On the handheld front, Sony and Nintendo continue their fight for the minds and backpacks of the nation’s gamers by releasing ever-larger portable consoles. The Nintendo XL features six screens, a folding seat and a selection of overpriced candy bars, while the PlayStation Still Ostensibly Portable can now play all known forms of media, including…
Consumerist Pac-Man and Socialist Tetris (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) “Pac-Man” is a game about gathering resources while fleeing from predators. It gives pleasure to those areas of our brain that remember what it was like being a tiny but clever mammal, surrounded by threats that are deadly but not too bright. Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde pass…
Here we are, faced with all sorts of new challenges, stuck in a system that seem unable or unwilling to change. We’ve mastered this assembly line method of teaching, programming all of our students in basically the same way throughout their time in school because that was the easiest way to do it. We didn’t…
Challenged to retrieve the powerful Amulet of Yendor from a fathomless, monster-plagued dungeon, you’ll discover that the dungeon is actually a randomly-generated configuration of brackets, asterisks and periods; the villainous pit beasts are an assortment of letters (“O” for Orcs, “D” for dragons and so on); and your heroic avatar is nothing more than a…
You stroll outside and are delighted to see the sun just clearing the eastern horizon. It is a beautiful autumn morning and the air feels brisk as you take a deep breath. Across the way, you spot a jogger just before they disappear into a grove of tall ash trees. —Mike Tolar —Clink: A Clickable…