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…
“We believe the victim was assaulted after hours Friday by an unknown individual or individuals,” a Columbia County sheriff’s departmaent spokesman said. “Though autopsy results are still pending, we believe the victim suffered fatal head trauma after his face was immobilized against the glass of a photocopier and repeatedly struck with the machine’s cover.” —White-On-White…
One thing that I feel very strongly about since I began my post-secondary literary studies, is that high school teachers tend to teach the students all sorts of things that need to be un-taught when they get to college. It drives me crazy! Shouldn’t we be teaching students skills they can build on when they…
I Think, I Want, I Know, I Feel, I Google (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Google Hits: I think (369,000,000) I want (275,000,000) I know (257,000,000) I feel (128,000,000) I hate (51,200,000) I love (270,000,000) Similar:What Can Science Tell Us About Dad Jokes?Beyond making the audience cringe and, h…CultureConfronting the Myth of the 'Digital Native'It’s one thing to…
The picture shows Stacy Snyder of Strasburg wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic “Mr. Goodbar” cup. The photograph taken during a 2005 Halloween party was posted on Snyder’s MySpace Web page with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” “The day before graduation, the college confronted me about the picture,” Snyder said Thursday. “I was…
Surely, Cho’s diseased mind was prepped and primed to commit mass murder, at some point. But did NBC’s show, the night before, serve as his prompt? In his afflicted state, did that “Dateline” installment push him over the edge? It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know. Yet, the numerous similarities between the Hyde and Cho stories…
“So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone?, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.” Umm, yeah, what to wright about?? I’m leaving to join the Marines and I really don’t…
One Iota of Difference (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) *Sigh.* I’ve already fixed the one I found on Wikipedia. Similar:Making a journalism game to teach myself ChoiceScriptMe: (Making a journalism game to teach m…AcademiaJANE EYRE Steps In and Out of Darkness at PICTJane Eyre is not a two-person show, and …AestheticsHow long has Google Docs let you pop up…
Floyd Collins was a caver who became trapped in Sand Cave on January 30th, 1925 50m from the entrance by a 26 1/2 pound rock. He was found and provided with food and media attention until February 4 when a further collapse cut him off, leading to frantic tunneling attempts, but he was found dead…
Read the poem slowly. Most adolescents speak rapidly, and a nervous reader will tend to do the same in order to get the reading over with. Reading a poem slowly is the best way to ensure that the poem will be read clearly and understood by its listeners. Learning to read a poem slowly will…
Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high-school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday. Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Ill., was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with…
A large focus of the book is the internal machinations of game production, and the demands it places on a writer. For example, a basic shooter may only require a few weeks of work on the writer‘sbehalf for the basic story, while a full-blown RPG could have the writer coming back time and again to…
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explained Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. “Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the…
I can’t hear you, Bert. (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I walk into my classroom about two minutes before class starts. It’s a great hybrid room, with 24 workstations around the outer edges, tables in the middle, and a huge projection screen up front. As usual, a few students who aren’t in my class are using the computers.…
The vast majority of gamers know life is not a Doom level – these rules are merely simplifications and abstractions that streamline very complex actions for smoother gameplay. We know when someone is shot in the head they do not lose 20 hitpoints. Games are not an excuse for their worldview, but rather a useful…
Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever’s message — checked for exact punctuation — reached the judges first. The text tests ranged from “faster than a speeding bullet…” and “what we do in life…