The Most Epic Demo in Computer History Is Now an Opera

This is nice, but what I really want to see is an Elizabethan-style revenge play featuring Clippy. December 9, 1968… in an underground convention center in the heart of San Francisco, Doug Engelbart gave The Mother Of All Demos, introducing the world to an astonishing slew of technologies including word processing, video conferencing, windows, links,…

Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies. He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it…

The Life and Times of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But, in addition to symbolizing despair, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ can be wielded as a Zen-like tool to accept the chaos of universe. Meditate on its wide eyes and upturned mouth; that’s not the expression of a quitter, it’s the carefree face of #blessed, radical openness. —The Awl. Similar:Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy,…

Blog ten-beat lines of verse, like Shakespeare wrote.

Blog ten-beat lines of verse, like Shakespeare wrote. But lazy bloggers, fill you not your posts With words transpos’d, poetic more to seem. Like this, who speaks? Like Yoda will you sound. Nor stuff your limping lines with pointless words And really wasteful phrases filling space And stretching points so thin across each line In order to fulfill the ten-beat rule. Yet rhymeless…

Joyful white guys finish ahead of struggling woman and black man in this university’s catalog

Looks like the quality control process at this school needs a little refinement.“The image was not representative of UNG’s commitment to diversity, and this will serve as an opportunity for increased dialogue about diversity issues and we expect that to better inform our processes and publications,” said Kate Maine, the university official. —Raw Story Similar:Great…

Leonard in Slow Motion (9min video)

Leonard exists in slow motion but lives in a regular speed world. When he discovers his office crush is getting transferred to Florida, Leonard decides he must somehow become regular speed to win her heart before she leaves town for good. Similar:Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome” “We Shall Overcome,”…

National Science Foundation announces plan for comprehensive public access to research results

This is good news. It’s unfair that government-funded studies get published in private databases that make money off of the public’s desire to access results of studies paid for by our taxes. NSF will require that articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions be deposited in a public access…

The Teen Brain “Shuts Down” When It Hears Mom’s Criticism

Wired summarizes an egghead study for the rest of us. Parents may benefit from understanding that when they criticize their adolescents, adolescents may experience strong negative emotional reaction, may have difficulty cognitively controlling this emotion and may also find it challenging to understand the parent’s perspective or mental state. (From a study summarized in Wired.) Similar:Katie…

9 Photography Tips (Steve McCurry)

9 Photography Tips Similar:I'm not a big fan of Disney's corporate greed.I’m not a huge fan of Disney, largely be…AcademiaHow Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on CampusIt can be scary outside the box. A unive…AcademiaPompeii artifacts at the Carnegie Science Center The lighting was very low, so the phot…Aesthetics20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't GetI expect…

Lighten Up (an illustrator explores the racial politics of skin color in comics)

Lighten Up — The Nib — Medium. Similar:The History of Typography Told in Five Animated MinutesOpen Culture. AestheticsDescent, Part 1 (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 26) Data experiences disturbing…Rewatching ST:TNG Data plays poker wi…CultureWhy Do So Many People on YouTube Sound the Same?So it turns out the “YouTube voice” is j…CultureInverted Pyramid, #SharpieGate edition…

My copy of Plotkin’s Hadean Lands arrived today. 

 Similar:Journalism, Fake News, and "Clickbait Defamation"Sometimes when my social media contacts …CultureMy meeting was cancelled, so I spent the morning assembling a cabinet for a Little Free Li…AcademiaThe Case Against High-School Sports”I’ve been in hundreds of classrooms,” s…CultureAnother very rough day. Students are cheerful and patient, obviously happy to be here.Another very rough day.…