GM famously learned this lesson in the early 1980s with the introduction in Mexico and Spain of its Chevy Nova coupe. “No va” in Spanish means “won’t go.” —What’s in a name? For cars, everything (Detroit News Auto Insider) And the editors at The Detroit News Auto Insider area about to learn a lesson about urban…
I’ve Been Sick… (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I finished posting all this semester’s grades just before the annual Christmas Mass and faculty/staff lunch on the 21st. That’s the most organized I’ve ever been, when it comes to grades. I was feeling very proud of myself, and very happy to be here at Seton Hill, doing a job…
Vasconcellos argued that raising self-esteem in young people would reduce crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, school underachievement and pollution. At one point, he even expressed the hope that these efforts would one day help balance the state budget, a prospect predicated on the observation that people with high self-regard earn more than others and thus…
For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that’s played God with the American public, telling everyone what’s news and what’s not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of…
Researchers singled out the deaths of more than 300,000 cancer patients, because deaths from cancer are usually more predictable and less sudden than those from heart attacks, strokes or other ailments. There was no increase in overall mortality after Christmas. —Liz Szabo —Terminal Patients Don’t Hang on Until After Holidays (TechNewsWorld.com) That probably won’t put that…
—Buttered Mashed Potaotoes Classic Filled Candle (bathandbodyworks.com) I’m sorry, this seems… wrong. Thanks for this link, Rosemary. It has disturbed in me in ways that I would prefer to forget. Similar:Covfefe chaos: What Trump’s typos say about his administrationMisspelled tweets and typos in press rel…CultureWhat Can You Do With An English Degree? | Seton Hill UniversityOne…
In the bowels of the British Library, the first object the conservator showed Seales was a manuscript that was so mangled, he says, “We almost ran screaming from the room, because there was nothing we could do. We had no tools that could help.” Seales tells me such manuscript fragments exist in the nooks and…
Washington Post Co. on Tuesday said it would buy Microsoft Corp.’s online magazine Slate, whose mix of politics, news and culture has built a loyal following but failed to yield significant profits. —Martha Graybow —Washington Post to Buy Web Magazine Slate (Reuters) Similar:You are in a book. There is a typo here.Sigh. Critical Path – Dan…
In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford’s strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart’s stingy compensation policies–workers make, on average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they must pay more than a third of the premium–contribute to an economy in which, increasingly,…
“Sometimes you do everything right and you still die,” Mr. Wade said. “So you pick yourself up and start again.” I can live with that message, even though I can’t shake the feeling that it was designed to sell books to conflicted parents like me. —Learning Early That Success Is a Game (NY Times) An interesting…
As Web logs proliferate — Technorati, which tracks 5 million blogs, estimates that 15,000 are added each day — the boundaries between public and private are being transformed. Unconstrained by journalistic conventions, bloggers are blurring the lines between public events and ordinary social interactions and changing the way we date, work, teach and live. And…
Because government schooling is so bad, and dissatisfies such a gigantic amount of people, as represented in ?survey upon survey,? it therefore follows that they cannot be held liable for their faults! Imagine this being said of a private company?an auto maker, or a toy manufacturer, produces products that are so extremely bad that they…
Tips Using blurbs with headlines rather than headlines-only seems to help disperse interest throughout a homepage (down the page). Recognize that a list of headlines-only high on the page might not get people to look as much on lower portions of the page. The use of blurbs does not appear to affect the number of…
I know who the murderer is, Kevin blogged. —S. Kurruk —The Lyttle Lytton Contest (Adam Cadre) One of the “winners” in the Lyttle Lytton contest, Adam Cadre’s alternative to the Bulwer-Lytton contest. (Cadre is also an accomplished interative fiction author.) Similar:Brian Williams is Giving NBC an Opportunity to Bravely Break with TraditionNBC has a marketing decision…
Exams: Hard vs. Unfair (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) As students got their first look at the final exam for “American Lit 1800-1915” the other day, a few gasped, “This is hard!” One student shushed the others. “It’s not all that hard if you think before you write.” Our classroom culture was open and friendly enough that the…
“She’s somewhat neurotic,” he confides, “but she is bright, organized and conscientious–the type who’d get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu.” He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old “couldn’t see the big picture.” That…
On both micro and macro levels, drawing from the research of others and my own, this proves true for both teachers and students: for some, particularly those with access, the blog is relevant to their lives both within and outside the classroom; for others, though, the medium remains irrelevant. This means that the quest for…
“Will you sit with the baby while I read the boy a good-night story?” “I’m so dead,” the wife sighs. “You put them both to bed tonight.” The six-year-old parades past holding the book he’s chosen. Nuclear Energy. Husband and wife exchange glances. “Look!” the boy beams. “It has a whole chapter on protons!” Wife…
Actress Sharon Stone has filed a liable suit against an LA plastic surgeon for comments he made about Stone having had plastic surgery. Stone adamantly denied the claim and is suing. —Freddie Mooche —Sharon Stone sues doctor for liable (Axcess News ™ News for the X generation) Earth to copy-editors… that should be “libel,” shouldn’t it?…
Improve Your Students Grammar Skills That was the subject line of a marketing e-mail I recently got from a publisher. I didn’t bother to check whether that publisher has any punctuation and proofreading titles. Similar:Students say "math class is stupid and boring," and they are right. –Mathematician Paul L…I am working on some conference papers…