Rhetorician and ethicist Stephen E. Toulmin has died. While I haven’t been able to fit his full system into my freshman writing courses, I did create a brief handout on the Toulmin method. Arguing against the absolute truth advocated in Plato’s idealized formal logic, Toulmin said that truth can be relative. Historical and cultural contexts,…
In Pensylvania, homeshool kids have to take standardized tests every few years (at grades 3, 5, and 8). When he took the grade 5 exams last year, Peter did very well in all subjects, including math, though he 1) often says he hates math and 2) wastes a lot of time not doing math (staring…
From the explanation of a map showing differences in press freedom around the world. We recognize cultural differences, diverse national interests, and varying levels of economic development. Yet Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions…
It’s fairly common for speakers at high-tech events to give their talks in front of a screen that displays a Twitter stream. The snarky backchannel compliments a speaker whose goal is to be provocative or entertaining, but what happens when the speaker is aiming for subtlety and complex understanding? Here’s a story of how the…
A man and a wife saw what happened and the man ran with the baby’s mother to help her pick the child up from the ground, police said. CBS Chicago I presume this was the level of detail in the police report, so the journalist is just echoing what’s in the report. But “husband and…
I just excerpted and linked to a story from the Huffington Post Blog, and after I checked my blog I found a strange link floating above all the rest of my text, making both my own text that was under the link and the link itself illegible. I had already included a link to the…
These numbers are a bit sad. So let’s see. Assuming their number is right — 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job? Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.” He said the cost per job was actually…
In California, the governor’s office reacts to hearing of a vulgar message hidden vertically in the first row of letters in this gubernatorial veto. As The Swamp puts it: “My goodness. What a coincidence,” a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “I suppose when you do so…
Great stuff from Mark Marino… not only is the content fascinating, but the blog-sized presentation, for discusison, of a fundamental theoretical concept is a great example of what the blogging medium can do for (and to) scholarship. Item for today: = In Donald Knuth and Luis Trabb Pardo‘s article on the history of computers, the…
I’m gearing up to introduce my journalism students to a news project that requires a basic knowledge of math. I don’t want to make it too frustrating to them, but I do want to emphasize how easy it is to be misled by the math. Margin of Error deserves better than the throw-away line it…
I assigned book one of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale to a “Writing About Literature” class, the designated writing-intensive course for our English majors. The students discussed the abrupt ending, the use of ethnic stereotypes, and of course the comic book medium itself. One student’s “Hearing through Yiddish… Seeing in Ink…” is particularly thoughtful. About a…
Although I explained how I track and archive my students’ Twitter activity, I didn’t describe what they actually do on Twitter. That’s because I wasn’t sure myself what they do. I mean, of course I’ve reading their tweets and sending my own, but I hadn’t considered in a systematic way how my students use Twitter.…
I just drafted a new handout on writing editorials. I couldn’t find anything online pitched at the proper level, so I had to write it myself. (I’ll probably be able to use a version of this in my freshman comp class too.) Presume that your opponent has good reasons for disagreeing with you. Talk to…
Yesterday in my journalism class, I asked everyone in the room to take out a coin and flip it twice, and raise their hand if it came up the same. Then I asked the ones whose hands were up to flip again, and keep their hand up if the coin came up the same yet…
Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: “I asked why I couldn’t borrow a pair of scissors and she said, ‘they are sharp, you might stab me’. “I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again – because she said I could hit her over the head with…
In all media that boasts your byline remain impartial, and don’t do anything stupid. But is it in the best interests of the paper? Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander points out the the Post (along with just about every other mainstream publication) has at times come under fire for being partisan. These guidelines aim to…
I’m looking for a current book that presents gaming theory at a level appropriate for a 200-level undergraduate course. I have only scanned through the section of Tanja Sihvonen’s work, Players Unleashed! Modding <i>The Sims</i> and the Culture of Gaming (PDF), that deals with Colossal Cave Adventure. I’m not too happy with what I found…
I am not too happy about the way wild conclusions drawn from this self-published research periodically pop up in the media. Kudos to Liberman, from Language Log, who tries (yet again) to explain. The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness The best way to describe this, I think, would be to say something like: In the…
Kanye West has tried to apologize twice, once on his blog and once on Jay Leno. He blew it both times. In each case he referred to having stolen Taylor’s moment. West doesn’t understand that what he did was wrong, threatening and self-centered. He simply acknowledged that his completely narcissistic behavior cut into another celebrity’s…
“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us,” Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.” — Virginia Heffernan, New…