"Mr. Storch has found that the ease, speed and accuracy of writing with a computer keyboard have vastly reduced the occasions on which he might turn to a pen or pencil. As a result, he and many others who spend hours a day using computers say that the penmanship they learned in school is deteriorating…
"Several years ago, the State University of New York at Buffalo took stock of its proliferating Web sites and found more than 250,000 pages spread out across 17 different servers. Not surprisingly, students and faculty members were having a hard time finding information they needed, even though they knew it was probably online — somewhere." Florence…
“Soon. Like in the next half hour or so. Given that I can’t do anything about it, I thought it might be interesting to stay online as long as I can and tell you what transpires…. I taste salt and something else. I exult in these moments. it’s the payoff for the bad times, the…
"After posting his father’s poem — a bitter reflection on the state of Egyptian society and culture after Egypt was defeated in the 1967 war against Israel — Shohdy was arrested in November 2001." Sergey Kuznetsov —Father’s Poem, Son’s Conviction (Wired) Similar:In July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX…
: The Smoking Gun features a small trove of scanned images of Monroe artifacts, including her will and a love note to Joe DiMaggio. Marilyn Monroe Died 40 Years Ago Today Similar:Beam me up, Chewie. AmusingWhat would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? @shu_hog… Amusing4 writing lessons from…
When asked to read a magazine article, 40% of college students thought that the author had performed the research reported in the article: "The willingness of students to believe that anyone who writes is an expert and authority was striking." Kate Manuel —How first-year college students read Popular Scienceb> (Studies in Media & Information Literacy…
In light of the above, it might be appropriate to mention Don’t Link to Us!: “Stupid Linking Policies.” Thanks, “paheil”. Similar:My Transplanted Heart and I Will Die SoonAmy Silverstein writes a stunningly powe…EmpathyThe Way of the Warrior #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 1) Worf joins the station…Rewatching ST:DS9 We cold open into a…MediaJournalists…
At Columbia, students "play pretend-journalism" for 10 months and leave with a master’s degree. "It’s striking how small has been the influence of J-school graduates on the upper reaches of American journalism." Tunku Varadarajan —Who Needs Dr. J? [Journalism-school reform at Columbia] (WSJ) Similar:Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original ''Adventure'' in Cod…Because…
Weblogs are vehicles for debunking inaccurate, biased reporting–exposing the media giants like never before. "A favorite target is the [New York] Times, which has developed the habit of running front-page editorials posing as news reports." John Leo —Flogged by Bloggers (U.S. News) Similar:Amazon may well be the most evil company in techLast week, I had…
"Researchers examined how different professions wrote text messages and divided them into four groups – creatives, jugglers, controllers and facilitators." —Children’s text messages are ‘the key to their future’ (Ananova) Sounds like a lazy journalist paraphrasing a press release rather than actually doing journalism, but the basic idea presented in the article seems interesting. Similar:I…
"The Internet is fueling an increase in library use which, in turn, has led to a library-construction and renovation boom." Steve Freiss —The Web Didn’t Kill Libraries: It’s the New Draw (CS Monitor) Similar:Sentence Definition: Species = Genus + DifferentiaJerz > Writing > Technical Writing…AcademiaSnap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO priceNASDAQ.com throws shade via Reuters:…
"I’m far too busy to seek [new drugs] out by reading medical journals and research papers or by talking to my fellow doctors. It really is a huge help to get great drug recommendations by way of hats, T-shirts, coffee mugs, pencil holders, clipboards, and fanny packs that I randomly encounter or that are sent…
Through the website http://www.austinpowers.com/, AOLTimeWarner seems to be hosting an altered version of my weblog, with the background colors changed, an advertisement added, and all the links changed — as if my weblog is affiliated with Austin Powers. I checked out the first movie from the library and won’t bother with any of the sequels.…
Somebody who apparently doesn’t care much about copyright laws scanned in all the pages from the first appearance of the comic book hero Superman. —Action Comics #1, 1938 Similar:Pa. agency explains why it enacted new 'no force-on-force rule' for Bushy Run, other sitesAttending the re-enactment of the Battle…CultureQpid (#ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 20) Q…
"John Robb, Userland president and COO, has coined a new term for the business blog — K-log, the ‘K’ denoting knowledge. It is so named because it is a tool for capturing and leveraging the knowledge contained in the minds of individual employees…" George Partington —Blogging: Electronic postings and links…nbsp; (WorldCom) Yes, that WorldCom.…
Google has reversed the economy of links; linking to a document makes that document more valuable to page-ranking systems. “The link has a clearer value to B than the content of Bs page has to me or to my readers. I pay B for Bs content with my link.” Jill Walker —Links and Power: The…
"Realizing he hadn’t eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases—cultural, racial, economic, and political—that infect all ethnographic and commercial ‘histories.’" —Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out…
"[W]omen have been systematically misled into overestimating their chances of dying of breast cancer in order to prepare them to accept mammography." [A review of the book Reckoning with Risk.] —Crunched by Numbers (The Spectator) Similar:The 7 things new college students don’t know that drive professors crazy While secondary schools pour the…AcademiaMedia Bias Chart 7.0…
Bulwer-Lytton wrote a novel that infamously began, "It was a dark and stormy night." His name lives on in the title of an annual bad fiction contest. This year’s winner: "On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll…
"Mr. Lomax was a musicologist, author, disc jockey, singer, photographer, talent scout, filmmaker, concert and recording producer and television host. He did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience." (Jon Pareles) —Folklorist Alan Lomax Dies (NY Times) Similar:Why ‘Cats’ the Movie Fails So FlamboyantlyI can’t seem to get…