Now, it’s worth noting that Brisbane’s question makes perfect sense, considered from the newsroom’s perspective. Romney’s claim that Obama makes speeches “apologising” for America isn’t readily amenable to fact-checking. Instead, Romney relied on what are sometimes called “weasel words”, in which an allegation is alluded to, without being made head-on. (Romney, for instance, never quotes…
Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs.…
See more at Pepper Spray Cop Squirts the Internet in the Eye Similar:Masks serve many purposes. How sad that they’ve become politicized. I’ve seen the original meme on my so…Current_Events▶ Taylor Mali on "What Teachers Make"I find that re-watching this every year …CultureLaying out our anti-socialization defenses & cleaning out the penitence shack for anot…Visiting…
I wonder what kind of a government we would have, if laws were written as collaborative Wikis. Looks like Iceland’s new constitution came close. To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document…
Whereas a mere couple decades ago, one could simply point a finger at the mass media and their powerful cultural producers as the source of most offensive stereotypes about minority groups, Web 2.0 technology and the #Occupy movement shows us how stereotypes can be perpetuated, embellished, nay, even constructed at the grassroots level, by men…
While I was in Egypt this summer, citizens explained why they flocked to protests early this year. Their stories focused on hardship and grievances; admiration of the Tunisian revolution; and the power of “street networks,” or the techniques used by mosques, unions and community organisers to rally people in the working class, almost none of…
Even when I mentally adjust for the alarmist rhetoric, I find this truly frightenting. What a pathetic use of resources… what a painful sign that our public schools are failiing, when they circle the wagons like this and villify their neighbnors, in an attempt to keep their local systems afloat. Other school districts use services…
Kismet is set in ancient Baghdad, a time historians call “The Islamic Golden Age.” Johnstown is in western Pennsylvania. “Flight 93 flew right over our heads,” school Superintendent Thomas Fleming Jr. explains. United Airlines Flight 93, of course, plowed into the ground nearby on Sept. 11, 2001, after the hijackers were overpowered by the passengers…
Since President Barack Obama announced last month that he would sign an executive order allowing states to request waivers from mandatory participation in the program, at least 27 have signaled that they will ask to opt out, and most others are reviewing their options. — States line up to ditch No Child Left Behind –…
Photo captions matter. Someone has to write them. Looking forward to the chapter in my journalism textbook. Here’s a real-world example of how captions can affect the news. In this case, the captions were themselves newsworthy; they created the news. The Weekly Standard reported Aug. 9 about a set of White House photos from Jerusalem that…
In 2008, when her scientific publication, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science, became the first in China to use CrossCheck text analysis software to spot plagiarism, Zhang was pleased to be a trailblazer. But when the first set of results came in, she was upset and horrified. “In almost two years, we find about 31 percent…
Today was the last day of a Benjamin Franklin exhibit at the Heinz History Center. My daughter stayed home sick, but I am glad I was able to visit with my son. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the exhibit on glass-making. I also enjoyed the detailed history of the Pittsburgh Courier, a…
What a way to socialize the school-building kids. The 55,000-student Atlanta public school system rose in national prominence during the 2000s, as test scores steadily rose and the district received notice and funding from the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation. But behind that rise, the state found, were teachers and principals in 44 schools…
When the Berlin Wall fell, I soaked up the optimism. Soon after, the reporters who had been covering the Cold War began filing reports from the Middle East. I remember asking my dad, “Is it always this way? The good news story gets stale, and the bad news happening somewhere else catches the world’s attention?”…
From a “realistic” standpoint it makes sense; it would indeed be impossible for a nigh-omnipotent being ideologically aligned with America to intercede against injustice beyond American borders without creating enormous political fallout for the U.S. government.While this wouldnt be this first time a profoundly American comic book icon disassociated himself from his national identity —…
While I was at home recovering from a brief but dramatic illness, my wife took the kids to an educational event at our local library. When my son (who turned 13 last month) returned, he told this story — another example of his intersection of interest in both history and video games. I asked him to…
Striking story of how, on the very spot where African captives first landed in the American colonies in 1619, slaves who had been forced to build fortifications for the Confederate Army claimed asylum on Union soil. Back at Monroe — dubbed “the freedom fort” — fugitives continued arriving daily. Each morning, dozens lined up to…
At Seton Hill, Christina Michelmore is about to speak on the Egyptian Revolution. Packed house at Reeves Theater. #Michelmore 7:00 PM Feb 22nd Michelmore is chair of the History Department at Chatham University. She studies images of Muslims in the Western world. #Michelmore 7:07 PM Feb 22nd Setting up extra chairs for “What’s Happening in…
When the Huffington Post launched in 2005, I wondered, “What will be the contributions of a large bunch of people, who could have blogged on their own if they wanted to, but were motivated to do so by the Arianna Huffington brand name?” On launch day, Many of the celebrities-turned-writers wrote initial entries that amounted…
Fascinating exploration of the relationship between official responses to torture and official responses to file-sharing, and possibly a useful way to introduce a big-picture concept (the issue of justice and its relationship to power) to students who have a strong opinions about the importance of their own file-sharing activities. [P]owerful perpetrators commonly use many or…