Opinions and editorials.

One of your assignments as we study newspapers is to analyze an Op/Ed piece from a respectable newspaper. Here is the link to the assignment:

Op/Ed Assignment

The due date will be determined in class, but you'll have enough time to pick up newspapers from the stands, if you like. You can also obviously use the WWW, although you must be sure to follow the guidelines for the source and date range.

Here is a list of links to reputable newspapers' Op/Ed sections:

The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The LA Times
USA Today (Notice the URL - blogs, huh?)
The Washington Post (Registration required but free)
The Journal News

There are certainly others, but check with me before using them.

tvlinks.co.uk

This news comes from the UK, but the site was mentioned in our class:

Major pirate website shut down

We'll use this in class as the first newspaper article read for structure and pacing (including the effectiveness of what is called "the lead"), but it's also worth discussing the subject matter. After searching for more information on the arrest, I was able to find the following:

TV-Links.co.uk Raided, Owner Arrested: UPDATED

You should notice the general difference between the two presentations of the same story, but for the purposes of today's class, we're going to discuss

1. the lead, or opening paragraph, and

2. objectivity.

More if I see another article on this topic.

Photography continued.

Class,

I'm back. Please read the post below before reading this one, and keep in mind that while quasi-inclement weather may not be ideal for a fire drill, we would probably want fog, rain, and muck in an actual fire. You know, to help to put out the actual fire.

To continue your assignment:

If you are maintaining a blog about the baseball postseason, you will want to focus in on a "big" idea in that sport: steroid use, perhaps, or even the idea that baseball is our "national pasttime." If you are posting about small town news, you may try to find the ultimate representation of what it means to live in a small town.

Use Google, use your common sense, and be sure that the picture is both iconic... and, of course, appropriate for the ol' school building.

I will check these posts on Monday morning at 7 AM, when I arrive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for another glorious day of educating the future of America.

-Mr. Eure

Photography assignments.

Class,

While you are in the computer lab today, you are still to give your attention to the seminar leaders, Anne and Lauren. They will be using the projector screen in the room to walk you through an activity.

Your first assignment today is to load a Word document, follow the seminar, and complete the assignment given to you.

Your second assignment (for this week's blog) is to post a fifth time. You must find a photography that fits the theme of your blog and the elements discussed in the seminar on Thursday and Friday -- i.e., you are to locate an iconic photograph that fits your subject -- and add it in the body of your post. Next, you are to write at least two paragraphs:

1. describing and personally reacting to the photo
2. explaining why this is an iconic photo for your blog's subject matter

If you have been keeping a blog about nutrition, you will want to settle on something "big" (read: significant, cultural, time-sensitive) that has happened in nutrition, with fast food restaurants, with the general health of America...

... and I can't believe that we have another fire drill. Back in a minute.

As you blog this weekend...

Shoot for the moon, right? Even if you miss, you'll land among the silent, cold vacuum of space.

Your blogging could bring in revenue if you attract enough attention to yourself. Eric Nakagawa, the Patient Zero of the lolcats meme (see the previous post), did just that.

Content creators and piracy.

This article discuss (and links to) another article about the threat of obscurity to content creators. Look for the following:

Who are "content creators"?

What does "obscurity" mean here?

What does "ubiquity" mean here?

What is piracy?

Why would obscurity threaten artists (e.g., musicians and film makers) more than piracy?

Memes: October 4.

There are hundreds of examples of memetic information on the Internet. Many of them are hilarious; others, disturbing; some, a little of both. We're looking at some of the more popular examples as we try to extrapolate a theory about what becomes popular and why it does.

First, let's look at the case study from earlier in the week again. We'll discuss why a site like the one created by this author only lasts a certain amount of time (memetically dies out) and why others -- the one below, for example -- seem to be gaining in strength with time.

Lolcats
- The original site
- The original picture (Patient Zero)
- A great article in The Wall Street Journal about the memetic longevity of lolcats

All Your Base Are Belong to Us
- Time article
- USA Today: Why would a line from an old game suddenly catch on? Who knows?"One of the great things about the Internet is it creates this," Schatz says. "Somebody grabs something out of the past and turns it into a phenomenon."

The Tourist Guy
- Debunked

Chuck Norris Facts
- Chuck Norris (possibly) not identifying irony when he sees it

Christopher Walken for President*

Bert Is Evil
- Life imitates art (and another article on this)

Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain

Badger Badger Badger

The Hamster Dance (original)

The Hamster Dance (nowadays)

Dancing Banana / Peanut Butter Jelly Time
- The interesting thing here is that the school server recognizese an attempt to view this animation as an attempt to view "Pornography/Adult Content" or something "Obscene/Tasteless." Remember that this is an animation of a dancing banana singing, "Peanut butter jelly time!" And remember that censorship is often clumsy.

*I bought this one. Completely bought it. I was ready to sign up to get the guy elected, and it in an only slightly ironic way.

Memetic fame, here we come!

Kids,

For your blog this week, you simply need to update with a third post. Next week, we will introduce commenting; the article hyperlinked in the post below this one is required by that time (but not now, so quitcher worrying).

For now, let's read about memes, Internet phenomena, and why it's not a good idea to leave embarassing video footage lying around -- metaphorically speaking or not.

Start here:

The Meme Epidemic: A Case Study

Trust me; even if you don't understand everything here, you will pick up enough background for our purposes.

Now to the Brits:

It's all in the memes

Read that article, too. Remember, if you don't understand the concept behind this information, it doesn't matter how funny a guy lip-synching to Romanian pop is.

Now let's look at a few repositories of information and a couple of websites devoted to tracking memetic developments on the Web.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Internet memes. It gives us a working vocabulary for types, although we'll add a few over the next few days.

Here is a site that actually lets us vote memes into existence: MemeVote.com. Take a look at what's on here.

Finally, the best site for current Internet trends in this regard (although it only tracks viral videos, those are the most prominent kind of meme in play nowadays): Viral Video Chart. This site tracks the number of views, links, and so on; notice what's popular right now, and we'll begin to discuss what it is that makes a video more viral than others.

In class, we will watch the most popular viral videos of all time, discuss their contents, and try to extrapolate a theory about this kind of popularity. We will look at trends, but we will also discuss how we -- as a class -- might create and propagate our own Internet meme.

Get to reading,

Mr. Eure

Fame and fortune.

The following article is a supplement to your semester blogs. You are to read it before the end of this week, when you will be asked to comment on a few classmates' blogs.

All-Stars of the Clever Riposte

For Monday.

Today, Friday the 28th, you should finish the censorship activity posted below this entry. You also have time to update your blog for this weekend's check.

We will be back in the classroom on Monday, when we will hold our discussion on censorship. Tuesday will see us in our first seminar. After Tuesday, we will wind down our study of the Internet before moving on to our second unit.

[expletive deleted]

The following link is to a document on my BHS website. This is your assignment for today's class and (probably) tomorrow's class; we may switch things up to accomodate our first seminar, but this entire guided tour is due.

Censorship on the World Wide Web

I will explain our schedule -- when we are in the lab and when we will be back in the classroom -- today during the period.