Mine Ears Have Heard the Tinkling of the Righteous Ice Cream Bells (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) An ice cream truck just drove by our street, playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic“. It’s an emotionally rousing march, but it sounded very strange in this jingly kid-attracting arrangement. Okay, it was part of a patriotic medley, but it…
Whether you’re a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you’ve been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post. Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory,…
Why have monograph sales declined so sharply? Is it because readers are turning to other sources of information like the Internet, as many observers have speculated? The main explanation almost certainly lies elsewhere. Research libraries constitute a principal market for scholarly monographs, and in the course of the 1980s and 1990s they were subjected to…
The high-def format’s merciless gaze isn’t solely a matter of screen resolution. Color is a factor, too. For years, government standards have limited the range of colors available to broadcasters, based on the technological limits of the time. With high-def, more colors can be used, including some formerly forbidden shades of red — which means…
This article is designed to help publishers and editors understand citizen journalism and how it might be incorporated into their Web sites and legacy media. We’ll look at how news organizations can employ the citizen-journalism concept, and we’ll approach it by looking at the different levels or layers available. Citizen journalism isn’t one simple concept…
Watch next week for the introduction of “wikitorials” — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials. —To Our Readers (LA Times) Fascinating idea. Similar:Meet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureGirlhood 2014They don’t even seem to want to watch Fr…CultureIt’s alive!…
News sites used the event as a chance to experiment with methods of getting news out quickly. CNN.com, for example, put a scorecardlike page up ahead of the verdict, with a color-coded system in place to mark “guilty” or “not guilty,” as each juror’s specific decision was read. But rival MSNBC.com appeared to get the…
[T]he process by which a fringe subculture, through its idiosyncratic reception of Tolkien’s fiction, ultimately came to define the “medieval” imagery, pacing, and plotting of one of the most popular film series in history is a relatively recent development. What was once a conception of Tolkien’s medieval fantasy realm held by an eccentric few has…
Searching for Gregory Yob (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Gregory Yob wrote “Hunt the Wumpus,” a 1972 computer game that featured cave-exploration and combat. Of course, the game was all text, which makes it hard for most of my students to believe that anyone would possibly have enjoyed playing it. 1972 was also the year Atari released Pong.…
The horrible conclusion which had been gradually intruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recess of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as…
Entering Daddy Mode (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Each day this week, my nocturnal wife (a full-time home-schooling mother who never schedules anything before 11am) will get up early in the morning and head off to work. The director of the local Suzuki music school asked her to direct a play as part of a week-long, 9-5 music…
General Electric is the latest big corporate convert; politicians at the state and national level are looking for solutions; and religious groups are taking philosophical and financial stands to slow the progression of climate change. They agree that the problem is real. A recent study led by James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for…
Listen to the voices of many of the best writers of the English language. These uncut, behind-the-scenes interviews were the foundation of Don Swaim’s long-running CBS Radio show, Book Beat. —Author Interviews by Don Swain (Wired for Books) Great collection of literary interviews. Blogging this for future reference. Similar:National Headline Contest 2011Great headlines from winner David…
“You mean to tell me that we have just purchased a mega-expensive computer that will build robots, drive cars, walk, talk, and probably wash windows and you want a text computer game that requires less than 640K RAM and a black and white monitor to run?” Indeed that was what he wanted, and off we…
If you want to be “cool”, “hot”, or “whatever”, then you need to know the lingo. –compiled by Anette Lamb —Blog Lingo (Escrapbooking) I especially like “barking moonbat.” Similar:Essay on the flaws of distance educationThe web also creates the illusion that a…AcademiaBlewsMicrosoft researchers discuss Blews, whi…CybercultureHow Humans Respond to RobotsThe play that coined the word “robot,”…
Her workout on the Stairmaster pumped the clot right through a too-porous wall in the heart on a direct path to the right side of her brain. Hurrying down to the gym, I suspected that whatever the “small” problem was, we might still have time to make the play. Instead, our lives were about to…
This semester we are going to experiment with blog technology to practice working on your critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Frankly, I‘m not sure where this is going to go this semester, but I hope we will find this useful and productive. Students last term convinced me that blogs rather than course discussion lists…
Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China. In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The…
The Love Bug is still a 1963 Volkswagen with a mind of its own and headlights that can freakin’ blink. Herbie is back with Ms. Lohan in the driver’s seat. The VW’s look and story hasn’t changed since actor Dean Herbie rode in “Herbie Rides Again,” “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo” and — perhaps the…
Hollywood actors unions have reached a contract deal with video game publishers, accepting higher pay instead of the profit-sharing they had demanded, the unions said Wednesday, removing the threat of a strike. —Voice Actors Win Bigger Check (Reuters | Wired) Just following up on a story I blogged earlier. Similar:Cost of Living (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch,…