Collier has never met most of his guild mates in person, but he knows two of them very well. They are his roommates, Adam Traum and Owen Nelson, both buddies he met in art school in Florida a few years back who are now his compadres in the real and virtual worlds. In real life,…
We are currently paying a large amount of money to attend this University and receive an education. If I have paid to be taught something, shouldn’t there be a repercussion for the teacher rather than, or at least as well as, the student when knowledge has not been taught? —Ailee Slater —Grading system gets an…
From a sample of 175,000 15-year-old students in 31 countries, researchers at the University of Munich announced in November that performance in math and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them…
Dude, you’ve got to read this. A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word “dude,” contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers…. Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derives its power…
For a librarian who has even a modest sense of either posterity or professional responsibility, entertaining any thoughts about a decline in the importance of books is painful. After all, books are how we speak to one another across generations, and one of the ways we can subvert the limitations of culture, class, gender, and…
The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle. —Jakob Nielsen —Undoing the Industrial Revolution (Alertbox)
In the universal, ritualistic adulation, it was no surprise that Google’s latest service received publicity that was as wide as it was shallow. The blogorrhea and avalanche of e-mail was as if a free, magical cure for cancer had been announced by the National Institutes of Health. I like and use Google a lot, but…
The Sims 2 now has a patch that fixes a few bugs. If only real life was debuggable like this. Here’s a few highlights: Fixes a problem with Sims’ jobs not functioning properly when 3 or more Sims go to work in a helicopter. Visitors will no longer kidnap a baby or toddler by leaving…
They reported that the more someone heads a soccer ball, the lower that player will score on tests measuring attention, concentration, and general intellectual functioning. Lezak is unsurprised. “I know what happens when you bat on the brain,” she says. “Given what we know about boxing, it would have been surprising if we hadn’t found…
Minorities who complain of underrepresentation might want to consider this still rather arcane problem. Television doesn’t just represent you; it usurps you. In this respect, to be underrepresented might be seen as a kind of privilege. It means that those bright and literate tv people haven’t really discovered you yet and set you going like…
In August of 2003, I spent $280 on X-rays and $400 on laptop repairs. I was in between fellowships and had no health insurance. I had slid down the steps of my charming two-floor walkup, resulting in an injury to my arm and, more painfully, damage to computer files containing my dissertation-research notes. Those charges…
Santa, enraged, kills Ensign Jones and attacks the Enterprise in his sleigh. As Scotty works to keep the power flowing to the shields, Kirk and Bones infiltrate Santa’s headquarters. With the help of the comely and lonely Mrs. Claus, Kirk is led to the heart of the workshop, where he learns the truth: Santa is…
At home, dads read to their daughters and throw footballs to their sons. In elementary school overwhelmingly female teaching staffs naturally teach in ways that connect better with girls. Fidgety boys are quickly defined as suffering from reading disabilities. In middle school, teachers – still unattuned to the boys’ disadvantages – take no action to…
—MSN Spaces = soylent green (BoingBoing) A good introduction to the online reaction to MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s new blogging service. Note particularly the terms of service that says anything you post using the service becomes a product that MSN can sell without reimbursing you.
Lycos Europe has shut down its screensaver, makelovenotspam, which delighted many Internet users with the opportunity to flood spammers’ Web sites with junk e-mail. ISPs and anti-virus developers objected to the tactic, and at least one spammer found a way to turn the tables…. One Web site reportedly spammed by the screensaver simply forwarded its…
How indulgent is World of Warcraft? The game actually rewards you for not playing it. If you log out of the game in an inn, you get double experience for a while when you return later. According to the documentation, staying away from the game for a week should give you about a level and…
—Subjects > News > Colleges and Universities (Alexa) The web indexing service Alexa rates my academic site (jerz.setonhill.edu) as the fifth most popular in the “News > Colleges and Universities” category. Then again, there are only five sites in that category… so “Alexa puts my site in last place” is another way of looking at the…
Three major network television stations – NBC, CBS and ABC – have provided news and entertainment to American television viewers for decades. Each network broadcasts the evening news at 6:30 p.m., and for many American families, gathering around the television set to watch NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, CBS anchor Dan Rather, or ABC anchor Peter…
“Troops crossed the line of departure,” 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. “It’s going to be a long night.” CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun.…
A spokesman for the Oxford University Press said that the word was now being put into other dictionaries for children and learners, reflecting its mainstream use. “I think it was the word of last year rather than this year,” he said. “Now we’re getting words that derive from it such as ‘blogosphere’ and so on,”…