First, most of what we call “news” today starts out as a press release, which then becomes a headline, a sound-bite, and eventually a story. In a parallel to the way government operates, in which special interest groups lobby to create or defeat legislation, most of our news stories come as a result of PR…
If you read newspaper headlines last week you would have thought that planetary warming meant an arid apocalypse was inevitable for Western Canada. After a new review of what is projected to happen to the hydrology of snowy places like Canada was published in Nature magazine, the Globe and Mail thundered: “Drought threat looms over…
Welcome to the Rhetoric and Composition Wiki Book. This wikitext is designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs. We are writing this free wikitext because we believe that while commercial textbook publishers offer excellent products, many of our students are unable to afford them. We would also like to make our…
Since this will be my last drama wildcard, I wanted to say goodbye & good luck to everyone in our class. It has been a fantastic semester and I had a great time. I came into this class thinking I had nothing more to learn (damn senioritis), but I was wrong. I not only developed…
On the 8:12 a.m. commuter train, everybody just assumes I’m one of them. So does my secretary, my assistant, and every single one of my colleagues at the law firm, where I’m now a partner. I even married this clueless girl from Connecticut?loves shopping and everything?and we have two ironic kids. I swear, they look…
Blogs are the latest form of electronic information that law enforcement is examining as part of investigations, and experts predict they’ll become even more relevant as their popularity grows. “We have to look at that as a new medium to solve crimes,” said Cmdr. Christopher Vicino of the Pasadena, Calif., police department. “We would be…
—Volunteers work smoothly for Operation Santa Clause [sic]Â (Tribune-Review [Online]) Dear Santa, For Christmas, what I need most of all is a good copyeditor. Love, Pittsburgh Live.co Okay, okay… To err is human. I shouldn’t be so harsh on whoever typed the headline. It’s gloating blog entries like this that annoy professioal professional journalists and make…
All of the professors interviewed agreed that the Civ3 gods created a universe in which war goes a long way. The gods, of course, are the game designers who determine the algorithms by which history, in the game, will progress. So in order for the game to accurately portray the inputs that spit out world…
Don’t write the sentence “There has been very little research done on games” in any more papers or articles or theses and essays UNLESS you also have a full bibliography that cites those few existing works. I don’t care how many authorities you cite who may have written those words quite recently. Because yes, gamestudies…
In Bovine majesty she stands, Her purple tail she swings, The amethyst cow, To my heart somehow, Perfect joy she brings. —Purple Cow Parodies (Purple Cow) What if Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, William Wordsworth, or Rudyard Kipling saw Gelett Burgess’s elusive Purple Cow? Parodies by Susan and David Hollander. Similar:Chipping away at Pygmalion…
In a matter of minutes Thursday morning, while they were in Herald Square hosting NBC’s coverage of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a balloon crashed in Times Square, injuring an 11-year-old girl and her disabled older sister. Lauer and Couric didn’t mention the mishap. […] Couric and Lauer spent the last 10 minutes of the…
So far, 132 people have voted for the best geek novels written in English since 1932, in spite of Survey Monkey’s rubric saying free polls were limited to 100 responses. The top 20 is therefore as follows, with the numbers in brackets showing the number of votes. 1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy —…
Turning to a few student samples we can see this concept exemplified even more. Below is a quote from one of Dennis Jerz’s students. This is one of the student’s first postings, and you can see his/her enthusiasm about designing and creating a blog. September 08, 2004: LOOK AT ME, I HAVE A BLOG! I…
Each of the following uses a weblog or content management system to manage the site and/or really breaks traditional conventions in other ways, changing the way that the teacher establishes their professional ethos in comparison to the more traditional forms seen above. —Example Instructor Professional Home Pages (Introductory Composition at Purdue: Technical Mentoring) Just doing a…
—MLA citation style: quick guide (PDF) (Cal State University, San Marcos LIbrary) A handy two-page reference sheet. I was pleasantly surprised to see what example this guide uses for how to cite a website. Perhaps there’s a text-adventure fan on the CSUSM staff. Similar:Eco-critical Code Studies: Reconfigurations of nature in the born-digital artifact “Coloss… Video game…
Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question. […] So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article…
Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question. […] So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article…
Framing a story is like building a house. Just as you determine how many rooms the house should have, you focus on the main idea of your story and what you want to say. A poorly framed story is vague and pointless, and your writing suffers. Good adjectives cannot make up for a bad story…
Researchers unveiled a prototype of a $100 hand-cranked laptop computer on Wednesday and said they hoped to place them in the hands of millions of schoolchildren around the globe. About the size of a textbook, the lime-green machines will be able to set up their own wireless networks and operate in areas without a reliable…
Awopbopaloobop, alopbamboom! —Roger Ebert —Just Friends (Roger Ebert.com) Ebert can’t seem to stay on the subject of reviewing the movie Just Friends. Pretty funny. (Via MetaFilter.) Similar:Winnie the Pooh saga turns 100 years old todayOne hundred years ago today a Canadian s…BooksShades of Gray (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Two Episode 22) Forgettable low-budget clipshowRewatching ST:TNG after a…