“May the cutest kitten win…” —Kittenwar Similar:The 1982 Tron Holiday SpecialSides: split. Gut: busted. Milk droplets…AmusingThis winter I changed my weekday alarm tone to chirping birds. This winter I changed my weekday ala…AestheticsBehind the art: The Westmoreland's 'Death of Elaine' beloved of staff and visitorsI always slow down and spend some time w…AestheticsHyperbole and a…
The movie wasn’t perfect, but there was a lot to like and a lot to laugh at. I so enjoyed myself that I became even more puzzled than I was before about the handfuls of invective that many reviewers of the film have been flinging at it, risking damage to their digital watches in the…
Robert Pittman, who created MTV, attributed the station’s success to the ability of viewers in their late teens and early 20s to process multiple facets of information simultaneously. In television, success brings imitation…. “When Mary Lynn Ryan, who was CNN’s producer at the time, did this the news ratings skyrocketed,” Grimes said. “So it appeared…
The game scene is resorting to faddish ideas from years ago to try to appear original. I’m surprised they haven’t come out with Pet Rock software yet. None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines.…
For decades, we’ve worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ”masses” want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ”24” episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively…
[A] de-emphasis in the academy in recent years on the formal elements of poetry, in favor of the social, legal, historic, and cultural background to literature, has meant that even doctoral candidates in English need not concern themselves overly with poetic form. Another quick but, I think, telling example: I was serving on a panel…
When was the last time you stretched your arms, locked your fingers together with palms facing out, and executed a satisfying snap before channeling your energies into a one-on-one encounter? I am not referring to the clicking of a mouse button, which is about as immersive as punching a warm soda from a vending machine.…
Theater owners are in three different businesses: showing movies; showing advertisements–previews, which must be shown as part of their contract, don’t generate any revenue–and selling popcorn and soft drinks. The only business that makes a profit for them is the third, so it makes sense to cater to teenage males, who gobble the most popcorn…
—i am 8-bit A Los Angeles art show. Website requires Flash. Similar:Depression Dog Successfully Previewed HTML in DIY LOL GENERATOR AmusingThe Random Pulp Science Fiction Title Generator from Cornelius Zappencackler's DERANGE-O-L…From Thrilling Tales (where the future i…AmusingAvoiding Spoilers Gives You a Superficial Appreciation of ArtI very much appreciate that nobody spoil…ArtBurgh to Burg,…
—Gibby’s Game Room (Nescapades) That’s my first computer on the bottom shelf, a Texas Instruments TI-99 4A (c. 1981). The key combination that produced “+” was “shift+equals.” The key combination that produced “System Reset” was “namelessbutton-right-next-to-shift + equals.” One day it started smoking, so we took it back to the store. I didn’t see an Atari…
You Get Transported To Another Dimension and Find This Weird Machine In A Maze And Then Some Other Stuff Happens, It’s Really Cool —Jacqueline H. Lott —The Stupid Title Comp What a stupid title for an adventure game. Similar:The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit Geary admits that he often makes…
How can I get rid of That Old Typewriter Smell? Hey, some of us like it! But we’re perverse … Seriously, it’s a common problem, especially with portables–and if you’re allergic to mold, it can be a real health hazard. Yes, the smell is caused primarily by mold, combined with decades of dust and cigarette…
Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time…
Although a failed business enterprise, Laurel‘sPurple Moon seemed to do exactly what it had planned — hit it off with girls. Her idea that games should consist of relationships, values such as loyalty, love, and courage, and conflicts such as jealousy, cheating, exclusion, racism, materialism, and broken homes seems worthwhile, but as a young girl…
The moon base landing dome opens in pie slices like eye muscles, or the jagged mouth of a cyclops. Pods are not designed strictly for function but thematic meaning: who would fly one without side ports? Tunnel vision. The dark port in the white pod body is very eye-ballish. Similar also is the deep socket…
That’s your lot. That’s the movie we’ve been waiting 26 years for. And let me tell you, it was not worth the wait, not for this. The whole film is true to neither the letter nor the spirit of Douglas Adams’ books and scripts. And it really seems that many of the changes have been…
Whether solving mysteries in text-based adventure games or slaying dragons by phone in multi-user role-playing games, many players still name the written word as their weapon of choice. —Jacob Ogles —Keyboard Is Mightier Than Sword (Wired) Rather than wallow in text-only nostalgia, this piece places text games in the context of modern 3D gaming, so it’s…
In terms of their reputation within respectable society, comics hit their nadir in the early 1950s. Slowly, however, the pendulum started to swing the other way. The careers of two Catholic intellectuals, Marshall McLuhan and Father Walter Ong, illustrate how comics re-won respect in the post-war era. In the 1940s, long before his fame as…
This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. —Yahoo! Creative Commons Search (Yahoo!) Slashdot is aflutter with…
One thing that would improve college teaching immensely would be mandatory drama and speech classes for all new faculty. Forget the expensive technology. Teach them how to use their voices, how to modulate their tones, how to string together an exciting narrative without notes. Teach them to make the passion that is surely inside them…