Wastewater job really stinks

From the outside, this professional complex of modern buildings along Route 30 East near Ligonier had all the appeal of a sedate college campus. Two newer, red-brick buildings sat near the administration office and lab, both housed in a structure that easily could be called Old Main. There was even an aesthetically pleasing weather vane…

My First Blog Entry

Blogging away for the common good or just to keep from watching whatever crap is on TV right now. —Michael Moore —My First Blog Entry (MichaelMoore.com) This is a welcome development… I’ll be very impressed if he enables comments! Thanks for the tip, Mike. Similar:Dragging Myself to a New Skill Level with Blender 3DWorking on some…

Cinematic truth lies in the close-up

In the current rejection of the close-up in mainstream cinema, filmmakers seem to have learnt nothing from the past. The 1950s epics now seem stolid, and most of DeMille is unwatchable. In a few years’ time, The Phantom Menace, George Lucas’s first Star Wars prequel – which was filmed almost entirely in medium and wide…

Visual Blogs

Does this mean that future weblogs should favour image over text? To do so would be to the detriment of the medium as it is the combination of words and images presented over time that make the visual blog what it is. Yet the contributions that images can make within weblogs should not be underestimated…

Fending Off a Plagiarist

A doctoral student at Northeast Urban University — I’ll call him Mr. X — presented my dissertation as his own. He received a Ph.D. and took an excellent research job at Prominent African University. Through my subsequent efforts, he lost his degree, his job, and his reputation. […] Mr. X must have thought that he…

Power Surge: Writing-Rhetoric Studies, Blogs, and Embedded Whiteness

Blogging and other electronic forms of rhetorical delivery and performance will not retain their power and ability to help white people in particular overcome our institutional and other kinds of racism, as I have strongly claimed here, if the Military-Media Complex, the five communication conglomerates in the U.S. as well as others in, for example,…

Into the Blogosphere

This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others. —Into the Blogosphere Similar:So, what…

Interview with Nick Montfort

Putting aside the issue of whether popular culture is distasteful, no one wants to preside at the opening of the Department of Beanie Baby Studies. —Nick Montfort, interviewed by “Mat”. —Interview with Nick Montfort (E Boredom) Similar:Wonderfully Detailed Tribute to 1970s British TV Show Space: 1999″A middle aged geek” puts it well: “Utte…AestheticsSteampunk flag for the…

Marlon Brando Dies at 80

Brando revolutionized American acting with his Method performances in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “On the Waterfront” and went on to create the iconic character of Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” —Marlon Brando Dies at 80AP|MyWay) Similar:What Khan Academy's Fun, Free Learning Empire Has to Do with Dystopian Social Control Over the Christmas break, I’ve been…

A Sudden Case of 'Routine Maintenance' in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

A Sudden Case of ‘Routine Maintenance’ in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Our local amusement park has a ride based on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The trolley takes you past large-scale mock-ups of various sets from The Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and yes, Trolley goes through a tunnel. “Come along, come along, to the castle hug-and-song,”…

It’s a Didactic Day in the Neighborhood: Mister Rogers and Educational Ideology

I recently lamented that my kids are growing up without Mister Rogers -– a very sweet public television show that features an infinitely gentle father figure who wears cardigans and talks directly to the camera. (We don’t have good reception of our local PBS station.) Someone gave us a copy of a Mister Rogers show.…

New Media's Age of Anxiety

Most Americans claim they don’t believe what they read in newspapers or see on TV — only a third say news organizations generally get the facts straight — yet their opinions continue to be influenced by the media. Multiply this curious effect by the dozens of cable TV news shows, the hundreds of newspapers and…

Is the Musical Comedy Dead?

The reason most pre-1940 musicals are unrevivable is that their books tend to be both slapdash in literary quality and fanciful to the point of absurdity. It was only in the late 30’s that the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart began to emphasize dramatic plausibility, most notably in Pal Joey (1940). And…

Usability

Chunking | Forms | Frames | Fitts Law | Flash Usability | Guidelines & Principles | Link Rot | Liquid Design | PDF | ROI | Writing, Reading & Content | Articles & Related Links —Usability (The Net Place) Great collection of links to practical online articles on each of the above subjects. Similar:Essay on the…

No Train, No Gain

—No Train, No Gain A great collection of short articles focusing on such topics as how to find an interesting story in a boring budget meeting, the basics of interviewing, and taking notes. For the first time this fall, students will be able to get credit for working for the student paper (of which I…