Hayles is an established authority on a humanities-centered approach to human-computer interactions, and My Mother Was a Computer (2005) is her third book on the topic. At times she writes with the expectation that her readers already know some foundational topics that she may have spent more time introducing in her previous books. In the…
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” Zimmerman is heard saying in NBC’s edited version. The difference is significant, since activists have been claiming that Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin. Critics have argued that NBC set out to purposely advance that narrative by condensing the 911 tape to make it…
“Whether in the lecture hall or in a textbook, anyone is obviously free to teach the subjects biology, economics, or psychology, and can do so using, creating, and refining the pedagogical materials they think best, whether consisting of ‘open source educational content’ or otherwise,” it reads. “But by making unauthorized ‘shadow-versions’ of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,…
My 9yo was ordered not to leave the kitchen table until her lessons were done, but she wanted to communicate to the world that she was in a bad mood. From where she was sitting, she had access to paper, scissors, and tape, which she used to construct this head-mounted frump-amplicfaction isolation cube. Ironically, it…
In Stallybrass’s mind, students—and in fact, all scholars—need to do less thinking and more working. “When you’re thinking,” Stallybrass writes, “you’re usually staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank screen, hoping that something will emerge from your head and magically fill that space. Even if something ‘comes to you,’ there’s no reason…
What follows is an excerpt from NBC Jumps the Shark on George Zimmerman | Mother Jones: According to the Today show, here’s what George Zimmerman said to a 911 dispatcher as he was trailing Trayvon Martin last February: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black. What a racist! Obviously Zimmerman had a real…
Thanks for the link, Kary. To subscribe to the New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, The Atlantic, Details, New York, and Time, you’ve got to have seven different apps, many of which are bloated. Some issues of Wired, for example, have weighed in at 500MB each. And what do you get inside? Aside from the…
Cool Infographics – Blog – 10 Tips for (journalists) Designing Infographics.
“We think it’s a terrific time to be making investments in the leading brands behind providing Moodle services,” [Blackboard’s] Henderson told Inside Higher Ed on Monday. In a blog post, he called the growing popularity of open source “the most important new dimension shaping the LMS market today.” Henderson acknowledged that some advocates might look upon Monday’s news…
An Apple iPad has never looked so awful. No, I’m not referring to the new iPad, the one with the ballyhooed Retina display. I’m referring to last year’s iPad 2, whose screen now looks grainy and pixelated when viewed alongside Apple’s latest tablet. The improvement in display quality smacks you in the face as soon…
My high school Drama coach and freshman English teacher Michael Garcia often shared his stories of making ends meet as a struggling young actor. When my 9yo daughter (a budding drama queen) recently started rehearsals for a local Stage Right professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and when I found out that…
I am so far out of the TV-watching habit that, Trekker though I be, I doubt I would watch any new Trek shows. I would probably just explore the fan-made wikis and blogs instead, as I have with Lost and the Battlestar reboot. Still, this imagined set of overlapping mini-shows sounds interesting. How does one…
Something I might want to do one day, before I go bald. Adam Bard shaves off half his hair and beard on opposite sides for unique driving licence photo
The number and scale of the apparently unexamined assumptions in this comment gave me pause. This coding business baffles me. I recently tried out an online how to code course and lost the will to live after lesson 3. Surely it is not beyond the wit of IT technicians to invent a programme which translates…
Yesterday, I sketched a chair I found at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s “The Art of Seating” exhibit. I had a spare hour, and threw together this Blender 3D model, and let the simulation render overnight. I only sketched it from one angle, so it’s fair to say this rendering is inspired by the…
The street artist Shepard Fairey, whose “Hope” campaign poster of Barack Obama became an enduring symbol of his last presidential campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to a charge stemming from his misconduct in trying to bolster claims in a lawsuit over which photograph had been used as a basis for the poster. Shepard Fairey Pleads Guilty Over…
Via David Thompson
I’ve been showing some of my Blender 3D creations to members of my son’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, and several of them asked me to teach them how to make a game. Blender 3D is a fantastic (free! open source!) tool that can model 3D computer-generated scenes and characters, render high-quality videos, as well as…
Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported. “Fixed playground equipment that meets licensing codes is unchallenging and uninteresting to children,” they wrote in the February issue of…
I almost cried while reading this. But the best part is getting to share with my kids, share the geeky things that informed my childhood and continue to inform my existence: Star Wars, Star Trek, math, science, reading, writing, music, computers and video games, movies and television. I can’t tell you the joy of having…