It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats. They wear knee socks, polished patent-leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as 6 or 7, on…
At PPT’s The Diary of Anne Frank. Similar:Opening night of Sive.PersonalIn News, What’s Fake and What’s Real Can Depend on What You Want to Believe The proliferation of fake and hy…CultureAnonymous comment cards from student journalists at the end of the second week. These folks are amazing! It’s such a…AcademiaThat Much-Despised Apple Ad Could Be…
It seemed the labs were using an outdated protocol for calculating the probability of DNA matches in “mixtures”; that is, crime scene samples that contain genetic material from several people. It may have affected thousands of cases going back to 1999. At first, they assumed the update wouldn’t make a big difference — just a…
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I passed along to my geeklings an appreciation for hammy sci-fi overacting. Similar:My #Blender3D set design for a Zoom-based production of Rossum's Universal Robots, which I…I’ve loved this 1920s play for almost 30…AestheticsHow are you holding up? What difficult choices have you made? How can we all help each oth…Carolyn and were recently cast…
This whole item applies very well to one of my children. Me: Put your shoes on. Child: Did you know that we don’t actually vote for president, we vote for people who vote for president? Me: I don’t care, put your shoes on. Child: I am. Me: You’re not. Put your shoes on. Child: Why do we have shoes anyway? Me: Just put your…
I still blog, because I want control over my own archives, so that I can link back to my own posts to provide context (such as this 2004 post on the emerging SHU blogging community, or this 2011 post on the switch from MovableType to WordPress). Your past pretty much doesn’t exist if you post it…
Electronic Book Review just published an article I wrote with Dave Thomas, on cave space in video game ecology. Parts of this article are a companion to my 2007 Digital Humanities Quarterly article on the 1970s text computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. Crowther’s translation of real world caving experience into the digital medium provides a…
My daughter Carolyn, Matthew Hommel, Vinny Tresco, and my wife are in this show. (My wife is also the director.) The show runs Oct 1-3 (Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 at the Geyer Performing Arts Center in Scottsdale, Pa.) Geyer production ‘Dani Girl’ offers inspiration to those touched by cancer. –Tribune Review Similar:Out for a walk…
Mars is the only [other] place where we have solid evidence for liquid [water]. —The Washington Post –– Similar:A fleet of drones performs a light show in Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. I can’t help thinking of the b…AestheticsScientists should be goggled and in the lab, where they belong. Shut up and make me a vacc…Am…
In a stunning reversal of decades of copyright claims, the judge ruled that Warner/Chappell never had the right to charge for the use of the “Happy Birthday To You” song. Warner had been enforcing a copyright since 1988, when it bought Birch Tree Group, the successor to Clayton F. Summy Co., which claimed the original…
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Similar:National Dance DayIn the restaurant parking lot after dinn…CultureEnjoying more live theater.CultureAbout to launch. PersonalDesk blotters, with procedural leather and wood materials by Blendermada. #blender3dAestheticsAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAesthetics‘Twelfth Night’ is a Shakespearean hoot, and Prime Stage actors Carolyn Jerz, Malcolm MacK…Why is Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Nigh…Aesthetics
I hated Clippy, not because it looked like it was leering at me, but because it was so intrusive. [T]he engineers in the room were willing to throw out the focus-group-provided data—data which they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for—because it didn’t cohere to their expectations. The software shipped with 10 male assistants and…
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. An opportune time, then, to revisit R. Sikoryak’s “Good ol’ Gregor Brown,” which first appeared in Russ Kick’s The Graphic Canon, from Seven Stories Press. —Literary Hub Similar:Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the …[A] popular type of…
A clever little stunt, getting a little publicity for the robot and the dance troupe. A robot has taken the first step towards becoming a working actor by applying for a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card.The robot, whose acting style could be considered stiff, is named IRB 2400. It made its screen debut recently by costarring…
Similar:Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. —Thomas JeffersonEducationVulcan mind-melds from Star Trek: The Original Series, in the order that I can think of th… With Dr. Simon Van Gelder in Dagger …PersonalMy Kids Loved Narnia but Were Unimpressed by Turkish DelightAmerican kids today would have little id…Amusing‘People…
That moment when you see a dozen or more of your own journalism students guiltily ignoring the “no electronic devices” note in the program so that they can livetweet Honors Convocation. Similar:Journalism, Fake News, and "Clickbait Defamation"Sometimes when my social media contacts …CultureFalse equivalency in a copspeak guide to dealing with the mediaPolice chief and…
Similar:A picture of puffy white clouds floating in a blue skyAestheticsHow Not To Make Professional ContactsTowards the end of my year-long radio ne…AmusingMy wonderful daughter.PersonalThe chief engineer has a forward-facing station, on a platform above the technical staff c…PersonalRemembering James Doohan on his 100th Birthday (found on the Star Trek Wholesomeposting Fa…When I was a…