My 13yo and 18yo enthralled by WarGames.
Wife likes movies. Son likes military thrillers. Daughter obsessed with 80s. Time to show them WarGames (1983).
‘WarGames’ and Cybersecurity’s Debt to a Hollywood Hack
After finishing his synopsis, Reagan turned to Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and asked: “Could something like this really happen?” Could someone break into our most sensitive computers? General Vessey said he would look into it. One week later, the general returned to the White House with…
When Asking the Question is Part of the News Story (New Example: Clinton Supporters)
I ask my journalism students to avoid using the phrase “When asked about…” as a default transition in news stories. While they are taught in freshman comp classes to introduce their quotes and then explain the significance of the quotes, to a journalist that’s just filler. This story from the Daily Mail (a UK publication…
How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus
It can be scary outside the box. A university is a box that people choose to enter. It can be scary in there, too. I don’t feel like I’m doing my job as a professor if I don’t make students feel at least a little uncomfortable. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses…
Sesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is Crushing
I’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of headlines surrounding the “Sesame Street moves to HBO” story. * HBO gentrifies ‘Sesame Street’ –VentureBeat * Sesame Street Episodes Will Shrink to Half an Hour –Time * Sesame Street Is Heading to HBO, and Getting Even Bigger –Esquire * This episode of Sesame Street brought to you by…
A salute lost to history
History is complex and baffling and fascinating. Reading this (an explanation that the stiff-arm salute that we now identify with the Nazis was a general gesture that was common in America before WWII) made my head spin almost as much as reading about the myth of 8 unbroken hours of sleep. A group of about…
Terminated for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem?
In February two students complained about an Allen Ginsberg poem that, at the request of a fellow student, was shared in Olio’s AP English class at South Windsor High School in Connecticut. A media uproar followed, and Olio was essentially forced to resign. Most of the facts do not appear to be in dispute – and are more…
Citizen Journalist Thrown Out of City Council Receives $200,000 Settlement
Know your rights as a journalist, and your rights as a citizen. The Mayor called the meeting to order and then said, “First of all, a little house cleaning. Uh, Chief Tatum, if you would, remove the camera from — from the auditorium. We don’t allow filming inside of the city hall here unless it’s…
The dark future of American space exploration: NASA’s golden age is about to come to a thudding halt
I remember, as a kid, being thrilled by the images that came in from the Voyager flybys in the late 70s and 80s. I wrote a fan letter to NASA when I was about 11, and received a big stack of glossy publications on the Space Shuttle and commercial technologies spun off from NASA inventions.…
New rules governing drone journalism are on the way — and there’s reason to be optimistic
Mapping disasters? So long as you’ve got ATC clearance, it’s possible. Imaging structures in 3D? Totally possible. Covering protests? With the caveat that you can’t fly over people, very possible.
Desiderata (Nerdy Inspiration)
This is a little story about an inspirational prose poem from the 1920s, a repeatedly unsuccessful US presidential contender from the 50s, a spoken-word recording released by Star Trek’s Mr. Spock in the 1960s, a Grammy-winning new-age anthem from the 70s, and a software company that taught my son to play chess.
Virtual debates about homelessness in Sim City hold up a mirror to real life
Back in 2009, the story of Alice and Kev, a blog about two homeless Sims characters, drew a lot of attention. (At the end of the story, the blogger asked for readers to help fight homelessness in the real world.) Here’s another interesting collision of the world of games and the world of social action.
What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2015?
If the pre-1978 laws were still in effect, we could have seen 85% of the works published in 1986 enter the public domain on January 1, 2015. Imagine what that would mean to our archives, our libraries, our schools and our culture. Such works could be digitized, preserved, and made available for education, for research,…
A college tells faculty it’s illegal to speak to student journalists
Congratulations, President Meadows. You have turned the little local squabble you wanted to silence into a very public issue. (See “Streisand Effect.”) Meadows said even though the administration is not prevented from speaking with students about the labor impasse, he had declined to answer [student journalist] Garber’s questions about the dispute. That, Meadows said, means…
The Sentence That Knocked Down the Berlin Wall (But Almost Didn’t)
Words that defined Ronald Reagan’s presidency, as remembered by the White House speechwriter. As a speechwriter you spent your working life watching Reagan, talking about Reagan, reading about Reagan, attempting to inhabit the very mind of Reagan. When you joined him in the Oval Office, you didn’t want to hear him say simply that he…
Reporters say White House sometimes demands changes to press-pool reports
The decades-old White House press pool was created as a practical compromise between the news media and the nation’s chief executive: Instead of having a mob of journalists jostling to cover the president at every semi-public function, a handful of reporters are designated to act as proxies, or “poolers,” for the entire press corps. Poolers…
How Social Media Silences Debate
The Internet, it seems, is contributing to the polarization of America, as people surround themselves with people who think like them and hesitate to say anything different. Internet companies magnify the effect, by tweaking their algorithms to show us more content from people who are similar to us. —NYTimes.com.
BREAKING: British Burn Washington … 2 Centuries Ago
Two hundred years ago this week, during the War of 1812, invading British troops destroyed two of the nation’s most important buildings — the White House and the Capitol. The war had started over issues of tariffs and the taking of American sailors on the high seas; by the summer of 1814, British fighters were…
My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole (Village Voice)
A closed-minded liberal writing a letter to the very liberal Village Voice receives a powerful dose of tolerance. Saving to show my students during a unit on developing an argument. The world isn’t being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist — the world is being destroyed by…
Russia Conspiracy Theories Trap Putin Malaysia Airlines MH17
An old journalism joke suggests that, during the Cold War, the USSR state-run news agency reported the results of a two-car race this way: “Soviet car finishes second; Americans next-to-last.” In a culture without a free press, the official story is the only story. Did you know that the crash of MH17 was all part…