A New Talent Emerges

I tried hard to frown disapprovingly when my beautiful daughter demonstrated that she can burp the alphabet, but she did *such* a good job…   Similar:LEGO turned itself around by analyzing overbearing parents[C]hildren play to get oxygen, to unders…CultureSuch deep roots you have: How Little Red Riding Hood's tale evolvedDid all these stories spring from…

What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks

I’ve been following the frustrating slow burn that is #Gamergate for some time. I’m planning to introduce it in my online Video Game Culture and Theory class this January. This ground-level introduction will help add context to the mayhem. Until recently, you might have lived a life blissfully unaware of the online #Gamergate movement. But…

Ada Lovelace at 17

The First Programmer Was a Lady

Over a hundred years before a monstrous array of vacuum tubes surged into history in an overheated room in Pennsylvania, a properly attired Victorian Gentleman demonstrated an elegant little mechanism of wood and brass in a London drawing room. One of the ladies attending this demonstration brought along the daughter of a friend. She was…

The Interactive Fiction Competition

Download and Play The Games of the 2014 IFComp The Interactive Fiction Competition. Similar:Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the pressMore on how their desire to control the …CultureBlondes 'to die out in 200 years'”The last natural blondes will die out w…CultureRemnants of a Legendary Typeface Rescued From the River ThamesA little over a century ago,…

Sources tell Seton Hill University’s Dennis Jerz that TV news websites emphasize self-promotion over reporting the news

Sources tell Seton Hill University’s Dennis Jerz that online write-ups of TV news stories seldom miss the chance to self-promote. Sources tell Jerz that two of the first three paragraphs in the text version of this Miami CBS TV news story put the name of the TV reporter before any actual news allegedly spoken by some nameless source.…

Reporters say White House sometimes demands changes to press-pool reports

The decades-old White House press pool was created as a practical compromise between the news media and the nation’s chief executive: Instead of having a mob of journalists jostling to cover the president at every semi-public function, a handful of reporters are designated to act as proxies, or “poolers,” for the entire press corps. Poolers…