A few interesting bits I found interesting to explore: There are two different ways to view the exact same data: The logarithmic scale shows a great comparison of the magnitude of growth between countries, but less of the human impact. The linear scale shows the real human impact — a growth twice the size is twice the number of…
My weekend coronavirus lockdown project was writing up a new handout devoted to Graham’s “Disagreement Hierarchy” for academic arguments. Does the word “argument” make you think of angry people yelling? This document presents Graham’s “disagreement hierarchy,” which catalogs multiple stages between juvenile name-calling and carefully refuting an error in your opponent’s central point. Siblings might…
Public officials misspeak all the time. Journalists make mistakes all the time. Ordinary citizens over-react to headlines without reading the full article all the time. We are all of us human. It’s unfair for any of us to treat every gaffe as evidence of malice or incompetence. For example, critics of President Trump are stretching…
Not fake news. Not the enemy of the American people. “Nobody ever thought a thing like this could have happened,” said the the president at Thursday’s press event. Feb 27: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.” [Narrator: “Cases were not going down.”] Feb 26: “The 15 [documented cases of COVID-19 in the USA] within…
The Society of Professional Journalists links to an interview with an MIT professor who’s studying misinformation on social media (which is not the same thing as bad journalism — some bad actors take journalism out of context in order to deceive). Responsible journalists are aware that sensational headlines can harm the public. The truth is…
In light of current events, I’m dropping the bleak Waiting for Godot from my World Drama class (actually I’m making it optional; students could drop a different play) and adding Thornton Wilder’s absurdist but optimistic The Skin of Our Teeth. Writing while World War II was still raging, Wilder depicts a representative American family…
Carolyn and were recently cast in a historical film. I recorded my video audition last week, feverish with an upper respiratory tract infection, coughing and gulping from a mug of tea between lines. Our characters are in different time periods, but we each get to fight someone in a duel. Filming for our scenes was…
CNN’s Stephen Collinson praises the president’s Monday press conference. This version of Donald Trump will save lives. The President offered Americans something they have rarely seen from him in his latest and most somber press conference yet on the coronavirus pandemic on Monday. He dispensed unimpeachable information based on fact. He called for national unity and…
I found this image on Facebook (where it was being shared without attribution). Similar:Operation War DiaryOne hundred years ago today, Britain dec…CultureAdded multiple swappable upper storeys. Next I will make slightly fewer variations of a sl…Added multiple swappable upper storeys. …AestheticsInternet hyperlinks do not infringe on copyright, EU court advisedWhile European Union rules say every…
I don’t know that much about the world of finance. This was a helpful explanation of what it means to say the Fed “injected” 1.5 trillion dollars. According to Slate, that money was in the form of short-term loans, not a gift. “Again, this is all short-term lending against the safest collateral in the world,…
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Similar:Darkest Hour (2017)I’m not a huge fan of war movies, but my…CultureUnscheduled Disasters in Journalism: Learn to DealIn school, we expect our professors to a…AcademiaWhy Writing Matters When You Advertise a Cragslist GiveawayThe latest example of why writing matter…Current_EventsNASA finally makes contact with Voyager 2 after longest radio silence in 30 yearsI was thrilled as…
A Chinese media personality with over half a million followers reports on the Coronavirus outbreak from inside Wuhan. Gripping audio news reporting. What happens when a Chinese man—just a guy, not a journalist or dissident—decides to go to Wuhan and investigate the country’s response to coronavirus? Reporter Jiayang Fan brings us the story. Similar:The Great…
The arts are vital to our lives as humans. And if one entered the cavernous arena suspecting that 18,000 teenagers might view this as class-trip goof-around time, those suspicions evaporated with the extinguishing of the house lights. The students from Queens and Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island laughed with the actors playing the…
My 13-year-old recently approached me at bedtime, a worried look on his face. “Is there going to be a draft for World War III?” he asked sheepishly…. He showed me thousands of videos kids had made. Most were meant to be satirical, I think, about being drafted. A quick search of the hashtag #WWIII showed…
Fascinating, and very sad, story behind an iconic National Geographic photo. McCurry wanted to take more pictures but Sharbat Gula fled. No part of the written story mentioned her narrative or even her name (which McCurry did not care to find out). He did not take her consent or her father’s to publish the image.…
My contributions this year are a workshop on #Inform7 and “Fixed It For You: Modding Memes, Maps and Minds”. Similar:Carolyn's "waiter with wobbly stack of plates" bit from Hello DollyPersonalPlaying video games linked to breast-feeding, not crimeGreat piece from Ben Kuchera at Ars Tech…AmusingRey is not a role model for little girls (major spoilers ahead)The…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation A new-to-me “Data Hears a Who” character story, featuring a multi-layered philosophical jam session in Picard’s quarters, a substantial B-plot for Wesley, and some tacked-on science-fictiony frippery for the groundlings. I started watching the show late at night, and lost interest when Wesley was steeling himself in the hallway…
Here’s an editorial by someone who feels a heck of a lot more optimistic than I do right now. The free press fostered and protected by the genius of the First Amendment has let Americans know the truth, if they wish to. They can see the facts and the process, and they will be shaped…
Going back to Plato—perhaps the first hater of literature on record—philosophers and religious authorities have attacked art for the same reasons our professors taught us to deconstruct and distrust it: because it is unpredictable, unreasonable and often inconsistent with their preferred politics or morality. It was also a lesson that was destined, in the years…