Civilization 3: Educational Review
What does my ten-year-old son think he has learned from playing Civilization 3?
The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency
Part of a list of jokes the president told at the Alfalfa Club Dinner. This set made me laugh. “In just the first few weeks, I’ve had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my BlackBerry. “I finally agreed to limit the number of people…
www.whitehouse.gov/blog
The URL says it all. www.whitehouse.gov/blog
E-mail Fail
It seems that a recent ‘reply-all storm’ at the State Department caused the entire e-mail infrastructure to crash. A notice sent to all State Department employees warned of disciplinary actions which will be taken if users “reply-all” to lists with a large amount of users. Apparently, the problem was compounded by not only angry replies…
Democracy 2
Are you a politician? a candidate for real political office? an MP in the UK? A Senator or member of the House of Representatives in the US? or the equivalent anywhere in the world? If so, I…a humble games programmer from the UK would like to give you a free gift. a FREE copy of…
Deep Throat Meets Data Mining
Journalism is changing. Watchdog journalism — the perusal of thousands of pages of official records in search of anomalies and other signs of abuse and corruption — is much harder to do than reporting on celebrity shenanigans or fashion trends. John Mecklin writes: On a disaggregated Web, it seems, people and advertisers simply will not…
Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate
Should local papers get a slice of the bail-out pie? Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.…
Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy: The Animated Gifs
That didn’t take long. BoingBoing assembles a collection of digital interpretations of the shoe-tossing incident.
One More Question…
A new generation of wired politicos will give journalists much fodder for scandal, but isn’t this making it a bit too easy for them? Incoming Obama administration director of speechwriting Jon Favreau (L) and a friend pose with a cardboard cutout of incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a party. (Obtained by The…
Ranks of Jailed Journalists Includes More Bloggers than Print or Broadcast Journos
China continued to be world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists. At least 56 online journalists are jailed worldwide,…
Fridge-sized tape recorder could crack lunar mysteries
A 1960s tape recorder the size of a household fridge could be the key to unlocking valuable information from NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon. An archiving error by NASA has meant 173 data tapes have sat in Perth for almost 40 years, holding information about lunar dust that could be vital in expanding science’s…
Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World
The web today is not the same as it was during the last presidential election. Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks. Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations…
Paper Dolls and Politics
My six-year-old daughter is in the next room, playing with her hand-made paper dolls. A few minutes ago, I heard her tones get a little deeper, and as I listened, I heard, “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.” Then I heard the rustle of another paper doll, and my daughter said, again in…
Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In – Series – NYTimes.com
A few weeks ago, my editors were bummed when I pointed out that an unusually large number of typos had slipped through the proofreading net and popped up in the headlines. For the most recent issue, the headlines were fine, but I found three typos in bylines. So the student paper isn’t perfect. Even Homer…
Courthouse News Service
Via Crooked Timber and BoingBoing: Thomson Reuters demands $10 million and an injunction to stop George Mason University from distributing its new Web browser application, Zotero software, an open-source format that allows users to convert Reuters’ EndNote Software. Reuters claims George Mason is violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base. (Courthouse News)…
Jack Thompson Disbarred
Kotaku reports: Is it finally game over for Florida lawyer and violent video game opponent Jack Thompson? Judgment has been entered in the case that started last year and came to a head when Judge Dava Tunis recommended permanent disbarment for the bombastic, showboating law man. The court has approved the report and has ordered…
Official Site of the Governor of Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia announces plans for a free, open-source physics textbook. The Virginia Physics “Flexbook” project is a collaborative effort of the Secretaries of Education and Technology and the Department of Education that seeks to elevate the quality of physics instruction across the Commonwealth. Participating educators will create and compile supplemental materials relating to…
Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines
Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines (a government website that identifies research backing up good web design practices).
Distracting Miss Daisy
Thanks for the link, Rosemary. From The Atlantic. Economists and ecologists sometimes speak of the “tragedy of the commons”–the way rational individual actions can collectively reduce the common good when resources are limited. How this applies to traffic safety may not be obvious. It’s easy to understand that although it pays the selfish herdsman to…
Men banned from national parks after vandalism
Boston.com: A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.