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…
Way Wrong — Time to Go to Bed (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) A new media researcher asked me to provide him with a few paragraphs on a subject I know well, for a proposal he’s planning to submit soon. I was going to dig out a couple of canned paragraphs this weekend, but one thing led to…
Last week, the Lonelygirl15 videos were indeed exposed as a hoax. The girl depicted was an aspiring actress named Jessica Rose. She subsequently discussed the videos on CNN, The Tonight Show and MTV — not bad exposure for a previous unknown. The creators of the video were revealed to be film professionals who describe their…
Is it such a bad thing for a student to feel comfortable enough with a teacher to share their personal problems? —Lori Rupert —When Seeking Comfort is Selfish (Continued) (Kaleidoscope ) This question sparked a good discussion on one of my students’ blogs. I’m not sure I’m striking the right tone in my comments over there.…
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. —F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Useit.com) Your goal as a web author is to put your best stuff in the hotspots. Obviously you can direct the user’s attention somewhat, using whitespace and graphics. But…
In Writing for the Internet, I had my students read some articles about e-mail and power relationships in the classroom. They are raising some very good questions in response. One asked me whether professors expect their students to send thank-you messages after every e-mail exchange. I just checked with two colleagues, and their reactions confirmed…
A man with a black trench coat whose shooting rampage in a Montreal college killed one person and wounded 19 others before he was slain by police said on a blog in his name that he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about the Columbine shootings. —Montreal gunman liked ‘Columbine’ game (Yahoo! | AP) Of…
Why did Godin decide to create a book series based on third-party NES games, and why did he use the name F.X. Nine? His reasons were both sentimental and practical. Godin was talking to his 10-year-old nephew about his hobbies, and was surprised to discover that the boy had never read a book for fun.…
A full day of radio programming from WJSV (now WTOP), Washington, D.C., for September 21, 1939. This project presents a representative sample of the mix of network and local programming of a major metropolitan network affiliate of the period. It also suggests a good deal about the programming mix of such stations: early morning breakfast…
Children are being deprived of the right to grow up at their own pace by a combination of advertising, junk food, pressures at school and TV and video games, experts have warned. —Junk Food, TV and the Internet ‘are poisoning childhood’ (This Is London) While video games are mentioned last in the lead, what does the…
When four planes were hijacked on a sunny fall morning, easy-to-use blogging services were still few and far between. Yet many who witnessed the horror of the attacks firsthand took to the keyboard to talk with the world. Horrified Americans used e-mail, instant messages, any available communication tool. But weblogs meant large audiences, not just…
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CAA spokesman Michael Mand said he “could neither confirm nor deny” that the agency is representing whoever is behind the 27 video posts. (Other talent agencies and production companies contacted by The Times denied any connection.) As to horror film rumors, calls made to several studios found no such plans — but plenty of fascination…
The 75-year-old actor said: “I’m interested in man’s march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.” Onboard the Starship Enterprise, sci-fi fans saw Shatner freely ‘explore the final frontier, seeking out new life and strange…
The outcry suggests the exhibitionism and voyeurism implied by participation in social networking sites has ill-defined but nonetheless real limits, and expectations of privacy have somehow survived the publishing free-for-all. For many people, apparently, pushing information to everyone on a friends list is not at all the same as publishing the same information on one’s…
A squirrel scampered into the bicycle wheel of an unlucky Finnish opera singer, causing him to fall, knock himself out and break his nose just ahead of the world premiere of a new opera. —Squirrel in spokes floors cycling opera singer (Yahoo!) Hm…. I don’t think the word “floors” is good for this headline, since “squirrel…
Western civilization did not exactly end last night as Katie took to the anchor chair. But the changing of the guard did represent another kind of cultural change. As of yesterday, network TV has proven it no longer feels the need to pretend that its nightly news broadcast is sober stuff, populated by earnest men…