December 2008
15 posts
Medill's News Mixer Project
My last year at Northwestern, I would often visit Rich Gordon and talk shop about the past, present, and future of journalism. And where Medill fit in.
So it’s great to see many of the web era best practices embodied in the News Mixer release.
Brian Boyer, Ryan Mark, Angela Nitzke, Joshua Pollock, Stuart Tiffen and Kayla Webley (and Rich Gordon) all deserve some kudos for making this...
NYTimes Op-Ed: Drop the Bachelor's Degree B.S.
I’ll save my ranting for another day, since Charles Murray has already done such a great job in his NYTimes Editorial from yesterday’s paper:
As president, Mr. Obama should use his bully pulpit to undermine the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification. Here’s a suggested battle cry, to be repeated in every speech on the subject: “It’s what you can do that should count when you...
Nico - I’ll Keep It With Mine...
How did Slumdog Millionaire clear those rights?
If you’ve never watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? before you go see Slumdog Millionaire, then you’d be intimately familiar with it by the music video infused end credits. It’s the thread that ties the whole film together, and it few people who see the movie will be able to watch any game show any time soon and not think back to Jamal and Latika.
The use of a real TV...
Jingle Bells + Born Ruffians, via Postcard.FM →
The Type of Neutrality That Matters
The whining match over network neutrality has been at the expense of other issues that could have just as many implications.
For instance, Greg’s story of How I Almo$t Tricked Google Into Making Me Millions
Great idea, right? By replicating the Mozilla business model (albeit in a much more sneaky way), Greg ended up make over $100 before Google got suspicious and shut him down without a...
11th Grade Activities
via xkcd
Paul Graham on Academic Credentials
The era of credentials began to end when the power of large organizations peaked in the late twentieth century. Now we seem to be entering a new era based on measurement. The reason the new model has advanced so rapidly is that it works so much better. It shows no sign of slowing.
via paulgraham.com
I do disagree with him on this point:
“So all other things being equal, a society...
The Google App Store, Coming Soon?
No, it’s not here yet.
But as App Engine Fan notes, the Obama Transition team used the GAE-based Moderator to take feedback from millions of citizens. Hmmm….
For all of its headaches, it’s not hard to imagine that Mountain View is planning for App Engine to be its trojan horse for a one-click Google Apps market. I’m in full agreement that the Solutions Marketplace in...
The First Family
"It's up to us — as fathers and parents — to instill this ethic of excellence in our children.
It's up to us to say to our daughters, don't ever let images on TV tell you what you are worth.
Because I expect you to dream without limit and reach for those goals.
It's up to us to tell our sons, those songs on the radio may glorify violence.
But in my house we give glory to...
Past performance....
When the economy tanks, graduate school applications go up. That’s one of the few bits of good news in which educators could have reasonably taken comfort this year. No more.
The number of students taking the Graduate Record Examination will decline in 2008, the first time ever that the GRE has seen a fall in test-taking during an economic downturn. Because the GRE is required for the vast...
Let’s Stop Preparing Kids for College →
(Note: I’ve been sitting on this post for about two weeks because it just didn’t quite feel right yet but, with these stories along with this blog post that I ran across yesterday, I…
American Students increasingly going abroad for... →
danw:
American parents’ involvement in the college-admissions process — and the helicopter-parent phenomenon, with hovering parents keeping close watch on their children’s lives — has been a continuing revelation to Scottish admissions officials
Why Do Universities Love RealPlayer?
While earning my B.A at Northwestern University, I took a half dozen film and media courses where each and every video linked to from the Blackboard CMS was always a RealPlayer video.
Of course, Quicktimes were the standard of the Mac worshiping Art Department, but that was the exception to the rule.
Six months after graduation, I’m researching the market for education services, and...