The New Yorker

A case study of technical writing gone awry. We'll look at it after the break.

Replacing A Toilet Wax Bowl Ring

An excellent piece of technical writing.

Customer Service

Salt Lake Tribune - Business: " Hazelbaker said the Escalade EXT has a standard anti-theft ignition immobilizer, which prevents the vehicle from being started without the right key, but it may not be as effective as newer systems. General Motors Corp. spokeswoman Kelly Wysocki confirmed that the Pass-lock system, which is on all current Escalades as well as 2005 models, is aging and said

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GM is considering a change soon."

TechComm - Main.Schedule4310

I've put our weekly schedule and topics on the wiki. There are still some details left to fill in, but it should give you an idea of where we're headed.

IrfanView - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

This program will let you easily resize and crop images.

Ambiguous: "Unfortunately, if a person who already has a human flu virus swimming around in them gets the bird flu as well, they could easily swap a few genes and start doing something Ebola will almost certainly never do; hang around on kitchen counters and doorknobs and in hugs and kisses. Then we have a problem . The SARS experience taught us that our current medical system is less protection than we thought it was, in fact it doesn't matter if you are going to Asia or staying home, we're all pretty much screwed at that point. To put more perspective on this potential danger the flu we're looking at could, with a few lucky mutations , start acting more like the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed 20 million people and sickened 1 billion. According to my handy dandy 8th grade percentage figuring technique, that's over 60 million dead and 4 billion sickened within the space of about 10 months. Stats like that don't fit comfortably in the mind, especially in the modern world, where able bodied people are needed to baby sit electrical grids and nuclear weapon that didn't exist in 1918. But surely our modern medical can protect us better than the bloodletting barbers of the 1918? Well, maybe. I'd have a lot more confidence in it if we hadn't just canceled half of our nation's flu shots. "

Boing Boing: Bird Flu risk extremely low

Mankato, MN Home Page

The beautiful city of Mankato.

ACC: shuttle tile risk analysis

Mankato, MN Home Page

The beautiful city of Mankato.

Jeffrey Veen: On Writing Short: "Yesterday at the conference table with a new client, we talked about their frustration with a classic problem. 'Users just won't read the instructions on our forms,' they complained. 'It really couldn't be simpler if they would just read the three sentences at the top!'
But of course we don't read instructions. It's a matter of context. When trying to get through an interaction, we're not in 'reading mode' ... we're in 'doing mode.' "

For class on Friday and Monday (depending on how much ground we cover)

1. Read chapters 7,8,9 (we've already discussed #7, but will revisit it briefly).

I asked you to do two other things: attach your current files to your wiki page, and discuss your research strategy on your wiki page, but we'll do these in class on Friday.

And, realisitically, we may not get to chapter nine until Monday.

For Wednesday's class, please read pg. 116, "The Research Process." There will be a fun surprise quiz connected with this reading. Just so you know.