There are no lithe leaps, perfect pirouettes or pointed toes here. Most girls cannot walk or stand, much less make a shallow curtsy. Their crutches and walkers lie nearby and their customized ballet slippers are stretched over leg braces. —Corey KilGannon —Given a Chance to Be Little Ballerinas, and Smiling Right Down to Their Toes (NY…
Born with a rare syndrome that left him profoundly autistic, seven-year-old Luke was trapped in his own body. But then his dad took him surfing. —Paul Solotaroff —About a boy (Guardian) I’m sick with a virus, and I can’t do much but read. Oh, and try to find out why my division chair can’t log into…
Humans communicate with each other through voice inflection, timing, and gesture. “Those capabilities are hard-wired into humans,” Pausch explains. “You wouldn’t put up with a person who makes you learn how to type commands to him; why should you have to talk to computers that way? Ultimately, we’d like to be able to read facial…
Here, Bullet If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, the aorta’s opened valves, the leap thought makes at the synaptic gap. […] —The horror, the horror of Iraq, in poetry (SF Gate.com) Fascinating reading. Similar:The Child –Antoine Bardou-Jacquet –The Child…AestheticsJournalists: The "Enemy of…
—Vintage Mobile Phones I’d love to see one with a rotary dial… how cool would that be? Similar:Another section of #steampunk control panel. #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #blender3d …AestheticsNarrow ParsersCreating n00b-friendly interactive ficti…CybercultureEdward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, 1960 Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s…AestheticsThat Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A…
The Carnegie Museum of Art’s Volcanic Magma: Lava It or Leave It (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Recently the family attended the Tiffany exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. My wife went on ahead with our preschooler, while I let Peter take in the exhibit at his own pace. I had him read all the display copy…
—Antoine Bardou-Jacquet —The Child Now there’s an interesting idea for a text-based mod of Half-Life 2. Hmm…. Similar:In-person classes heighten age-related hearing problems (opinion)My family tells me I’m starting to speak…Academia‘These are all fake news,’ said the honor student. He was wrong.Kim Ash teaches the Newseum’s “Fighting …CultureI Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two…
For instance, on the day that I am writing this (Christmas Day, 2006), the big news story is that James Brown, one of the greats of rock ‘n roll music, has died. As an individual running a news web site — or as a student running a news web site — I probably would not…
Hammer, 3D Design, and the Virtues of Minimalism (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) For the past month, as preparation for teaching a brief Hammer unit in my “New Media Projects” course, I got pretty good at Hammer basics — in part because I recorded a series of Flash tutorials, and doing so really solidified some basic design skills.…
Guiding a single point of light seems most suitable in a highly abstract game, and the pixel has shined in several of these. The driving real-time puzzle game Qix, a coin-op game from the 1980s, is a notable one. (Admittedly, the player’s pixel is highlighted with a surrounding diamond, but it’s still reasonably considered a…
After learning a bit about IF and playing a few games, you might think to yourself: hey, I could do this! And the best part is: you’re right. The modern IF scene is so vibrant largely because it’s quite possible for a single author to build a game from start to finish. It’s easy for…
There are remarkable parallels between “The Canterbury Tales” and modern rap, Brinkman said at Wellesley College during a recent stop on his tour of high schools and colleges across the eastern United States and Puerto Rico. “Chaucer and rap are both performance-based and they’re both battles of words where your proficiency gets you by,” said…
In this idea originated the plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination…
—Maybe! (Wondermark) Click to see the punchline. Saving this for the next time I teach A Doll House or “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” This one with an elephant is good, too. Oh, and this one about the kidney made me laugh out loud. I feel like I need to add a new tag called “retro”. Similar:Tevye from…
In what seems to be a growing genre, we have a new trailer for Mary Poppins re-cut by a fan into a horror film called “Scary Mary”. —Mary Poppins re-cut into Horror film (The Disney Blog) Stay awake… don’t close your eyes. Similar:A Successful Failure: The TI-99/4A Turns 40My family had one of these when I…
—Gingerbread Tie Fighter (Flickr) The Icing is what gives the ginjedi his power. It’s an energy field created by egg whites and sugar. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the ginjedibread together. Via BoingBoing. Similar:Amanda Knox responds to high-profile movie profiting off of her nameAmerican student Amanda Knox was wrongfu…CultureCooper Hewitt: the typeface by…
—Periodic Table of the Elements (Popular Science) This is a detail from the “Oxygen” entry for this photographic periodic table of the elements. Last night for his bedtime reading, when asked to choose from a small stack of books that also included adventure and humor, for his bedtime story my eight-year-old chose “The Mystery of the…
The bricks are so meticulously made that the company claims that out of every 1 million elements made, just 18 will be declared defective and removed from the set. Impressive numbers, considering that the LEGO Group is producing 15 billion components a year–that’s 1.7 million items an hour, or 28,500 a minute. Tire production accounts…
With the aid of a photo, master illustrator Rob Sacchetto will hand-illustrate a custom portrait depicting you as a brain-chasing ghoul. —Zombie Portraits Similar:Just a random side corridor in the #neovictorian #steampunk cruiser I've been building in …AestheticsThe Hidden Subversive Messages of [MGM's Screen Adaptation of] The Wizard of OzWhen I tried teaching The Wizard…
My robot came configured to make 384 donuts per hour automatically. —Donut Robot of Love 2000 (adw3345) How can you not read something that includes a lead like that? Via MeFi. Similar:How a billionaires boys’ club came to dominate the public squareThe world’s richest man, Elon Musk, atta…BusinessMy second greenscreen test.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d-LPwKQ…CybercultureReport to the bridge so the…