Don’t trust the scary bad interweb. Do trust us, your local TV talking heads, who will do all the scary thinking for you! Seeing local TV devote air time to discuss fairness and accuracy in journalism is a good thing. But when scores of newscasters read word-for-word the exact same statement, which blames social…
I don’t know the provenance of this quote attributed to Gus Speth, which affirms the role of the humanities in a STEM-obsessed world, but I did find this interview, conducted by Steve Curwood. “You know, what’s an environmental issue?” And if the answer is air pollution, water pollution, climate change…then we’re really right where we’ve…
Historian Niall Ferguson notes that Silicon Valley is not that interested in history, which is one reason why technological gurus keep making the same mistakes. Technology that decentralizes power brings its own problems. According to Ferguson: “The idea that witches live amongst us and should be burned went as viral as anything that Martin Luther…
Misspelled tweets and typos in press releases are becoming the norm under President Trump, but critics say it points to a pervasive carelessness in the White House.
Wired, obviously having worked on a thinkpiece about Zuckerberg’s silence, manages to repurpose it in light of this afternoon’s statement. The Irreversible Damage of Mark Zuckerberg’s SilenceWhat has happened in the last five days has been the biggest crisis of Facebook’s existence. But Zuckerberg’s five-day silent treatment may prove more damning for Facebook than any…
Already met a lot of good people and found opportunities for following up. I’m here through Saturday morning. For now, though, I’m eating a sandwich.
Using the mixed media of sketch notes, animation, and voiceover, this video explores the field of composition’s relationship between multimodality and composing. The piece illustrates how multimodal strategies such as sketchnotes can enhance idea generation and learning and provide classroom strategies for multimodal composition. […] We must remember that, yes, digital composition is multimodal but…
The way we teach it at Seton Hill, as a process that leads to a researched term paper, I think it’s safe to add freshman comp to the good list. We continue to operate on the basis that knowledge is stored in repositories, usually a book or an teacher. This dependence on textbooks has distorted…
The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. […] Our call is to promote interdisciplinary research to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed. Failures of the U.S. news media in…
Hat tip to my former student Kiley Fischer, who brought this story to my attention saying “Good example of ‘do NOT remove things from photos.’” Longtime City Paper reader Edward King-Smith, 37, of Pittsburgh’s Stanton Heights neighborhood was among those who alerted Deitch that his publication included a photo of a woman tattoo artist wearing…
You Are the Media You Eat
Farhad Manjoo says he’s a better, more-informed person thanks to his decision to try getting his news only from print sources. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.…
Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.” The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan…
Today was the last day of the manuscript unit in my “History and Future of the Book” course. I wish I had come across this article a little sooner! “As calligraphers, we feel like we’re playing an integral role. The invitation sets the stage for the whole event. Calligraphers are helping, simply, to set the…
Don’t use that “18 school shootings since Jan 1” meme. It’s misleading. I’ve lost track of how many times this image has popped up on my social media feeds. The 18 “school shootings” marked on that map include an instance in which a third-grader accidentally pulled the trigger of a police officer’s holstered gun (nobody…
I announced that my 300-level Media and Culture class would spend an hour in monastic silence, collaborating on a Google Doc. I expected the students would understand I was helping them get into the mood to appreciate the 14th century setting of The Name of the Rose. What I didn’t expect was an awesome drum…
Those who remember Jane Eyre solely as required reading in high-school English class likely recall most vividly its over-the-top Gothic tropes: a childhood banishment to a death-haunted room, a mysterious presence in the attic, a Byronic hero, and a cold mansion going up in flames. It’s more seemingly the stuff of Lifetime television, not revolutions. But as…
Last year, SHU did not sponsor a bus trip to Washington D.C., so I did not arrange a field trip to the Newseum. Seeing a chunk of the Berlin Wall, an antenna from the World Trade Center in front of a display of 9/11 front pages from around the world, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski’s cabin, and…
I don’t generally like teaching with slide decks, but students are used to them. I use a typeface that makes it easy for me to pretend I’m creating Okudagrams for Star Trek: TNG computer displays.