstrike mod with maps based on his school. Two parents learned of the map he made from their kids, and they informed his parents, who in turn reported him to the Fort…
Digg Takedown, Obama Takeover, Army Blog Squeeze (Jerz’s LIteracy Weblog) This is the last week of classes, and I’ve got deadlines galore (3 conference proposals, an annual report, a departmental proposal, and an article submission that I’ve been sitting on for a week). So I won’t have much to say, but I still thought it was…
Getting shot hurts. — Ronald Reagan —Reagan diaries reveal president’s private musingsYahoo! | Reuters (will expire)) As an American who started drinking tea the English way while in Canada (brewed in a pot and poured into the cup, not made in the cup with a single-serving tea bag), I enjoyed the anecdote about Prince Charles.…
On the night of Monday, April 23, the magazine’s editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up. —Richard Pérez-Peña —Business magazine fails to heed its own tech advice (International Herald Tribune) What makes this a “dog bites man” story is the…
—Map of Online Communities (XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language) Thanks, Josh, for the suggestion. (This is just an excerpt from the full map.) I’m going to have to give this site some attention when grades are in… I wish the artist could draw people instead of stick figures, but the jokes are…
A cameraman for the NBC affiliate in Houston was captured on home video sporting a Mexican flag on his camera while covering a rally in the Texas city that supported illegal immigrants, drawing angry shouts from counter-protesters. In the first of two clips posted on YouTube.com, a counter-protester with a bull horn can be heard…