My copy of Plotkin’s Hadean Lands arrived today.
DCNF, TV Upfront Presenters Need to Understand That Content’s Kingdom is Changing
Today’s viewers don’t differentiate between "traditional" and "digital." Today’s viewers watch what they want, when they want. The average consumer is not thinking about whether it’s scripted or unscripted, user-generated or premium. They care that it’s funny, interesting, gripping or cool. Brands need to recognize the power of those four adjectives, and take risks alongside…
Don’t Text While Parenting — It Will Make You Cranky
The study summarized in Time Magazine looked at adults in a fast-food restaurant, who are using their smartphones while in a group with two or more children. One child reached over in an attempt to lift his mother’s face while she looked down at a tablet, but to no avail. Another mother kicked her child…
Unpopular grammar rules
Language is a fluid, living social construct. The rules of grammar were not carved on stone tablets and handed down by God. They were created by human beings who had observations about how language works, and opinions about how it should work. “Subject pronoun,” “predicate nominative,” and the like are almost insider terms, ones that…
Why the King’s Quest demo reignited my love for adventure games
I would give this King’s Quest reboot a try, but not until summer, when grades are submitted and conference papers are given and such. King’s Quest has me excited for the future of adventure games. Until I sat down for a demo of The Odd Gentlemen’s modern take on the 30-year-old series, I didn’t know I…
Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts
Indeed, in the world beyond grade school, where adults must exercise their moral knowledge and reasoning to conduct themselves in the society, the stakes are greater. There, consistency demands that we acknowledge the existence of moral facts. If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can…
How it feels to watch a user test your product for the first time
Jonathon Shariat.
They called it a “flashlight” because early handheld lights weren’t designed to shine steadily
A student’s short story featuring a treasure hunt at an ancestral mansion uses a vintage name for the mistress of the house a vintage name and supplies a butler, suggesting a Victorian Engliand setting. But the story also used the term “flashlight” — an Americanism for what the Brits are more likely to call an “electric…
Before I Go: A Stanford neurosurgeon’s parting wisdom about life and time
A very moving reflection by a dying man, who contemplates the meaning of the time he has left with his baby daughter. Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually,…
Computer Interfaces in Star Trek’s “Assignment Earth”
I was watching classic Star Trek with my son a few days ago when I came across this scene, from Assignment Earth, which is set on Earth during the 1960s (when the original show aired). This episode featured the adventures of a human raised by apparently benevolent aliens who want to stop Earth from destroying…
Text of note written by Boston Marathon bomber inside boat
Text has been redacted by bullet (hole)s. We are promised victory and we will surely get it. Now I don’t like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam but due to said (hole) it is allowed. All credit goes (hole) via seattlepi.com.
If you like to play with words, good news
I wish there were a secret day between Friday and Sunday, which you could tap into at will, whether to lengthen the work week and get one more project out of the way, or to lengthen the weekend and give you more time to recover. Anyway, Boing Boing’s review of “80 Days” is one of…
Los Angeles Times reorients for digital
Three weeks ago, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet informed staff that the paper would no longer take enterprise pitches for Page 1 of the print edition. Instead, editors from the various news desks would pitch their best enterprise pieces for digital slots on what will be called “Dean’s List.” Those stories’ publication in…
NYT: G.W. Bush is “super-overexposed” and “so far to our right” — so they omitted his presence from “Bloody Sunday” coverage
The quotes in my headline are accurate, but completely misleading. Saving this for an example in my journalism class, demonstrating the obligation that journalists have to avoid the perception of bias in their reporting. A photographer for The New York Times says the publication did not crop former President George W. Bush and first lady…
5 tips for choosing the right typeface
When it comes to picking a typeface, you can’t rely on gut alone. Making the right choice depends on function, context and a whole host of other factors. But how do you ensure you’re going about it the right way? Here we give you pointers to send you in the right direction…Creative Bloq.
11 Problems to Anticipate Before Your Next Website Redesign
I’m building a new site for a non-profit and will probably be moving the student newspaper to a new template, so this is the time to think of such things.
Five myths about daylight saving time
No, Daylight Saving Time was not created to help farmers (actually, they hate it) and no, it doesn’t save energy (running the air conditioner longer in the evenings costs more than we save by turning on fewer lights in the morning). And why are we on “Daylight Standard Time” just four months out of the…
Perchance to Dream: LARPing Hamlet at Castle Elsinore
This is the concept of Inside Hamlet, an interactive performance that takes place this weekend and next in the real Elsinore, at Denmark’s Kronborg Castle. Over the course of three five-hour acts, 100 actors will assume the roles of royals and servants of the House of Hamlet—and other related houses who have taken refuge at…
The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking
I quibble with The Chronicle headline writer’s notion that paper & pencil are “no-tech,” but hand-written notes are valuable. Students tested right after a lecture tended to answer factual questions equally well regardless of how they took notes, but students who handwrote their notes did consistently better on conceptual questions. What’s more, when students were…
The six wives of Henry VIII, in pie chart form
If you’ve ever wanted to see the reigns of Henry VIII’s wives represented in a pie chart, the New Statesman is here to serve. Catherine was queen for 24 years. That’s nearly seven times longer than her nearest successor. It’s nearly 50 times longer than Anne of Cleves, who was queen for all of six…