Talk to teachers, review messages posted on e-mail groups and browse professional journals, and you’ll find high school assignments that are long on fun and remarkably short on actual writing. For example, someone who teaches an honors class for high school freshmen posts a short-story project that allows students 13 options, only a handful of…
The Riverwalk may be on fire (shopping mall at the river at end of CBD/Quarter). Everytime we talk to the police, we hear about sniper fire at the fire scenes. I cannot confirm that there is any. This is all hearsay, but it’s coming from the police. The police we talk to, while consistent about…
—Bus-ted! Update (Junkyard Blog) This satellite photo shows some 255 unused buses in a flooded New Orleans lot. (Found via Instapundit.) The photo — found, I presume, via Google Earth, and mailed to a weblog by a reader — depicts an unused escape route for some 15,000 New Orleans citizens. The blog, which defends George Bush…
As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don’t “get it.” That’s right, I don’t. Many in the tenured generation don’t, and they’ll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come. If that’s bad news, I’m sorry. But would it really be better…
It’s September, and I’m unleashing another crop of bloggers on the world. But some have been blogging already for years, and have developed a culture all their own. They’re going to trample a few of my flowers and track a little dirt on my carpet, but that’s okay, because I don’t live in a museum.…
Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editing. Nvu is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web…
I’m sitting with my Newswriting class in A309, because everybody is getting a blog today! To the newbie bloggers, a blog is like a sofa. You have to get used to it, you have to break it in, and eventually blogging will become comfortable. Sometime I think my fellow students are intimitated by blogs, but…
Private vs. Public Anyone can read this: professors, classmates Don’t write about your love life or last weekend’s activities unless you want your professors (or the academic dean) to read about it Take caution when complaining about classes or classmates Also, watch what you write – don’t link to pictures of you doing anything illegal…
Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true. […] Surprisingly, [epidemiologist John] Ioannidis says another predictor of…
[T]he geek bloggers are in decline and there is very little they can do about it. But before the flames start let me explain further because I’ve been tossing up the title of this post for about 24 hours, some of the other titles included: time for the geek bloggers to get a reality check,…
“Hyperbole researchers have arrived at, without possibility of argument or refutation, the single greatest moment in all of creation, now and forevermore,” said the project’s lead scientist, Dr. Lloyd Gustaveson, activating the hyperbolic chamber’s gazillion-ultra-watt semantic resonator at a gala launch party Monday. “The divine flame kindled by our new hyperbolic chamber will cast its…
An expression of rage, witnesses reported, came over Starr’s face as the befuddled agents followed the special investigator’s gaze overhead. There, in the middle of the ceiling, a grid panel covering one of the building’s ventilation shafts had been removed and was sitting diagonally askew in its casing, as if it had been hastily replaced.…
Duane Grunfeld, a 44-year-old Hartford-area insurance-claims processor, experienced a passing moment of satisfaction in his otherwise agonized existence Tuesday when he purchased a new pen. —New Pen Brings Fleeting Moment Of Satisfaction To Local Man (The Onion (Satire)) Similar:They Should Have Used Another TypefaceHave you ever noticed that the letters “…AestheticsApology of Socrates, By PlatoAristotle classified…
Greetings, fellow citizen of the Federation! I couldn’t help but notice that you seem a bit fatigued. I suspect that the many demands of Starfleet service have worn you down, and you now require recreation to refresh you and restore your spirits to a nominal level of function. I know just the thing–a merry Elizabethan…
Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to “organize the world’s information,” announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index. —Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index (The Onion (Satire)) Hooray! It looks like The Onion’s…
You say ”Looting,” I say ”Finding” (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Two interesting discussions on Flickr, regarding the ethics of captions that accompany stories about the looting in New Orleans. See: “Racism on Flickr.” It’s certainly worth noting that in one picture, a black an is identified as “looting,” but in a different picture, two other people (initially…
Mayor Cabot,” he wrote, “cast the only dissenting vote.” Then the editor reconsidered. Without altering its meaning in any way, he recast the sentence to read, “The mayor cast the lone dissenting vote.” With a stroke of the pen, so to speak, he had achieved a line of perfect iambic pentameter. The MAY-or CAST the…
An inseparable but special part of the feeling of words lies in the fact that they have to be produced by a human body — with an exception noted for parrots and the like. The act of producing a word involves breath and muscle, and various kinds of muscular activity tend to produce various kinds…
—Classes Start (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Today is the first day of classes. I’m teaching News Writing, Drama as Literature, and two sections of American Literature I. I also advise the student paper, The Setonian. Similar:White House Bars Times and Other News Outlets From BriefingKudos to the reporters from Time and AP …Current_EventsNo, this Jeopardy! contestant was…
A memo sent to departments ranging from residential life to counseling to public safety reminds employees: “We will not solve problems for students because it robs students of an opportunity to learn.” […] “We get quoted the price tag frequently,” said Dean of Student Affairs Jim Terhune. “But what you’re paying for is an education,…