He was giving away Zippos for answering a survey…. So, even though I don’t smoke, I took the survey. He asked what I smoked, and I answered “Marlboro Lights.” Divine inspiration. Then he asked the tough question. “Hard or soft?” Well, I had no idea cigarettes could hard or soft. I was pretty sure they…
Most newspapers have traditionally not made room for online producers and editors in their newsrooms, shuffling them off instead to a different floor, or to a different building entirely.|But in the past few years, many newspapers have decided that having two newsrooms — one for print and one for online — doesn’t make much sense.…
“We intend to try our case in the courtroom, not in the public or the media.” —Michael Jackson, on a website devoted to trying his case in public and in the media. —Michael Jackson (The Official Press Room) I don’t actually blame the guy for wanting to have his say, but it’s a bit hypocritical…
Moveable Type FrustrationLiteracy Weblog) I’ve been using MT since the middle of September and haven’t had a single problem with it — until now. Since some time over the weekend, none of the 40 or so authors on blogs.setonhill.edu have been able to post comments. They can still post blog entries, but we can’t comment…
VOCALOID allows song writers to generate superb authentic-sounding singing on their PCs by simply inputting the words and notes of their compositions. The software synthesizes the sound from “vocal libraries” of recordings of actual singers, such as those being developed by Zero-G, and retains the vocal qualities of the original singing voices to reproduce real-sounding…
Walt Disney has pulled out of the new $140 million film version of Peter Pan after refusing to give a share of its profits to a children’s hospital in London… Barrie transferred the copyright of his famous creations to the hospital in his will. The hospital has full control over all productions of the play…
Think blogs are useless? Donna, while applying for jobs, got a email back from Central Pa Magazine. They happened to have read her blog and asked her to write a column on food/health for them. Let’s all cross our fingers for her that they ask her to be a regular columnist. | Woo Hoo Donna.…
Everyone knows that some very good people leave teaching because it pays so poorly. Some experts estimate that there is one well-qualified teacher not teaching for every one now in the classroom. Under my Leave No Teacher Behind Act, some of these people would surely return and others stay. That would increase the pool of…
Even now, surveys show that fewer than 50 per cent of Americans believe there was just one gunman. | One of the effects of this is that an entire industry has grown up surrounding the death of JFK, who was shot twice as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza… —The Assassination Industry (NZ Herald) Hmm… I…
—Lileks vs. Salam Roundup (Instapundit) Glenn Reynolds has a good collection of links covering Minnesota blogger and fisker extraordinaire James Lileks’s angry reaction to Iraqi blogger Salam Pax’s criticism of the US-led occupation. Similar:New York fails Common Core testsJust 23 percent of charter students scor…BusinessDuring World War II, Literature Reigned SupremeBooks symbolized freedom. Posters of 194…BooksFirst…
It’s no coincidence that the most-read blogs are created by professional writers. They have essentially suckered thousands of newbies, mavens, and just plain folk into blogging, solely to get return links in the form of the blogrolls and citations. This is, in fact, a remarkably slick grassroots marketing scheme that is in many ways awesome,…
Believe me, I’m all for the well-placed bit of flatulence, but this is Dr. Seuss, for Pete’s sake, and the onslaught of burps, farts, pee, puke, and almost-bad words is stunningly miscalculated. —Ty Burr —Kitty Litter: Coarse `Cat in the Hat’ is another case of Seuss abuse (Boston.com) This movie sounds awful, but I haven’t read…
Is it possible to write a policy for academic blogging that respects a university’s mission but doesn’t amount to censorship? The vice-president for academic affairs asked me to draft a policy for student bloggers. Since we are a Catholic institution, the administrator’s off-the-top-of-her-head suggestions included suggestions like “no foul language” and “no links to porn”.…
[Nothing to quote — which is ironic, considering the page is about literacy.] —America’s Most Literate Cities (U Wisconsin, Whitewater) An interesting find, from my student Julie Young. The website itself is an abomination — all these words are images, so you can’t copy and paste, a search engine won’t be able to find it because…
Not completely yes. First: most obviously, the Memex (had it ever been built) would have operated on photo-mechanical, rather than digital technology. (As you watch the animation, you can hear the machanical operation sound, that sound would be a proof to believe that it is not digital media) Second, the operation of the memex is…
We live in the dark ages of digital media. We fantasize about the infinite possibilities and revolutionary potential of the Web, about how free information wants to be, about uploading our brain to a hard drive — but we actually know less about the creative computing that happened in our lifetimes than some people know…
A Picture is Worth… Sigh. Do you remember when Jackson was black? As an academic, I try to keep an open mind… but in my humble opinion, this very talented man is really, really disturbing. I assume the mugshot, which I found on Drudge, is the same one that won’t show up when I try…
Nick Montfort’s Twisty Little PassagesLiteracy Weblog) I just ordered my copy of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction — Nick Montfort’s study of riddles, Adventure, Zork, and beyond. Similar:7 Tips for Budding Mobile Journalists“Mobile journalism is … not something yo…CybercultureTell Me a Smart Story: On Podcasts, Videos, and Websites as Writing AssignmentsIt does…
James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying. It’s an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which…
“In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?” Actually, wrong. By comparing the European Swallow with bird species of similar body mass, we can estimate that the swallow beats its wings 18 times a second with an amplitude of 18 cm… Jonathan Corum —Estimating the…