Author Archives: Ralph Hanson

Dear 16-Year-Old Me….

Dear 16-year-old me, I was diagnosed with melanoma at age 42.  I was lucky; it was caught early…. Ralph A brilliant, if disturbing ad.  Found it as part of a collection at Mashable of the 20 most circulated viral video … Continue reading →

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‘Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince’ as a Comedy Trailer

Suppose for a minute that Warner Brothers wanted to promote Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as screwball teen comedy.  The trailer might look something like this: Thanks eBookNewser! And here’s the actual trailer:

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Questions worth asking (Maybe)

What would Steve Jobs do? Want to design an elegant, effective product?  Computerworld’s Jonny Evans says, ask yourself “What would Steve Jobs do?”  Worth reading even if you are not an Apple fan. What is the future of electronic textbooks? … Continue reading →

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Link Ch. 14 – Jose Vargas, immigration, and journalistic truth telling

Former Washington Post reporter Jose Vargas is a successful young journalist.  He was part of a reporting team that won a Pulitzer for covering the Virginia Tech massacre, he wrote a well-regarded profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for the … Continue reading →

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Go The F@$% To Sleep uses online buzz to sell parody bedtime book

Note: The links from this post all contain NSFW language. There has been a new parody of a children’s picture book being published this summer called GTFTS. It has all the sweet illustrations and baby animals you would expect in … Continue reading →

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Magic with the iPad?

Thanks to Mashable for the link to magician and performance artist Simon Pierro video performance with an iPad.

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Copyright, Creative Commons & the Public Domain

When I logged onto Twitter this morning, it seemed like everywhere I looked there was news about implications of copyright law and copyright alternatives: RIAA says there’s no value in the public domain Fascinating post from Tech Dirt about how … Continue reading →

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Link Ch. 7 – Meet Girl Talk’s Gregg Gillis

(Updated 2/17/19) Please note that most of the links here to video or audio content will contain offensive and/or NSFW language. Trying to explain what Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, does to anyone my age can be a bit challenging. … Continue reading →

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

How did people learn about bin Laden’s death? Survey says — Television.  Though many of my students said word-of-mouth from people who had been watching TV. What parent wouldn’t love a book called “Go The @$#& To Sleep”? This book … Continue reading →

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Ch. 1 Link – Web comics that defy classification

NOTE: While none of the comics discussed here go much beyond PG-13 in art, they do sometimes have offensive language in them. (12/15/11) Regular readers here know that I’m a huge fan of web comics. In your textbook, there’s a … Continue reading →

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