Greensburg science center planned

Joe Napsha writes in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Downtown Greensburg could have a hands-on science center for children and adults at the former Mellon Bank building if two natives can make their dream a reality. An interactive science center would feature a wide range of exhibits featuring sight, sound, motion, light and gears — “anything with…

The Plagiarized Field Manual, Part 1

Mike Edwards, a civilian instructor at West Point, reflects on the academic reaction to a new army field manual that plagiarizes large swaths of complex material, sometimes verbatim, from published sources. Part 1, Part 2. The scandal, though, is this: according to anthropologist David Price, the published version of the Army’s FM 3-24 on Counterinsurgency…

Success! Found our soldier…and he's alive today! – Nelson Foto | Learn : Teach : Grow (And Happy 2nd Anniversary to Our Members!)

Someone bought a collection of old slides from a second-hand shop, scanned them and posted them online, then got in touch with the photographer — who had tossed them into a trash bin 30 years ago. I was an artist in Vietnam and served with the Department of Information, Mac Headquarters. During my time there…

AP says "Web log" but real bloggers say "weblog"… and Google says "glarbifulous"

Well, Google didn’t say “glarbifulous” on its own, but I had a good reason to search the internet for a nonsense word. In order to confirm my feeling that the Associated Press’s preference for “Web log” is far less popular online than the traditional “weblog,” I did a quick Google search. 12,900,000 Google hits for…

the page of only weblogs

According to Rebecca Blood, in early 1999, Jesse James Garrett posted a list of 23 web sites that posted links and brief commentary. The Wayback machine’s archive of Garrett’s site returns this list from early 2000. badlands bump camworld flutterby genehack gulker hack the planet honeyguide jjg.net infosift linkwatcher metalog ltseek macronin nowthis obscure store…

Gioia to graduates: 'Trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones'

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke at Stanford last June: Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure–humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who…

Makin' Bacon

Scott McLemee writes about an intellectual brownout that came to him during a party, when he was asked to comment on a book he knew well. People who consume two or three books a month, for example, might be less susceptible to moments of total overload than those who read two or three a week.…

Slouching Toward Black Mesa

In The Escapist, Tom Rhodes takes a stab at W.B. Yeats/Gordon Freeman slash crit. It’s more of a nice try than a slam dunk; yes, it’s possible to make these connections, and the insights are, well, insightful… but what the article lacks is an argument for why this interpretation is necessary, why it offers a…

Playing it Safe

On Grand Text Auto, Andrew Stern writes a good post about the distinction between character-driven games and purely linear narrative (which makes for a poor gaming experience). No one can disagree that games should be “player-driven”, another way of saying games with high agency. I take a purist’s view on this; I quickly lose interest…

The Next Microsoft

Cringely Google Personalized Search now uses the terms from previous searches to help fine-tune the next search, which seems good in principle, but if someone searches first on “childcare” then later on “insurance” they are likely to be served ads for insurance for children, which might not interest them at all. There are other issues…