Gallery: Pepper Spray Cop Squirts the Internet in the Eye
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Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Is Not
I wonder what kind of a government we would have, if laws were written as collaborative Wikis. Looks like Iceland’s new constitution came close. To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document…
Great spoof of the “zoom in and enhance” plot device; from Red Dwarf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFkb0d1kbU
If HTML5 Kills the Blog Format, I Won’t Shed a Tear
The blog format relieves publishers from the tiresome duty of producing covers and front pages and things to make their content more attractive and make readers want it. In some cases, it enables publishers to surrender any responsibility for making content attractive in the first place. There is a prophetic scene in the magnificent movie…
The Prop Master: Ross Macdonald, Forger for Screens Big and Small – Steven Heller – Life – The Atlantic
Because this is mostly a serial list, there’s not a lot of journalistic depth to this piece, but I did enjoy reading it. It’s a rather stark comment on how fatherhood has affected my movie-going when I realize I haven’t seen a single one of these movies, other than “Baby’s Day Out.” Macdonald is an…
Books With Soundtracks: The Future of Reading? – Atlantic Mobile
I am not sure what to think about this. This is both a thrilling prospect and a frustrating one. The sound is linked to the line of text for which it was composed, and as I begin reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery on my iPhone, an arrow in the right-hand margin slides down before my…
Awesome Modular Tables
Maura 331, where I’ll spend 6 hours a week teaching has been refitted with these awesome modular tables. Our great CIT folks took out the huge, blocky, immobile PC stations. Since students have their own MacBooks and iPads, there is no reason to clutter up the space. I love the freedom this setup provides. It’s…
Commonly Misused Words: THAN and THEN
The Hunger Games: Seton Hill University Student Videos
In addition to iPads and MacBooks, every freshman who arrives at Seton Hill this fall will get a copy of The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I taught this book last term in my American Lit class. Here are two of the best student projects on The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games: 2 Sides of…
Two Out of Three Takedowns; Irony and Ambiguity
A popular handout from my site, Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers, includes a phrase uncommon enough that Googling for it (“practiced scream therapy“) leads me to short story exercises that develop an example into more detailed studies, or pages that remix the content of my site in order to make a similar point.…
Updated my “Show, Don’t (Just) Tell” Handout
Taking advantage of a summer day in the office to tweak one of the most popular pages on my website. Five of my pages account for more than half of the traffic on my whole site, so I’ve made it a summer project to give those pages some attention, to make them worth the visit.…
Uncanny footage of an outdoor sculpture. – YouTube
Uncanny footage of an outdoor sculpture. – YouTube. Blender Camera Mapping Tutorial
Robert Lepper’s Typewriter Peacock
I love this piece, on display at the Westmoreland Museum of Art, as part of “They Practice What They Teach: Artist Faculty of Carnegie Institute of Technology.”
Is Google Ruining Your Memory? | Wired Science | Wired.com
Predictably, Wired celebrates the freedom that comes from depending on computers instead if your own memory. (The story includes a link to Nicholas Carr’s opposing view.) By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven’t disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our…
MediaShift . The Twitter Effect: How Social Media Changes the News Narrative | PBS
This gossipy “hive” narrative yields little new information, despite that it has the look and feel of news (stock file videos and stills of the “Jackass” guys being Jackasses and a lame movie of the “crime scene” two hours after the fact designed, cynically, to draw hits). For journalism students, the result of such coverage…
Angry Birds Text Adventure of the Day
Angry Birds Text Adventure of the Day – TDW Geeks. Thanks for the link, Josh.
On NYTimes.com, Now You See It, Now You Don’t – NYTimes.com
It’s annoying that the New York Times apparently disables my browser’s copy text function. Here is a screenshot instead. On NYTimes.com, Now You See It, Now You Don’t – NYTimes.com.
Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”
I do still see value in teaching students how to blog, precisely because academic blogging (as practiced by academics) involves reflection, citation of sources, interaction with archived posts from the past and current posts by peers on other blogs. Blogging, as a genre, extends beyond using any one piece of software. Being an “expert” on…
Gamification: When two tribes go to work – Features, Gadgets & Tech – The Independent
Honestly, this does not sound good. In the short term, it will only be possible to alter the “flavor text” and not the substance. Since the producers ultimately control both the game world and the TV world, and can therefore nerf a gameworld city that e TV plot needs destroyed, or buff a game world…
Bacon Starry Night Meme
I’ve no idea where the “Bacon Starry Night” meme comes from. Other than Vincent Van Gogh, and bacon, of course. My wife asked whether there is a bacon “The Scream.” Not yet, apparently.