In his office with its towering view of midtown Manhattan, Pearlstine boasted that if I’d been writing for Time or Fortune, or any other Time Inc. publication, he would have backed me all the way to the Supreme Court. “We take the First Amendment very seriously around here,” he said. I couldn’t help but recall…
According to the students, the less they were taught, the better. But I knew better. And I had been on the receiving end of some of these half-taught students. One of my colleagues at a large community college in California had confessed that he passed any student who would sit through his course. With no…
Community voices have always contributed to local and national papers. Citizen journalism is different. It often covers a wide territory from soliciting arts and entertainment coverage to providing the angle on the city council budget that the cub reporter might have missed. The London attacks moved the trend to a new level. Web sites from…
Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights. And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up (along with much of their business). Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with…
Self-reflection is a hallmark of many teachers’ blogs, according to the creator of weblogg-ed.com — the first stop for most teachers who want to try blogging. But thinking of them only as online journals shortchanges the medium, said Will Richardson, the nationally known lecturer on the topic who runs the site. “More and more teachers…
In some cases, a Google search of the candidate’s name turned up his or her blog. Other candidates told us about their Web site, even making sure we had the URL so we wouldn’t fail to find it. In one case, a candidate had mentioned it in the cover letter. We felt compelled to follow…
Observation is good. If you want to write about caves, go look in one. If you’re actually an adventurer, and not a wimp like me, go caving. Report back. We’re curious what it’s like beyond the handrails. —Andrew Plotkin —Likely To Be Eaten By A Bottomless Pit (rec.arts.int-fiction) When I read this Usenet posting in 2001,…
The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for a glimpse. —NASA Cheers Probe’s Direct Hit on Comet (AP|MyWay) Similar:We Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process…
Homeless and broke at age 53, he allowed the domain registration for robotwisdom.com to lapse and can’t afford to re-up it. He has abandoned his Chicago apartment and is staying on Andrew’s floor while he tries to get back on his feet. He’s looking for work – sort of. After a few hands-in-pockets attempts at…
States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more. The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at…
Spacewar! was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962 by Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz, together with Alan Kotok, Steve Piner, and Robert A Saunders. […] The “a”, “s”, “d”, “f” keys control one of the spaceships. The…
Fubon said that the trader was unfamiliar with new computer systems and will be fired. —Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy (News.com) What kind of an interface lets a worker spend $251 million with a single keystroke? The real problem here isn’t the worker — it’s a whole inhuman mindset that expects human beings…
My 7-year-old son envisions random evildoers coming into our house and abducting him — and we don’t let him watch TV news. But how can anyone miss the danger teases that blast through prime time like buckshot? And while we debase ourselves by playing voyeur to the pain of families immersed in tragedy, we ignore…
Let’s say you picked a specific number of people in the United States at random. What then is the chance that the people you picked do not accurately represent the U.S. population as a whole? For example, what is the chance that the percentage of those people you picked who said their favorite color was…
Rushkoff’s “A Computer Ate My Book” paints a more symbiotic relationship between the print and electronic worlds. He sees book writing and online publishing as two sides of the same coin. He appreciates the tangible appeal of books but also resents that his American publishers won’t let him release electronic versions of his books. —Susannah…
As befits its beginnings, the genre is planted firmly in pop culture’s nerd division. The films most often given the fanfic treatment – The Matrix, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean – wing straight out of dork central. There are thousands of fanfics online for each popular anime TV series, and many hundreds for sci-fi…
Edmund Wilson once wrote, “Doorbell broken–please knock.” How might this sentiment be applied to Cheever’s Neddy Merrill, who finds himself looking through the windows of his own deserted house? Compare Neddy Merrill’s feelings at that moment to the feelings of, for example, a fictional Assistant Professor after a humiliating and unfair performance review by the…
This page provides the usual list of links to writing resources on the Internet… but instead of trying to cover everything in a long list, I have been very selective. The “Spotlight” section features links to articles about academic writing. If you have suggstions for this page, please let me know. —Dennis G. Jerz —My…
After 2 1/2 two years of frustrating setbacks and delays, NASA officially set July 13 as the launch date Thursday for the first space shuttle flight since the Columbia tragedy. —Marcia Dunn —Space shuttle ‘go for launch’ on July 13 (AP/My Way) In my mind, the space shuttle is intimately connected with school. The Columbia tragedy…
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that a surprisingly large number of native English speakers, who are otherwise very technically competent, seem to lack strong English skills. Mostly, this seems to manifest itself as varying degrees of poor spelling and grammar: ‘definately’ instead of ‘definitely’; ‘should of’ instead of ‘should have’; and I even…