Category Archives: Asides

Little things worth saving.

Tap Left Margin -> Next Page; my favorite fea­ture of the iPad. This means I can com­fort­ably read while drink­ing tea and not worry about which hand holds my iPad.

The major­ity of the time I’m read­ing a book I just want to go for­ward. It always felt clumsy to swipe with my left thumb. Advancing with just a tap means the device never breaks my flow.

We need to rein­vent the arti­cle. Sean Blanda illus­trates that it’s time to rethink not just the arti­cle but how infor­ma­tion is pub­lished on the web. I agree. My favorite nar­ra­tives are those that answer long, wind­ing ques­tions by telling a story. They are more akin to a short book than a news story. This recent New Yorker piece is 50 pages and over 20,000 words when I drop it in to Pages.app. I loved that arti­cle, but default­ing to the same men­tal model and design pre­sen­ta­tion for a few hun­dred word piece about NFL draft trades is ludicrous.

Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses. Particularly this quote:

The col­lege has also charged 27 other mem­bers of SAE, stem­ming from events in the 2011 pledge term. While the other stu­dents all cat­e­gor­i­cally deny doing any­thing ille­gal, the infor­ma­tion that Lohse pro­vided to Dartmouth offi­cials may directly impli­cate him in haz­ing. As a result, Lohse – the only stu­dent to come for­ward vol­un­tar­ily – may be the only stu­dent who is ulti­mately punished.

Also, see “Allegations of haz­ing lev­eled against TKE ini­ti­a­tion prac­tices” and Daniel’s post. I have an idea for an enter­pris­ing reporter: take a deep look at fra­ter­nity abuse reports like this and answer:

  • What per­cent­age are fol­lowed up on by news orga­ni­za­tions, par­tic­u­larly col­lege news­pa­pers, after the ini­tial report?
  • What per­cent­age result in con­crete action under­taken by col­lege administrations?
  • In how many cases is the stu­dent who reported the offense the one who takes the brunt of post-publication attacks?
  • How fre­quently are reports the sec­ond, third, etc. time alle­ga­tions have been made against a spe­cific fraternity?

There are more ques­tions that would be inter­est­ing but the above would be a start.