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Ave atque vale

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What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero’s artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal [...]

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Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction Road

Wonderfully detailed analysis of two ground-breaking works of interactive fiction. I regularly assign “Photopia” and “Galatea,” but in our media projects course we never have time to analyze the works in this detail. I never did use a walkthrough for “Galatea,” so I am sure I missed lots of it.

Last time I looked at [...]

Aesthetics | Art | Books | Culture | Design | History | Humanities | Literature | PopCult

When F. Scott Fitzgerald Judged Gatsby By Its Cover

With a big Hollywood movie now in theaters, some recent printings of the book have abandoned the classic cover in favor of one that ties in more closely with the film. So high school students working their way through the summer reading list this year will be hard pressed to find a copy without [...]

Aesthetics | Books | Culture | Design | Drama | Literature

Jaz Parkinson “Colour Signatures”

Amusing visual representations of the color references in a handful of literary works. These are my colour signatures, an ongoing collection which are basically graphs of all the visual content in the books. For example when it might say ‘yellow brick road,’ ‘yellow’ gets a tally, or when for example in The Road it says [...]

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Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext Story

It’s not that hypertext went on to become less interesting than its literary advocates imagined in those early days. Rather, a whole different set of new forms arose in its place: blogs, social networks, crowd-edited encyclopedias. Readers did end up exploring an idea or news event by following links between small blocks of text; it’s [...]

Academia | Amusing | Culture | Drama | Literature | Personal

Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Masculinity in Seussical

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Yesterday, I performed in a school matinee for Suessical, dashed back to campus to advise with students working on their 20-page term papers for Literary Criticism, served on oral exam panels for four graduating seniors, then went back to the theater for an evening performance.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself chatting in [...]

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Huge Collection of Free CC-Licensed Textbooks (2012)

2012 Book Archive.

Business, humanities, writing, science.

[...]

Cyberculture | Design | Literature | Modding | PopCult | SciFi | Technology

Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines?

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The X Files did a good job of embracing the mobile phone to advance the plot. One character is sneaking around a warehouse, while another character is in a lab coat, frowning at a test tube. One calls the other, they quickly explain (for the benefit of the audience) what they are doing, and then [...]

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.

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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Banned Performance Enhancing Substances in Literary Competitions.

PROUSTZAC

Enhances and enriches remembrance of things past. Can lead to increased carbohydrate consumption.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Banned Performance Enhancing Substances in Literary Competitions..