I did not bother to click on the llama story or the dress story, and now you don’t have to, either.

Now I’m going to bed. Similar:Journalists call out White House claims on terror reportingThe easily-disproved surface-level claim…CultureHow journalists should handle racist words, images and violence in CharlottesvilleI have covered protests where people sho…Current_EventsPope Leo XIV names AI one of the reasons for his papal name…I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There…Current_EventsAre we spreading…

Google’s AI could probably beat you at Atari

What’s significant in this story is not that a computer can perform tasks more efficiently than a human, but that the computer in question is not deploying a pre-programmed strategy; it is instead teaching itself how to win. When IBM’s Deep Blue computer defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, and the artificially intelligent Watson…

Reflections on Flannery O’Connor’s “The River”

I’m teaching “The River” today in an “Introduction to Literary Study” course. Demonstrating that we know what to do if we ever encounter such a little boy in real life won’t help us to understand O’Connor’s literary accomplishment. From a Catholic perspective, the mysteries of God are beyond anyone’s understanding. Anyone who prays for God…

FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules For ‘Open Internet’

Verizon and Comcast lobbyists hang their heads. Technolibertarians rejoice… within reason. The full text of the policy has not been released, so we’re not sure exactly what the policy means for supporters of keeping the Internet open and weird. The Federal Communications Commission approved the policy known as net neutrality by a 3-2 vote at its…

What do students need to know about rhetoric?

I love giving the “what is rhetoric” lecture in my freshman writing seminar. Most students have at least heard of a rhetorical question, but most don’t know what “rhetoric” means, nor have they heard of logos, pathos and ethos. The first thing that students need to know about rhetoric, then, is that it’s all around…

Lincoln’s last play; or, the continuing fascination with “Our American Cousin”

E. A. Sothern as the foppish and silly Lord Dundreary stole the show. His part was originally small, but his ad libs were received so well by the audience that his part was expanded. Our American Cousin wasn’t just the last play President Lincoln saw. It was one of the great commercial successes of its…

The dark future of American space exploration: NASA’s golden age is about to come to a thudding halt

I remember, as a kid, being thrilled by the images that came in from the Voyager flybys in the late 70s and 80s. I wrote a fan letter to NASA when I was about 11, and received a big stack of glossy publications on the Space Shuttle and commercial technologies spun off from NASA inventions.…

Police respond to Twitter bot sending death threat to another Twitter bot

Jeffry built himself a harmless little Twitter bot. His intent was to create something that remixed his previous tweets into new — and hopefully coherent — sentences. No big deal, right? Except that when his bot happened to pick up on a tweet from another Twitter bot and made mention of a specific event, the…

Why teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’

However, there’s a silver lining for Mark Zuckerberg, as his company owns Instagram and WhatsApp, a popular messaging service. Whereas the company used to try to “clone the competition,” according to Bosker, Facebook has started acquiring its heirs. If teens are fickle and always looking to the next big thing, it’s smart to make sure…

We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.

A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. Our culture has drawn an artificial line between art and science, one that did not exist for innovators like Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. Leonardo’s curiosity and passion for painting, writing, engineering and biology helped him triumph in both art and science; his study of anatomy and dissections…

Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her

Justine Sacco is the PR exec whose tweet about AIDS went viral last year. It turns out that the angry Twitter mob that called her racist and unprofessional just might have been uninformed about the whole story. Imagine that! An apology to Justine Sacco had been itching at my throat from the moment I saw…

Paparazzi-proof clothing that’s embedded with reflective glass

This article featuring reflective clothing designed to overload cameras is actually more interesting to me because of the focus on how the crowd-sourced idea process works. Glass nanospheres are bonded to the fabric and act as little reflective lenses, which gives the clothes their shine. “It’s taking light and shoving it right back into the…

When backwards newbie poets write

When backwards newbie poets write
Up rhymes they clever wish to set,
Like Master Yoda do they sound
And awkwarder their poems get.

New rules governing drone journalism are on the way — and there’s reason to be optimistic

Mapping disasters? So long as you’ve got ATC clearance, it’s possible. Imaging structures in 3D? Totally possible. Covering protests? With the caveat that you can’t fly over people, very possible. Similar:My second greenscreen test.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d-LPwKQ…CybercultureTrying to Tame Huck FinnAdventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of…AcademiaNew Video Game's Second-Person Shooter Mode Features Someone Just Describing Game To…

Pick Up Your Smartphone Less Often. You Might Think Better

Research suggests we neeed to be bored sometimes in order to be creative. The constant distraction offered by a smartphone keeps the brain from entering the boredom phase that often sparks creativity. Delete a time-killling app on your phone today! (I haven’t played Candy Crush in months, but it’s still there on my OS device.…

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life

A PR professional should have known better. But mistakes can have serious, disproportionate consequences enacted by vigilante mobs. It may not be fair, but labeling it unfair doesn’t undo the consequences. Sacco’s Twitter feed had become a horror show. “In light of @Justine-Sacco disgusting racist tweet, I’m donating to @care today” and “How did @JustineSacco…

Naomi Baron’s Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World

What’s the deal with ebooks? They run out of battery, they hurt your eyes, they don’t work in the bath. After years of growth, sales are stagnating. In 2014, 65 percent of 6 to 17-year-old children said they would always want to read books in print—up from 60 percent two years earlier. via The New…

Brian Williams is Giving NBC an Opportunity to Bravely Break with Tradition

NBC has a marketing decision to make, not whether the punishment of expelling the nation’s top-rated nightly news anchor fits the crime. The question NBC needs to ask itself is: “Where can we go from here?”

The Hubble spotted this smiley face in space

Reading each other’s facial expressions is so important to our survival as a species that our brains are hardwired to respond to expressions on faces that aren’t even there. This adorable image — in which the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 seems to be smiling at the camera — comes courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope. It was spotted…

NASA | A View From The Other Side

A number of people who’ve seen NASA’s annual lunar phase and libration videos have asked what the other side of the Moon looks like, the side that can’t be seen from the Earth. This video answers that question. The imagery was created using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data. A number of people who’ve seen NASA’s annual…