How Americans Die

Fantastic data visualization. How Americans Die. Similar:The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create ItI’m getting ready to introduce my freshm…Cyberculturexkcd: Pathogen ResistanceThis is just an excerpt. Read the whole …AmusingThe Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pagerIn the halls of power at Amazon, busy ex…BusinessFamily Business (#StarTrek #DS9…

The Dadliest Decade

The eighties, at least, were drenched in cocaine and neon, slick cars and yacht parties, a real debauched reaction. But nineties white culture was all earnest yearning: the sorrow of Kurt Cobain and handwringing over selling out, crooning boy-bands and innocent pop starlets, the Contract With America and the Starr Report. It was all so…

The Benefits of Writing Crap (A Reminder)

A first draft gives you something to go on in the future. Because you will rewrite this draft. And you’ll rewrite it again after the first time. So, don’t rush the process. (And I’m talking to myself as much as to you.) At the same time, I think its important to acknowledge that writing “masterful…

How to Lie with Data Visualization

Data visualization is one of the most important tools we have to analyze data. But it’s just as easy to mislead as it is to educate using charts and graphs. In this article we’ll take a look at 3 of the most common ways in which visualizations can be misleading. —Heap Data Blog. Similar:I’m really…

Understanding Poetry

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Understanding Poetry. Similar:The Righteous MindI just finished “The Righteous Mind: Why…CultureChapbooks — the latest assignment in my “History and Future of the Book” class.Students have already done a 400-word sp…AcademiaAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this meme because the last time I used in cla…AcademiaA professor examines why her students…

My Day of Digital Humanities

I’ve blogged a bit as part of today’s Day of Digital Humanities. Day of Digital Humanities on Twitter. Similar:Memories of Toronto Yonge Street EncountersI arrived in Toronto in 1992 as a 22yo g…CultureHypertext as a Teaching Tool — Brown University Poetry Classroom 1974This short film documents an early attem…AcademiaGirlhood 2014They don’t even seem to want…

Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say

  The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read. Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways…

MS Paint Adventures

Wonderfully silly take on old-school point-and-click adventures. I’ve only played through the first few turns but found quite a few good laughs. I’ll be back to play more when I’m done chauffeuring the offspring this evening. A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this…