There was no separating the two Treks, the vacuous and the visionary. It’s no coincidence that one of the most legendary episodes — “The Trouble with Tribbles” — was essentially a comic take on the show’s established themes. Given some distance from the moment, I realize this is actually an entirely healthy attitude. It’s the…
PDK Question (n=500) “Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?” Results: 37% Favor 55% Oppose 5% Neither Favor or Oppose 2% Don’t Know/Refused Adjusted Question (n=500) “Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose any school, public or private, to…
Some have appealed to Gingerich’s group not to downgrade Pluto, saying it would disappoint children and throw our understanding of the universe into chaos. Others say let the chips fall where they may and seem to relish the idea of overturning our current view of the universe. –Alan Crosby —Pluto’s status attacked (Boston.com) The debate over…
It’s important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories. The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are: 1.…
You rarely see, for example, a faculty member from an Ivy League university alongside one from a community college on a Modern Language Association panel, regardless of any research interests they might share. That shows the dangerous classism that pervades academe, something I admittedly did not see for myself until I began teaching at a…
The blog hurt the administration in two key ways: First, administrators were unable to focus on correcting the problems that led to the creation of the blog, and second, the administration’s clumsy and futile efforts to combat the blog simply compounded the anger and contempt on campus. —Daniel W. Barwick —The Blog That Ate a…
There are serious logical problems posed by any attempt to prove conclusively that a person does not (or did not) exist. No matter how many searches fail to prove the existence of someone, that failure does not negate the person’s possible existence. However, when a specific person’s specific occupation or background are made relevant as…
The best students will learn, retain and understand the material they are taught in class no matter how it is presented. However, there are many students in the class who do not have the attention span to concentrate for the whole lesson, who get distracted or do not do the required reading because they are…
—The Information Machine (YouTube) A fascinating vintage piece of rhetoric. It skips a bit in the opening, but settles down quickly. The images of room-sized computers and stacks of punch cards made me swoon. The narrator’s patient voice and the final image — of a rose fading into a heart — show an concerted effort to…
Complete with the Bernie Mac perfect afro the redguardsman stared back at me in 1080i. His racial description? The most naturally talented warriors in Tamriel, the dark-skinned, wiry-haired Redguards of Hammerfell seem born to battle, though their pride and fierce independence of spirit makes them more suitable as scouts or skirmishers, or as free-ranging heroes…
Curious about the candidate, Ms. Homayoun went to her page on Facebook. She found explicit photographs and commentary about the student’s sexual escapades, drinking and pot smoking, including testimonials from friends. Among the pictures were shots of the young woman passed out after drinking. “I was just shocked by the amount of stuff that she…
New media have always met with suspicion: As The Economist editorialized a while back, a “neophobic” tendency dates from antiquity, with Plato’s argument in the “Phaedrus” that the relatively newfangled medium of writing corrupted the memory-building powers of oral culture. Of course sometimes the new is bad. Yet the critics of video games are not…
The Internet is popularly perceived as either a definitive and government-created (and controlled) international computer network–as if “The Internet” is an official and closed system, not unlike “The Post Office”–or as a free-wheeling, uncontrolled, chaotic, and unruly frontier. Neither one of these perceptions is entirely accurate because the Internet is, in fact, the result of…
Don’t call me “Honey.” Call me “Smart Girl.” —Carolyn Maureen Jerz (age 4).Cute vs Brainy (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) How perceptive children are, at an early age. Of course, next week she’ll be back to “My name is Sally. My family was killed in a car crash. Can I be your new girl?” or “I want to…
“In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE],” the sheet said. The Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, told the Web site that a colleague was making a joke in a draft that was then mistakenly released.…
Over the past six weeks a Western security force has effectively taken over the small African nation of Namibia. A beach resort in Langstrand in Western Namibia has been sealed off with security cordons, and armed security personnel have been keeping both local residents and visiting foreigners at bay. A no-fly zone has been enforced…
Each scenario offers a simple Sim-City style visual depiction of its urban center that allows you to plan tactics and assess trends, but everyday events are usually planned and occur within the game’s menus, charts, and lists. Some scenarios offer maps that depict infrastructure, agricultural, or natural resources that can be targeted. There’s a ton…
Ahmadinejad: Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history? SPIEGEL: The German people today can’t do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our…
Youth and alienated populations are inclined to spend more time going through identity development processes because they are trying to “figure out who they are.” Blogs and profiles are particularly supportive of this. Of course, blogs require having something to say while profiles let you write yourself into being via collage. People do grow out…
If you’re stuck, shut down the word doc you’re working on and start again, from scratch, in an email (putting the name of a close friend in the “To:” field can help). —Matt Weston —Write how you speak (Business Bricks) While I don’t think the adage “write how you speak” applies universally, it makes good sense…