“The technology is simple,” said Microsoft Office Research Division Head, Richard Greenwood, “students have been doing it for years. Thanks to the power of Microsoft Word 2004, anybody can turn a five-hundred-word report into a ten-thousand-word masterpiece.” —Word 2004 to Pioneer AutoUnsummarize Feature (BB Spot) Not the best spoof news site, but this article isn’t bad.…
I’m marking blogging portfolios for my Writing for the Internet course. Here are a few gems: “I don’t get any leftovers at school, and I miss that twice-heated home cooked goodness.” — Amy Slade “I’m willing to wager that writing for an online medium is letting me take the easy way out.” — Julie Young…
A solid agreement has been reached between BlogShares founder Seyed Razavi and technologist Jay Campbell — the site is coming back! —Blogshares: Coming Back Soon I figured that a good idea wouldn’t lay dormant for very long. Similar:Three challenges for the web, according to its inventorA letter, published a few weeks ago, in …BusinessWinky Winky…
OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and hit the “Find words” button. (Keep it short to…
Citing the prior week’s ABC broadcast of “Living with Michael Jackson,” the controversial Martin Bashir documentary, the school official lodged allegations of “general neglect by mother and sexual abuse by ‘an entertainer,’” according to the summary memo…. [P]ublished reports have indicated that the older boy was taunted by classmates after the documentary aired on ABC’s…
Scientists say measurements taken by the US space agency’s Mars Odyssey craft prove that a human mission could survive on the Martian surface. | Instrument data show radiation around the Red Planet might cause some health problems but is unlikely to be fatal. —Richard Black —Humans ‘could survive Mars visit’ (BBC) Also interesting in this article:…
I hear of and see teachers who write comments on student drafts, sniffily, ?You have reached the maximum number of errors. Rewrite? or ?You don’t have a conclusion here. You need to add one.? The message here is clear as a bell: Your ideas don’t matter. To Hell with your ideas. Your obedience matters, or…
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history — with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.” —Christopher Harper Mitch Radcliffe? Ratliff? Computers, handguns and tequila (And That’s The Way It Will Be… News and Information in a Digital World) Found this quote in a paper written by a…
“I worked hard in high school, but they could have worked me harder,” said Belisle, now a sophomore. “Not only was I adjusting to new people, a new place to live and a new city, but I was adjusting to a new way of learning.” | From the U.S. Department of Education to the company…
There are instances when, in the interests of the majority, some censorship may be used for a period of time. Indeed, there is material which virtually everyone would agree should be kept out. Sadistic pornography, incitement to violence against racial or ethnic minorities are just two examples. | But we cannot strive for an information…
“Good job!” doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. It may even create a vicious circle such that the more we slather on the praise, the more kids seem to need it, so we praise them some more. Sadly, some of these kids will grow into adults who continue to need someone…
Oh the snow outside’s delightful. My stacks of papers to mark are frightful. For the students who want to know: Days to go, days to go, days to go…Stacks and Stacks of Papers to GradeJerz’s Literacy Weblog) Dear Students, The last week of classes is always an emotional time for me. I love you all,…
Dr. Michael Whitlatch, professor of speech and drama, has a review published in the November issue of Choice. His review of “Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950 Soul and Society in the Age of the Machine,” by Dennis Jerz has just been sent to college and university libraries. —Whitlatch Publication (Buena Vista U) Gulp! As I prepare…
I’m not sure I’m artciulating anything new here, but for me, reading some of the “high-profile” blogs feels a little bit like listening to talk radio: a charismatic figure stirs up people’s frustrations and fears by linking to a news article or bit of information. Then a feeding frenzy takes place, with dozens of other…
His voice was calm, but I could tell by his furrowed brow that what he truly wanted to say was, “Graduate school is a slow and unrelenting descent into hell. Save yourself while you still can.” | I felt the earth move under my feet. Grad school had been my last great hope. For most…
Key to the technique is comparing news sources that cover the same events but employ slightly different styles. Because they are writing about the same events they contain the same facts, or arguments, said Barzilay. “This gives us patterns which are kind of the same — and this is the core of the paraphrasing technique.”….…
“We realized the only way we could improve on the original is if the Cylons could have sex,” quipped co-executive producer David Eick at Tuesday night’s Los Angeles premiere. The chrome-domed “walking toasters” from the original TV series are succeeded by — well, really hot blond chicks, who infiltrate human society to engineer its doom.…
…Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph “persuasive essays” for the state exam, she was stumped by her first [college] writing assignment…. “I had good grades in high school, so I thought I could do well in college,” Ms. Arevelo…
Santa Claus needed Rudolph, Hermey, and Yukon Cornelius, and during the show’s climactic blizzard, the outcasts negotiated a place within the North Pole’s hegemonic power structure… | One can only imagine the looks on the faces of the children who unwrapped the misfit toys. Did they laugh and cheer for the squirt gun that sprayed…
The story you are about to read is true. It involves a fugitive heiress, guns, money, and layers of Internet intimacy and deception. It is a mystery that takes place at the edge of technology. And it is unlike anything you’ve ever read before. —John H. Richardson —The Search for Isabella V (Esquire) A fascinating additional…