If you don’t get these jokes, you will when you finish CO201

Seven Bar Jokes  Involving Grammar  and Punctuation.

BY Eric K. Auld
- - - -
1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. 
2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.
3. A question mark walks into a bar?
4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a bar.
5. A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.
7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

Here’s how to post your edited midterm. Write a good headline here as well.

AGAWAM — With a click . . . click . . . click, the Wicked Cyclone roller coaster car slowly rises 112 feet into nothing but sky. As it levels at the top, riders get a quick view of the Six Flags amusement park and the treetops of Agawam beyond. Then, the car drops at a 64-degree angle, propelling its 24 screaming passengers along a twisting track with two “zero gravity” corkscrew rolls and a turn that banks at an unprecedented 200 degrees.

One of the coasters' overbanks.
One of the coasters' overbanks.

Once the rickety wooden cousin to the park’s steel coasters, the 32-year-old Cyclone has been remade and renamed. Topped with a new type of metal track, the Wicked Cyclone is one of five such wood-steel hybrid coasters in the country. Now, the ride rivals the park’s sleek Bizarro as a favorite of both casual riders and a community of devotees known as coaster enthusiasts.

Chrys Garber now counts herself among them. A full-time mother from nearby East Longmeadow, she stood in the Wicked Cyclone line with her kids on a sunny, late June afternoon. Garber said she’s ridden at least 40 times — pretty much every day since the ride reopened in late May.

“I love it. Oh my gosh,” she said. Garber loves the corkscrew spins, the drop, and the hang time. “I thought it was more scary than Bizarro. This has more adventure from start to finish.”

Riding the Wicked Cyclone with the Go Pro from Tinker Ready on Vimeo.

The network of organizations, websites, and social media feeds produced by coaster fans buzzes with news and reviews of the Wicked Cyclone. American Coaster Enthusiasts, a 40-year-old group that counts more than 5,000 members, held an ERT event (for “exclusive ride time”) at the park in July.

“I’ve never been on a coaster that inverts that only has lap bars,“ Acquafresca wrote. “I haven’t felt that way about a coaster since I first started riding. The experience of just hanging there with nothing over your shoulders is a glorious feeling.”

Some pay for that feeling with their keys, phones, or sunglasses, which, unlike passengers, tend to fly out during the ride.

Nikki Wilson of Middletown, Conn. walked down the ride’s exit ramp seemingly unrattled after riding with her brother. Still, she was wary when she sat down and strapped in. “I didn’t see anything going over my shoulder, and the ride goes upside down,” she said. “So, I was a little nervous, but then I saw the little kids getting on, and I said, I’ve got to get on there too.”Six Flags 2015 RMC Cyclone Coaster Specs_Page_1

One of those kids was Matthew Keegan, 8, of Milford, who marched down the ramp with a slight weave in his step after his first ride. He said he liked it, but hesitated before saying he wasn’t scared. Keegan admitted that he was frightened when the car took its plunge.

“Because you lean forward when you go down the drop,” he said. “It’s just so scary.”

The Wicked Cyclone pulls cars up a 109- foot hill -- the equivalent of a ten story building.

The designer of the original Cyclone would be pleased to hear that. A veteran coaster engineer, the late William Cobb copied the Coney Island Cyclone when he created the new wooden coaster for what was then Riverside Park in 1983. For a family-owned operation, it was a big investment at $2.5 million. With a 96-foot rise, it was one of the biggest of its time.

Cobb wanted it to be one of the scariest too. “I want people to ride my coasters so that when they get over the first hill, they wish they had never gotten on,” Cobb told the Valley Advocate newspaper. “I want them to get off, say they’ll never ride again, and then get right back on the end of the line.”

Not that the old Cyclone wasn’t thrilling. Shilke said he tries to make his revamped rides more exciting than the original. This one offered a challenge.

The Wicked Cyclone pulls cars up a 109- foot hill -- the equivalent of a ten story building.
The Wicked Cyclone pulls cars up a 109- foot hill -- the equivalent of a ten story building.

“Typically, most of the coasters I redo are so boring that anything I do surpasses what was there,” he said on the phone from his Utah workshop. “This was one of the first coasters where the original rise really took advantage of every turn. I had to come up with reverse bank turns and a whole bunch of stuff that I had never done before just to pack as much into this coaster as I could.”

Tim Baldwin of American Coaster Enthusiasts agrees. He said the Agawam Cyclone was one of the last coasters designed by the now-legendary Cobb.

“He really put some wild craziness in it.”

Speaking from the group’s convention in Atlantic City, Baldwin said some of the older wooden coasters are being torn down, and the group has many members who are lamenting the loss of the traditional rides. Baldwin thinks the hybrid is the answer.

