Stanford to offer new undergraduate majors integrating humanities, computer science

Training humanists who can code like a techie and engineers who can dream like a poet. Well played, Stanford! “We’re also seeing students who want to balance their academic passions with pragmatic considerations about their career development, and this kind of program addresses that need. The intellectual landscape is changing, and the workplace landscape is…

Khan Academy Gets Rare Partnership To Close Wealth Gap In College Test Prep

“We think we can make the playing field more level by making the best-in-class tool and making it free. We hope that beyond individual students, these tools become adopted by after-school and college readiness programs.” With a huge influx of donations from Silicon Valley’s most notable philanthropists, Khan Academy quickly evolved from a YouTube lecture…

Vulcans, The Secret Garden, and Venn Diagrams

  Similar:Bad Writing Costs Businesses BillionsThis is thinkpiece rehtoric rather than …AcademiaActors too reverent with Shakespeare, says Mark Rylance”To take a song like Honky Tonk Woman an…CultureRules for Civility: 14-Year-Old George Washington's 110 Commandments for Cultivating Chara… Every Action done in Company, ought…CultureInfinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface IndignityAmusingAttached (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch,…

Facebook Puts a Downer on Upworthy

Facebook Inc. changed its newsfeed algorithm. You’ll never believe what happened to Upworthy’s traffic next. —Bloomberg. Similar:CNN reports Biden's dog was "involved in another biting incident"CNN’s headline: “Bidens’ dog Major invol…Current_EventsWhy Did Dial-Up Modems Make So Much Noise?Screeeech . . . hisss . . . squaawk. The…CybercultureTechnology won’t fix America’s neediest schools. It makes bad…

Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web

We see narrative everywhere. It’s a primitive urge, a way to tie cause to effect, to convert the complexity of our experience to a story that makes sense. We want to see narrative everywhere. Stories are fun, exciting, comforting. This isn’t just a matter of bedtime stories and art. The saga of the Great Browser War, the…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu

My Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being Online

When I find something interesting that an online friend has shared via a linkbait site, I hereby pledge that I will link to the origin of the story, rather than a third-party site that republishes it without commentary. The people who share and like and respond to Upworthy and similar linkbait websites are just responding…

Feature: History Lesson: the treasured past of LucasArts point and clicks

I played more of the Sierra point-and-click adventures than the LucasArts ones, but “The Dig” and “Full Throttle” were probably as important to me as half a dozen of my once-favorite TV shows or movies. (I’ve revisited these games by watching YouTube longplay videos.) There’s a fondness throughout the catalogue for the catalogue. Monkey Island…