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 13Â (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…
For one thing, we overestimated academe’s interest in the humanistic study of video games. True, colleges and universities across the country are rushing pell-mell to grab a piece of the game pie, but that rush seems to be more about pipelining students into industry jobs than helping them develop critical-thinking skills. Ensuring that young people…
Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg. Yes, the country that for hundreds of years was best known for emigration, tragic poets, famines, civil wars and leprechauns today has a per capita G.D.P. higher than that of Germany, France and Britain. How Ireland went…
Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: “geeking out” and “vegging out.” To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal – and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a…
It just can’t be good, it has to be original and good. When I think hard about it part of me kind of wishes we hurled our bodies into the air, at times, cracking on impact, but I miss the rest of you and I am now working on keeping myself at SHU. You can…
Computers and the Internet are changing the way people read. Thus far, search engines and hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked take you to a new Web page, have turned the online literary voyage into a kind of U-pick island-hop. Far more is in store. Take “Hamlet.” –Gregory M. Lamb —How the…
At the same time, usability is also an ideology — the belief in a certain specialized type of human rights: The right of people to be superior to technology. If there’s a conflict between technology and people, then technology must change. The right of empowerment. Users should understand what’s happening and be capable of controlling…
We live at a peculiar juncture, one in which the record (an object) and the recombinant (a process) still, however briefly, coexist. But there seems little doubt as to the direction things are going. The recombinant is manifest in forms as diverse as Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, machinima generated with…
As theorists became endowed chairs, department heads, series editors, and MLA presidents, as they were profiled in the New York Times Magazine and invited to lecture around the world, the institutional effects of Theory displaced its intellectual nature. It didn’t have to happen, but that‘sthe way the new crop of graduate students experienced it. Not…
As did many others, I received the sad news this morning that John Lovas, recent chair of CCCC, passed away June 21, 2005. He was 65. —Doug Hesse —John Lovas (Community College English) I’m still catching up on all that happened during my offline week. This is a shock, and it certainly puts my own little…
On Father’s Day, while we were headed east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on our way to a family vacation in Amish country, the steering on our 1992 Taurus gave out. The car spun out in the grassy median, flipped over, and came to rest partially in a westbound lane.–Dennis G. Jerz —What I Did on…
Vacation June 18-25 (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Sometime this weekend, I’ll be taking the wife and kids to a cabin for a week in Amish country. Actually, that phrasing is misleading. It’s more accurate to say I’ll accompany my family to a cabin that my in-laws booked. At any rate, I’ll be offline the whole time… and…
The students were deliciously amused as the blinds fell. . . but the screen rose — or else the video was out-of-focus, or the sound intermittent, or worse. How I hoped to orchestrate the class! Instead, the room orchestrated me, and the technology orchestrated the room. Are lecture halls more vulnerable to the lure of…