“We can’t deny the success the parks have had with these smoother rides,” he said. “You have a wild, out-of-control ride, but it’s glass smooth.”

Riverside Park , 1915. Six Flags is built on the same site.
Riverside Park , 1915. Six Flags is built on the same site.

 

On November 16, protesters gathered at the offices of a Cambridge drug maker. They say people are dying because of insulin price hikes.

The campaign to lower the price of insulin came to Cambridge Massachusetts on Nov. 16.  A small group of protesters gathered in the freezing rain outside the local office of the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

Nicole Smith-Holt, protester
Nicole Smith-Holt, protester

They are part of a broad push to bring down the price of insulin, which has jumped in recent years.  The police were there, and the employees had been sent home.  The protesters gathered across the street for about an hour and later ended up at a nearby Starbucks. We talked to them there.

More here from the Globe.

 

Yesterday’s #journalism class assignment: Go cover the #RedSox victory parade live via social media

Class ended at 9:30. Victory parade started a few block away at 11.

Red Sox fan Carrie Casello talks about why she came to the #RedSoxParade today: pic.twitter.com/9rfxizA7DB

— Simone Migliori (@migliori_simone) October 31, 2018


View this post on Instagram

Peddlers are handing out programs for the Red Sox World Serious Victory Parade.

A post shared by EJY (@ecejyavuz) on Oct 31, 2018 at 7:03am PDT

Why don’t smart people understand journalism? Please read this thread

Students: Embedding Instagram, Twitter posts into a WordPress post : Here’s what it will look like

URL or embed code will work.  Be sure to  use the "text" or "html" tab at the top for the embed code. URL seems to work with either tab

 


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Este video lo grabamos hace un mes atrás y hoy es un día especial para publicarlo por que te vas a Argentina por un tiempo, siempre nos divertimos tanto y lo más hermoso es que compartimos juntas esta pasión del baile...buen viaje y vuelve pronto hermanita te amo mucho!! ❤️🙏 . . We filmed this video one month ago and today is a special day to post it because you’re going to Argentina for a little bit, we always had so much fun and the beautiful thing is that we shared together our passion of dance...good trip and come soon sister love you so much!! ——————————————- Choreography : @tuli_acosta 🔥 . . Dancers: @tuli_acosta @isidora_dancer 💃 . . Song: Miss you by @cashmerecat / @majorlazer / @torylanez 🎤 . . Filmed: @karinnmarco 🎥

A post shared by Isidora Villagra (@isidora_dancer) on Oct 2, 2018 at 5:00am PDT

 

 

You need to use the "text" or "html" tab at the top, or it will look like this. Don't use the visual tab unless you want it to look like this
<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/BobhAWuDGSb/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" data-instgrm-version="12" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);">
<div style="padding: 16px;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BobhAWuDGSb/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" style="background: #FFFFFF; line-height: 0; padding: 0 0; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; width: 100%;" target="_blank">
margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a together our passion of da...44340126766239749?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This Google Sheets exercise is a simple intro to databases and visualization. Learn spreadsheets to do more.

Data to graphics 101 with Google Sheets. Excel will do the same.Tableau Public is an online tool.

Assignment: Complete the pie chart and embed it in a WordPress post.

 

This is an update of a Knight Tutorial.

Go to Google Sheets

ss open ss

Click Blank  to create a new Spreadsheet. Note the following features:

  • The menu bar lets you select different commands to change your spreadsheet.
  • A cell is an individual square where you can double-click and type in information.
  • The cells are organized into rows (assigned numbers) and columns (assigned letters).
  • (This screenshot is from is older Google.)

3

Here's what the 2017 edition looks like.

Capture

 

Make a pie chart

The pie chart is the most ubiquitous of charts. Here's what it is and when to use it.

  • It is a circle divided into segments.
  •  It should illustrate the relationship of the parts of a total.
  • The data may be numeric but it is usually displayed in percentages.
  •  Never more than 5 parts. If you have more than five subsets, consider a TreeMap.

Save your spreadsheet and call it "Pie Chart." You only have to do this once. The document will autosave as you make changes.

Fill in the data as shown below. Select cell A1 by clicking it once. Hold down the Shift key and click in Cell B4 to select the range of data

Screen Shot 2017-09-30 at 4.38.07 PM

Click on "Insert" in the Google Menu Bar and select "Charts." A new window will appear

The "Chart editor" will recommend charts for your data. Under "chart type" choose pie chart. You can customize typeface, color, etc.  Hit insert and the chart will show up on your spread sheet.

Click the menu -- three little dots --on the upper right corner of the chart and choose “Publish chart.”  (You also have the option to copy or save chart as an image here. )

Get link or embed code.

Screen Shot 2017-09-30 at 4.55.54 PM

Capture

Here's what the pie chart looks like embedded.