In my discussions with opponents of [plagiarism detection services], it’s unclear that any methods of plagiarism detection at all are acceptable. Too much zeal to trust students can lead to a tacit “look the other way” practice which is naive, irresponsible, and just as likely to breed resentment among students who do the writing as…
Today Ibsen’s wedding of tragedy to the ethical dilemmas and unadorned rhetoric of middle-class characters seems like the necessary prelude to modern drama, from George Bernard Shaw to Arthur Miller. Within his stuffed Victorian living rooms, the Norwegian playwright championed free-thinking, if flawed, heroes over both the conformist masses and self-aggrandizing authorities. His signature metaphors…
Truth is: The flow goes both ways. We don’t move invisibly through the links, we leave a fine trail, much more real than pixie dust, but as intangible. Gathering information, we leave a trail of information. The ivory tower does not protect us here, and there are no sets of information gathering ethics protecting the…
The words “global warming” provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: “It’s a big scam.” And the name of climate researcher Kevin Trenberth elicits a sputtered “opportunist.” At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where Trenberth works, Gray’s name prompts dismay. “Bill Gray is completely unreasonable,” Trenberth says. “He…
Nobody ever doubted that Harold von Braunhut was one twisted dude. What else can you say about a man who transformed a dinky, transparent species of crustacean into “Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys,” peddling billions of the creatures under fantastically false pretenses? A man whose 194 other patents included those other unforgettable staples of comic-book advertising, Invisible…
The 40-hour gamers are able to play in a way that I used to when I was a teenager, but can’t anymore. They devote full evenings and entire weekends to marathon play-sessions. They get into the zone — that Csikszentmihalyian state of “flow” where all distractions drop away, and you focus with lizard-brain survival intensity…
—White and Nerdy — Weird Al Yancovic (YouTube) E-mailed to me by a student who knows me well. P.S. Kirk, definitely. Similar:Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?To summarize the findings: because they …Academia‘Snowplow parents’ may be trapping their childrenThe passing agonies of the everyday are …CultureSmall Changes in Teaching: The Last 5 Minutes of…
“(Video games) are a little bit like documentary films were in say the ’60s or ’70s,” says Suzanne Seggerman, co-founder of Games for Change, a support organization in New York for makers of video games dealing with social issues. “Film had been a popular medium for a long, long time, (but) it took quite a…
A high school assistant principal is suing two students and their parents, alleging the teens set up a Web page on MySpace.com in her name and posted obscene comments and pictures. Anna Draker, an assistant principal at Clark High School, is claiming defamation, libel, negligence and negligent supervision over the page on the popular free-access…
Two weeks ago, NBC began airing 30-minute episodes of “VeggieTales” on Saturday mornings. The show was edited to comply with the network’s broadcast standards, said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks. “Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of…
This discovery, if validated, will be one of only 10 remaining pages left in existence today, and according to unnamed sources at Seton Hill University of Internet Sciences, could expose the true reasons behind the almost complete depletion of both public and private schools circa 2300. Though several prominent scientists at the competing University of…
YouTube, You To Be, To Be You, You Be Too. (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Jay Leno and Videos he found on YouTube. About 3 minutes. The first clip looks like a scene from America’s Funniest Home Videos — nothing new there. Two of them are just clever video tricks, and while they’re nicely done, they don’t show…
Just because you tell your friend a secret doesn’t mean you’re happy when he tells others. Same with your employer, your bank or any company you do business with. But as the Facebook example illustrates, privacy is much more complex. It’s about who you choose to disclose information to, how, and for what purpose. And…
Knowing that the game would become an underground cult obsession, knowing that someone would eventually ferret out my identity, knowing that I would get death threats and receive requests for autographs, and knowing that one mentally disturbed man would cite my game as one he liked to play before randomly shooting at college students… there’s…
Documents to Go and VersaMail Woes (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I love my Tungsten T3 handheld computer. I also love Documents to Go, which is bundled software that lets me edit files (mostly word processor, but also spreadsheet and slide show) on my handheld, and then synch my changes with the version of the file on my…
I am the editor in chief of the Setonian. During production week, I live, breathe and worship all that is QuarkXpress, Adobe Photoshop, copyeditor’s marks and the Associated Press Style manual. People don’t really see me that much, that is, if you don’t count the back of my head, which is turned in the direction…
I watched a group of people popularly assumed to be rude, brash, loud and forward carefully negotiate the lack of washing machines, driers and laundry baskets, politely assisting when the time-lags were evident, ignoring the intrusions on personal space with almost Scandinavian stoicism, and happily folding their clothes side by side; Spanish, Irani and Irish.…
Firefox Upgrade 1.5.0.7 Resets Personal Settings (and keeps resetting them) (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My preferred web browser is Firefox, but this morning when I logged in, Firefox had upgraded itself automatically, and it wiped all my bookmarks and personal settings. I was able to reload the bookmarks pretty easily, but the darn thing is resetting to…
Zombies, eh? They’re us, and we’re them. When the worst comes to the worst what we should really fear is ourselves, and each other. I think that’s what Jerry Springer was really trying say. All of which serves as a very lengthy introduction to my latest completed project. A knitted homage to Dawn of the…
The quotation that caused all the furor involves a 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The pope quotes the emperor, who says: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his…