Uncle Mark 2010

The 2010 edition of the Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac is now available as a free PDF download from Mark Hurst, consumer-experience consultant and creator of Good Experience. The 2010 guide offers single buying recommendations in various categories, along with useful and sometimes surprising tips and tricks. (Turn your index finger into a magnifying glass!)

A related post
Review of Mark Hurst’s Bit Literacy

“Dissertation Writing Help”

My post What plagiarism looks like now draws spam comments offering shady URLs for “Dissertation Writing Help,” “Research Assistance,” &c. Sigh. Delete.

A related post
“Plagiarism free” (Purchase your own “plagiarism free” dissertation)

Dentistry at dawn

I like our dentist. He’s eighty years old, an ace, and he’s been our family’s dentist for twenty-five years. He is the only dentist our children have ever known. His workday starts early and ends early. When the phone rings at 6:30 in the morning, it’s his office, wondering if we’d like to come in earlier because a spot has opened up.

Elaine and I have been thinking about how to break it to certain other members of the family that our group visit to the dentist later this month has been scheduled for 7:00 A.M. And thus I have written this post. We’re sorry, kids. It was the best time we could get.

The Harlem Children’s Zone

Last night 60 Minutes reported on the Harlem Children’s Zone. Watch here.

The Michigan Theater

Ozymandias alert: the Michigan Theater, a once-glorious theater in Detroit, now houses parked cars. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The theater is the subject of a Flickr set by photographer James D. Griffioen.

Update, March 6, 2010: The New York Times reports an effort to save the building: Seeking a Future for a Symbol of a Grander Past.

Related reading and viewing
James D. Griffioen (the photographer’s website)
Michigan Theater (Wikipedia article)

(Thanks, Rachel! And thanks, Shelley.)

Harry Potter and college

High-school senior Lauren Edelson objects to a cynical new strategy in college marketing:

Back when I was a junior, before I’d printed off an application or visited a campus, I had high expectations for the college application process. I’d soak up detailed descriptions of academic opportunity and campus life — and by the end of it, I’d know which college was right for me. Back then, I knew only of these institutions and their intimidating reputations, not what set each one apart from the rest. And I couldn’t wait to find out.

So I was surprised when many top colleges delivered the same pitch. It turns out, they’re all a little bit like Hogwarts — the school for witches and wizards in the Harry Potter books and movies. Or at least, that’s what the tour guides kept telling me.

Read more:

Taking the Magic Out of College (New York Times)

I’ll suggest an acronym for this sort of marketing strategy: TLC. Not “Tender Loving Care” but “Treat ’em Like Children.”

William Meehan update

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that charges of plagiarism against Jacksonville State University president William Meehan have no place in a lawsuit over ownership of a plant collection. [Sic.]

Read all about it:

Court stops plagiarism claim against JSU president (Gadsden Times)

Related posts
Plagiarism in the academy
Boening, Meehan, plagiarism
What plagiarism looks like

Google Public DNS

Google at work: “Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.” According to Google, Google Public DNS provides greater speed and security than the DNS resolution available from ISPs (Internet Service Providers).

I set up Google Public DNS on my MacBook this afternoon (it took no more than ten seconds) and have found that browsing is faster. Much faster. Much, much faster.

Read more:

Google Public DNS (Google Code)
Using Google Public DNS (Google Code)

Jim Lehrer’s journalistic guidelines

He read them tonight, the final night of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which on Monday becomes the PBS NewsHour:

Do nothing I cannot defend.

Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.

Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.

Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.

Assume the same about all people on whom I report.

Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.

Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label everything.

Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.

I am not in the entertainment business.

I found these guidelines online in a 2007 commencement address Lehrer gave at Wesleyan University. I’m imagining him reading these guidelines not to college graduates but to fellow journalists. They are for the most part not listening. But I’m looking forward to seeing Jim Lehrer on television again on Monday night.

A related post
Jim Lehrer's Post-it Notes

More on the PBS NewsHour
Launching the PBS NewsHour (PBS)
Stressing the Web, NewsHour Begins an Overhaul (New York Times)

Edward Tufte on PowerPoint in schools

The core ideas of teaching — explanation, reasoning, finding things out, questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronizing authoritarianism — are contrary to the cognitive style of PowerPoint. And the ethical values of teachers differ from those engaged in marketing.

Especially disturbing is the introduction of PowerPoint into schools. Instead of writing a report using sentences, children learn how to decorate client pitches and infomercials, which is better than encouraging children to smoke. Student PP exercises (as seen in teachers’ guides and in student work posted on the internet) typically show 5 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation consisting of 3 to 6 slides — a total of perhaps 80 words (20 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Rather than being trained as mini-bureaucrats in the pitch culture, students would be better off if schools closed down on PP days and everyone went to The Exploratorium. Or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence (Chesire, CT: Graphics Press, 2006), 161.

This passage is revised from Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2003).

Related reading
Edward Tufte’s website