News Cut: December 14, 2012 Archive
Is Congress really worse than ever? (4x8 - 12/14/12)
Posted at 7:04 AM on December 14, 2012
by Bob Collins
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Five by 8
A Penny's thoughts, Duluth's 'horrible' film project, Marilyn goes to Hollywood, and the Indiana Jones mystery.
Continue reading " Is Congress really worse than ever? (4x8 - 12/14/12)"
Your daily aww: Christmas edition
Posted at 10:45 AM on December 14, 2012
by Nate Minor
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Life, Media
What would YOU do in this situation?
Bob Collins is off for the rest of the day.
(3 Comments)What the web used to be
Posted at 12:30 PM on December 14, 2012
by Nate Minor
(2 Comments)
I admit, I haven't been working on the web as long as this blog's main author has — though somewhere in the back of my mind exists the memory of this antiquity.
So I can relate to digital master Anil Dash as he remembers The Web We Lost:
The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be.
Dash goes on to reminisce about Flickr's heyday, when links "weren't about generating revenue, they were just a tool for expression or editorializing," and when people were more wary of handing their personal information over to companies. That's changed with the rise of social media giants, Dash says:
... They haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilities of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.
It's that last part that resonates with me the most; I straddle that generation Dash mentions. And yes, at their best, those web tools and websites encouraged innovation and creativity. But they also took a lot of work and excluded a lot of people. Even Myspace required/encouraged rudimentary HTML skills; it's no surprise that Facebook is much more popular than Myspace ever was.
And for most people, I think that's fine. Not everyone needs to know how to build a website. Us web-heads should remember that the rest of the world has the ability to express itself in other ways. Including, you know, off-line.
I just hope it continues to do that.
-- Nate Minor
(2 Comments)U's greatest enrollment increase comes from China
Posted at 10:52 AM on December 14, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Schools
China and Illinois have been recruiting targets for the U for a few years now. The five-year trend maps, though, show just how important that growth has become.
The U is particularly sensitive to the idea that Minnesotans are being crowded out by the university's desire to bring in students and higher tuition dollars from outside the upper Midwest.
Officials published a list of "myths and facts" along with the 2012 accountability report that included this:
Myth: The U is so hard to get into that it no longer represents MinnesotaThe trends are lower, though, if you look simply at the numbers of Minnesotans entering as freshmen.
Fact: The majority of our students are from Minnesota. On the Twin Cities campus, 69% of undergraduate students and 55% of graduate students are from Minnesota. Every year, 2,000 undergraduates, most from Minnesota, transfer to the Twin Cities campus. Keeping these students in Minnesota is good for our state, as is attracting high ability students from out of state, many of whom will stay, become active citizens and community and business leaders.
Enrollment data posted by the U's institutional research department tell a slightly different story.
Minnesotans made up 63 percent of the 5,514 new freshmen enrolled on the Twin Cities campus for fall 2012. That's down from 2002, when Minnesotans made up 66 percent of those incoming freshman.
(0 Comments)'The Mindless Menace of Violence'
Posted at 6:45 PM on December 14, 2012
by Bob Collins
(3 Comments)
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