Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Noun-Verb Agreement

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K.I.S.S.
“Success is keeping the students’ attention to start with, and then getting them to see that most of the rules are fairly simple. I always started by telling them not to be too concerned with stuff like weird verbs (swim, swum, swam) and just remember to make subject and verb agree. It’s like we say in AA: KISS . . . Keep it simple, stupid.” 
 —Stephen King, in Jessica Lahey’s “How Stephen King Teaches Writing,” The Atlantic, 2014 Image:
Mike Segar/Reuters
 
Editorial Comment: How cool would his class be?

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Squash Pile








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Monday, September 29, 2014

Get Reading

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Free Books

“With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all—can tell you what to read and when and how.” 

—Doris Lessing (1919-2013), author and 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature winner
 
Editorial Comment: Proud, card-carrying library patron.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Rock Art








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Friday, September 26, 2014

Ban This Book!

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Pro-Underpants

“Captain Underpants has topped the most challenged books list for two years now and [Dav] Pilkey is also baffled by his notoriety. He suspects the book’s anti-authoritarian tone may be to blame.

“‘I don’t consider the books to be anti-authoritarian,’ he says, ‘but I do think it is important, if you think something is wrong, to question authority — because, you know, there are villains in real life, and they don’t always wear black capes and black hats. Sometimes they’re dressed like authority figures. And kids need to know that it’s important to question them.’”

—Dav Pilkey, creator of Captain Underpants, the most banned book in America, in Lynn Neary’s “Too Graphic? 2014 Banned Books Week Celebrates Challenged Comics,” National Public Radio, Sept. 24, 2014

 
Editorial Comment: Who says?

Related: 
Banned Books Week, Sept. 21-27  
Banned Books By The Numbers 
Opinion: Book nazis—Keep your mitts off my reading lists!

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Rock Art








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Happy National Punctuation Day

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Jealous Colons

“The dash is the Kim Kardashian of punctuation marks: misplaced, over-exposed, shamelessly self-promoting, always eager to elbow out her jealous sisters the comma, colon, and semicolon.”

—Roy Peter Clark, word guy, “Dashes—the Kardashians of punctuation,” the Poynter Institute, August 2014
 
• Editorial Comment: KarDASHians—get it?


PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Colt as a comma . . .











TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Tapioca Brain

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Turning Off the Tube?
“Americans are increasingly turning off their televisions, as numbers show plummeting viewership. . . . Young people in particular are tuning out. Nielson data shows that among the 18-24 group, viewers watched an average of 21-and-a-half hours of TV a week during the second quarter of 2013, one hour less than the same quarter during 2012. . . . 
“In 2007, there were approximately two million households that had no televisions; by 2013 that number jumped to 5 million.”
• Editorial Comment: That would be an impressive number, if there weren’t 115 million+ U.S. households in 2013.


PeezPix by Ted Pease 

 Capt. Jim Gullett, 1946-2014








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Kurt’s Writing Advice

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Find Seductive Potholes


“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. 

“I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.”

—Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), writer, “How to Write with Style,” 1985 NYTimes obit Image: Jill Krementz
 
• Editorial Comment: A petition to the girl next door? Or love letters to potholes.


PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Tunafish











TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Monday, September 22, 2014

Hail Mary

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NFL Lapdogs


“It’s no surprise that NFL-owned media would tiptoe around stories questioning the integrity and credibility of the NFL. The [Ray] Rice [domestic abuse] case is a reminder of how the nearly $10 billion-a-year NFL’s rise to cultural prominence has allowed it to shape the message transmitted to fans, both through its quasi-journalistic arms and through multibillion-dollar deal with other media. . . . The league’s media lapdogs have started barking, and they might not stop until the commissioner is gone.” 

—Stefan Fatsis, reporter, “Giving Up on Goodell: How the NFL lost the trust of its most loyal reporters,” Salon.com, 2014 


• Editorial Comment: Woof. 


PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Summer Blooms










TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Friday, September 19, 2014

Tony Auth, RIP

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A Man with a Mission

“Our job is not to amuse our readers. Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them. Our task is to continually hold up our government and our leaders to clear-eyed analysis, unaffected by professional spinmeisters and agenda-pushers. In these times, when those of us who are members of the ‘reality-based community’ are under relentless attack from both the right and the left, we must encourage, and our work must reflect, independent and non-ideological thinking.” 

—Tony Auth (1942-2014), Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, accepting the Herblock Prize for cartooning, 2005 NYT obit (Thanks to alert WORDster Mark Larson) 


• Editorial Comment: Truth-telling is a rare commodity these days.


PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Mola







TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Thursday, September 18, 2014

No More ‘Anti-Science Fringe’

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New BBC ‘Balance’


Good news for viewers of BBC News: You’ll no longer be subjected to the unhinged ravings of climate deniers and other members of the anti-science fringe. In a report published Thursday by the BBC Trust, the network’s journalists were criticized for devoting too much airtime (as in, any airtime) to unqualified people with ‘marginal views’ about non-contentious issues in a misguided attempt to provide editorial balance.”

—Lindsay Abrams, reporter, “BBC staff ordered to stop giving equal airtime to climate deniers,” Salon, July 2014 

• Editorial Comment: A lot of unhinged ravers will be looking for work.


PeezPix by Ted Pease 
Wet Grass








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Post-Obama Landscape

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Kenyan Humor

“Let’s face it, Fox, you’ll miss me when I’m gone. It’ll be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya.”

—President Barack Obama at the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner


• Editorial Comment: Hey, O’Reilly. Hill’s from Benghazi, isn’t she?


PeezPix by Ted Pease 
 
Charlie Tuna








TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Java

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Tweaking the IT Guy

“After I drink coffee I like to show the empty mug to the IT guy to tell him that I’ve successfully installed Java.”













• Editorial Comment: But what the hell is with that damn spinning pinwheel thing? 




PeezPix by Ted Pease 
 
Coming Attractions












TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Monday, September 15, 2014

The View From Abroad

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Unholy Jungle

“I found America the friendliest, most forgiving, and most generous nation I had ever visited. We South Americans tend to think of things in terms of convenience, whereas people in the United States approach things ethically. This — amateur Protestant that I am — I admired above all. It even helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets.” 

—Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentine writer, 1970



• Editorial Comment: Gonna have to count that as a mixed review. 


PeezPix by Ted Pease 
 
Red Sky at Morning
(The 107,000-acre Happy Camp fire turns Trinidad red.)









TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

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Friday, September 12, 2014

Writers & Readers

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Intelligent Life
“The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, connections, and perceptions. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer’s work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. 

“‘All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain,’ said Emerson. ‘They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them.’”

—Nicholas Carr, author, The Shallows, 2010

  • Editorial Comment: Of course, then there’s the less discerning audience member, which in turn explains cable TV.


PeezPix by Ted Pease 
 
Red Sky at Morning
(The 107,000-acre Happy Camp fire turns Trinidad red.)









TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California.
(Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

.