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The GE Mascot That Proves They’ve Never Seen ‘The Matrix’

On a scale of 1 to 10, this definitely rates a WTF.

Seriously, has no one in GE ever seen The Matrix? Literally any other robot in the history of film would have been a better choice — even RoboCop would’ve made people feel more at ease, because at least he’s a police officer. Agent [...]

Academia | Aesthetics | Education | Media | Rhetoric | Science

Higgs Boson Video

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Great video about subatomic particles, from Piled Higher and Deeper.

Aesthetics | Business | Culture | Design | Ethics | Media | Modding | Rhetoric

little drops — Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry

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Very insightful…. A reminder that even the much-praised Dove “we are exposing their advertising techniques” campaigns are just that — campaigns, designed to sell a product. (The parent company of Dove also owns Axe, which is blatant in its use of demeaning sexual stereotypes.)

Brave, strong, smart? Not enough. You have to be beautiful. And [...]

Aesthetics | Books | Culture | Design | Education | Humanities | Personal

Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be published

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Some of my happiest memories of fatherhood include introducing my kids to the Richard Scarry books.

Featuring a huge anthropomorphised cast, with recurring characters such as Sergeant Murphy, traffic hound and pursuer of miscreants, and solid, cheerful, lederhosen-wearing Huckle Cat, Scarry’s tales of mishap, derring-do, industry and shopping always feel deeply, richly safe. Some aspects [...]

Aesthetics | Cyberculture | History | Media | Writing

30 Best Text-Adventures/Interactive-Fiction Games Over 5 Decades | Gaming Enthusiast

Nobody has to twist my arm to get me to reblog someone’s interactive fiction post.

As gamers, we know perfectly well that the graphics is not everything that counts. The story, the immersion, the memorable characters – those are the things we really dig. So what would we get if we leave those and [...]

Aesthetics | Amusing | Culture | Drama | Media | Modding | PopCult

Review of “Dodge Intrepid and the Pages of Time”

I’ve been a fan of the Dodge Intrepid shows from the beginning. The voice of the daring librarian is Mike Rubino, a Seton Hill alum whom I only had in one or two classes, but who made himself known on the young Seton Hill blogosphere (and as a columnist and cartoonist for the student paper).

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Aesthetics | Amusing | Cyberculture | Drama | PopCult

Today’s Google Doodle is Mostly Harmless

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Ford Prefect kept a script of Godspell in his satchel, by the way, in order to support his cover story of being an actor. I used an image from the cover of “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” in a slide presentation I used as a prop on stage during the “Tower of [...]

Aesthetics | Art | Design | Literature | PopCult | SciFi

Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, 1960

Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, 1960 | Brain Pickings.

Aesthetics | Culture | Current_Events | Design | Government | Media | Modding | Rhetoric

Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the Sequester

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Apparently these are two famous and physically attractive celebrities who are popular enough that lots of people will wade through lots of words in order to look at pictures of them doing things that celebrities do. Which presumably does not usually include talking about the federal budget.

Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the [...]

Aesthetics | Books | Cyberculture | Design | Media | Modding | Technology | Usability

Kindle App Vs. iBooks. (Spoiler: They’re Virtually Identical Now!)

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I noticed with interest that Kindle now lets you highlight text in different colors. It’s also very easy now to tweet a brief quote.

Is it time to revise the blog-based pedagogy I’ve developed over the past 10 or so years, and ask students to tweet a few passages while they read them for the [...]