S.C. daily newspaper publishes my article

Shoeless Joe Jackson is getting a bunch of attention in South Carolina.

I'll take some of the credit. See my article in the (Spartanburg, S.C.) Herald-Journal, about a 55K-circulation daily newspaper, at the above link.

Obama visits Winthrop University

It isn't often that we get a major presidential candidate on our campus.

But it happened yesterday morning.

Barack Obama, 46, handsome, smart and full of energy, spoke to about 800 of the faithful at McBryde Hall.

Yours truly, along with five of his students, waited in line for about 45 minutes--to no avail.

We didn't have tickets. Those that did got shuttled in front of us, so we gave up and trudged back to class.

Prediction: Obama will win South Carolina but he won't win his party's nomination for the presidency.

Let's see what happens.

Funny headlines from Jay Leno

I'm usually asleep with Leno comes on late at night with his funny headlines segment.

But Stefanie Johns, a student in my news editing class, shared one of his shows with us.

Click and enjoy.

Moral of story: If it can happen with a headline, it will.

Remember that ghost baseball player?

Remember that mid or late 1980s movie "Field of Dreams"?

Remember baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson, from South Carolina, walking out of a corn field and promising the owner of an Iowa farm: "If you build it, they will come"?

Was Shoeless Joe Jackson, with a lifetime batting average in the majors of .357, one of the biggest liars in history?

Or was he not guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series?

If not guilty, should newspapers of today help restore his reputation?

I've written about him at the above link.

Monkey makes robot walk

That's one small step for a robot. And that's one large leap for a primate.

That's what a scientist said (or something to that effect) when a monkey in North Carolina on a treadmill, connected to a computer (which was in turn connected to a robot in Japan) made the robot walk.

The great monkey/machine connection.

Really intriguing!

Future of newspapers?

Where have newspapers been? What have they done? Where are they going?

Read a retiring Wall Street Journal's perspective.

Unsightly underpants

A story in today's Herald about declining etiquette in America caught my attention.

Ever been bothered by someone answering their cell phone and then barking loudly into it?

Annoyed when someone's g-string is showing from the top of their pants?

Irritated by someone's ugly, unsightly, gaudy tattoo?

Read more about all this in this article.

My former student caucuses in Iowa

Arlecia Simmons, a graduate of Winthrop (mass communication), trudged through the deep snow a few days ago to be a part of the historic ground breaking (yes, I think we can say ground breaking) caucus in Iowa.

I call Arlecia my "brown daughter."

Read her account of what happened that evening to and with her in Iowa City.