A 14-year-old Indiana boy mastered “autochthonous” to win the National Spelling Bee Thursday, outdueling 264 rivals, including one who fainted on stage but recovered to take second place. —Ben Feller —14-Year-Old Indiana Boy Wins Spelling Bee (AP|MyWay) Also worth noting: the comment about the environment at the bee (“[c]ourtesy reigns”), and the story of Ashkay Buddiga,…
Associated Press editors were forced to retract an earlier report that a meteorite might have hit near Olympia, Wash., this morning after discovering that a source, one Bradley Hammermaster, claiming to be an astronomy professor, had perpetrated a hoax. —Joe Strupp —AP Meteor Crash Report Was a Hoax (Editor and Publisher) Similar:Sparklecleaver the PonyswordCorrections -…
To paraphrase Matt Barton‘s hyperbolic words playfully, let’s remove our lips from the poisoned suckbottle of proprietary software and switch to the wholesome breast of open source. —Clancy Ratliff —Taking Copyfighters to Task (CultureCat) Beware, open-source activists, if your praxis is not as pure as your theory! In the theater world, it turned out that the…
Writers are supposed to be on TV to tell people what to read or to explain how to clean up television, period. When a writer is a regular on television, his or her writing craft has to suffer because you’re in make-up when you should have been trying out sentences. Pretty soon, your writing starts…
“I was treated like a god,” the former Nebraska quarterback says. “I had pretty much everything given to me out there from the start. | “I never thought I had to work for anything. It was pretty much understood, ‘Hey this kid is going to take over the program.’ I don’t like things given to…
Since the best way to make a good choice is by using the Internet, I ask all my readers to reach out to a senior citizen who doesn’t understand computers. Clip this column and invite a senior — perhaps a relative or someone who lives in your neighborhood — to line up his or her…
A survey of 1,309 pupils aged between 10 and 14 and from 24 different schools found alarming levels of ignorance about the invasion of Normandy 60 years ago. —Hastings and Henry —D-Day 1899 and President Denzel Washington is leading liberation of New Zealand from the Nazi’s (Telegraph) One teacher at Great Addington Church of England Primary…
A parody helps change a corrections policy at The New York Times. An online critic’s query ends a career at the Chicago Tribune. Bloggers’ scrutiny is making its mark on traditional journalism. —Mark Glaser —To Their Surprise, Bloggers Are Force for Change in Big Media (Online Journalism Review) Another great suggestion from Rosemary. Similar:I just dusted…
As an example of the new pricing plan, suppose you posted an entry to your blog reading, ?I had a cheese sandwich for lunch today. Then, I got behind the slowest woman in the grocery-store line! Grrrr!? By my count (TypeKey will handle the sentence diagramming automatically in MT3.0014d), this entry contains 6 adjectives/adverbs, 4…
THE world’s newspapers enjoyed buoyant advertising sales in 2003 but overall reader numbers were in marginal decline, according to a report on the state of the industry delivered at the 57th annual World Newspaper Congress today. —Christine Pouget —Newspaper advertising up (Daily Telegraph) An interesting detail buried in this story: “The distribution of free newspapers –…
On 19 September 2001 the Federal Minister for Aged Care the Honourable Bronwyn Bishop MP launched the National Public Toilet Map. The National Public Toilet Map identifies the location of more than 13000 public toilet facilities in Australian towns and cities, including rural areas, and along major travel routes. Useful information is provided about each…
“They struck his head with a reed and spat on him.” — Mk 15:19 —The Crucifixion (in Lego) (The Brick Testament) This site, by “Rev” Brendan Powell Smith, features Lego illustrations of Biblical passages — including many that you don’t often see in kiddie books, including the Dueteronomy passages on rape, bestiality, incest, homosexuality, transvestism, and…
Wikipedia is both an encyclopedia and a wiki community. You can edit articles on Wikipedia right now! Learn how to contribute with the tutorial (or just play around in our sandbox). For more information, post comments at the Village Pump, read the Help directory and our policies, contact other Wikipedians, and keep track of what’s…
Jerzies: Tastes Like Cardboard! After I lamented that I couldn’t design a box of cereal for myself, this is apparently Mike Arnzen‘s way of telling me I’m a flake. Or maybe just that I stay crispy in milk. Thanks, Mike. Similar:New data on the first three jobs held by graduates of six popular majors“There is…
eeeeeee ee [iiiiiii:’ii] v. to move. e eeeeeeee ee eerp mph; move over, you meatball, I can’t breathe under your furry butt. —Harrap’s Rat-English Dictionary (ratbehavior.org) A rat-English dictionary. Via join the dots. Similar:"Do Date" vs "Due Date": Do Profs Really Have to Explain the Difference? If there really are teachers who lis…Academia"I'm a geek. Deal…
[It’s a visual site with little text to quote.] —Don’t Buy It: Get Media Smart (PBS Kids) Found via watercoolergames, where the “make a cereal box” utility was featured. I couldn’t get that to work on my computer, which is too bad, because I really wanted to make a Jerz’s Literacy Weblog cereal box, and maybe…
How can we ask our students to read great literature and then criminalize them when they respond, on occasion, with the angry bitterness of Hamlet? Clearly, we’re not dealing with the proverbial “isolated incidents” here. FEAR ITSELF is loose in America and it needs to be addressed, strongly, powerfully, by all of us who teach…
Writing bad poetry is easy when you disregard meter, pace, and rhyming scheme. Just make sure to follow a few simple guidelines: 1. Never write about anything cheerful. Remember, you are a tortured artist. Be one. 2. Be sure to use the following words at least once per sentence, no fewer than 50 times per…
The final internet chatroom exchange took place on 28 June last year. “U want me 2 take him 2 trafford centre and kill him in the middle of trafford centre??” said one message. “Yes,” came the reply. Less than 24 hours later, a 14-year-old boy was critically ill in hospital with stab wounds in the…
It’s exciting to see the topic generate such interest and activity — especially since that’s one of the premises on which the Disseminary is based. One of the topics involves the question of what the various conversants mean by “open,” which I’d summarize with the following list of opennesses: “open source” (Stephen Carlson’s emphasis): primary…