Facing the Facebook

“We often hear the assertion that rising faculty salaries drive the cost of tuition,” he says, but data over 25 years show that is not the case. “One of the several sources behind rising tuition rates is investment in technology.” Facebook is not the sole source for those woes. However, it is a Janus-faced symbol…

Hedge your bets

Substantially fewer films will be produced over the next year or two. And a significant portion of the production costs of the reduced slate will be borne by hedge funds and other investment groups. Talk to the corporate hierarchs and you quickly elicit the thinking behind this pullback: Too many movies have been crammed into…

Bridging the Composition Divide: Blog Pedagogy and the Potential for Agonistic Classrooms

Without deliberately planned, consciously modeled classroom use, it is understandable that students might fall back on their understanding of the blogs as an electronic version of the print-journal, a genre without interactive or collaborative potential. However, we contend blogs can impact the writing classroom effectively, if their integration and function are clearly structured and articulated.…

Please Stop Honking

Dear fellow resident of my Pittsburgh area neighborhood, I rejoice in the knowledge that you are apparently pleased with the performance of the football team that serves our geographical area. By all means, feel free to celebrate. Have another beer or something. But please take your black-and-gold-mitten-clad hand off your car horn so I can…

A Heavenly Legacy

It has been twenty years since Christa McAuliffe reached for the stars. Her launch into the sky on the space shuttle, Challenger, literally became what she had previously anticipated as being, “The Ultimate Field Trip.” What truly prophetic words they were. —A Heavenly Legacy (Reeves Library) A good overview of the legacy of Christa McAuliffe. Similar:In…

Google Won't Hand Over Files

Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose, California for an order to hand over the requested records. —Google Won’t Hand Over Files (Wired | AP) Similar:I ditched Google for Bing with ChatGPT for…

Comments Turned Off

But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we’ve decided not to allow comments for the time being. It’s a…

Screening the Latest Bestseller

The result is a display that looks far more like ordinary paper than a liquid crystal display, because the pixels reflect ambient light rather than transmit light from behind. There’s no flicker, because the pixels are completely static (in an LCD or a cathode-ray tube display, by contrast, pixels need to be “refreshed” 60 times…

German firm bans office whingers

It is a small firm, which employs 16 people. But there is something that distinguishes Nutzwerk from other companies. Employees can be fired if they are caught complaining in the office. It may sound absurd, but employees have a clause in their contracts which states: “moaning and whinging at Nutzwerk is forbidden… except when accompanied…

Randomized Garfield

—Randomized Garfield Garfield strips, chopped up and re-assembled randomly. Funnier than the originals. Via memepool. Similar:Portofess”If people can confess on Oprah, Phil an…EthicsThe poetry of deafnessMy auditory processing disorder makes it…AestheticsWe're Teaching Books That Don't Stack UpOur provost sent this link to English fa…AcademiaThis Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping…

Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure

Revision 88 / Serial number 54892 Oval Office You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you. There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of…

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked

Franklin believed men were equal, in a certain way, but he was consistently reluctant to endorse Thomas Jefferson’s notion of human equality, informed by John Locke, that all men are equal in a state of nature, and he rejected the idea that all men are equally loved in the eyes of God. It was manifestly…