“Mr. Frisbie,” I called to him, and he stopped and turned around, taking off his bowler hat and smiling as he shook my hand. I got right to the point. “I’m trying to come up with a column for the dog days of summer,” I told him. “Something quick and fun but smart. But I’m…
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SHU’s Phil Komarny: Every get, starts with a give: We have all heard the phrase, you get what you give, and in the world of social media that phrase takes on a much more weighty meaning. Go ahead, prove me right, create a twitter account and follow 100 or so people. Just read, don’t interact.…
Student who dropped by to troubleshoot her blog politely averted her eyes each time I typed my admin password. #kidstoday Similar:Google's AI could probably beat you at AtariWhat’s significant in this story is not …CybercultureTwo Steps Down the Interactive Fiction RoadWonderfully detailed analysis of two gro…AestheticsIn Changing News Landscape, Even Television is VulnerableThe transformation of…
For a while, we were part of a homeschool co-op, where the organizer — a parent to two darling girls who happily sat through lessons — would discipline fidgety boys like my Peter by withholding their recess breaks. During a group activity, I overheard another parent say “Peter, don’t work ahead.” We didn’t sign up…
I still haven’t seen the video, but this event is the pop-culture gift that keeps on giving. Every child dreads this day: sooner or later, your parents will come to you, innocently wide-eyed, to ask you about twerking. How you handle this difficult conversation is extremely important and could have a significant impact on the…
Mrs. Miller doesn’t read the entire newspaper. “Some people put in things that don’t interest me, like who is going to host church next time,” she said. She reads letters from former hometowns and from her older sister, 89-year-old Ada Coblentz, who writes for the Budget and recently noted she had a chest cold. Both…
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If you are a gentleman, never lower the intellectual standard of your conversation in addressing ladies. Pay them the compliment of seeming to consider them capable of an equal understanding with gentlemen. You will, no doubt, be somewhat surprised to find in how many cases the supposition will be grounded on fact, and in the…
My 11yo, of the opening chapters of a YA novel with an orphan heroine: “That’s a rip-off of Annie, Oliver, and Les Miz.” (Eyeroll.) (But she asked me to read her more chapters.) Similar:Carolyn as Maria in West Side StoryPersonalYesterday my wife took this last known picture of our two teenagers. The boy is 20…
A typographic engineer, Connare was working at Microsoft in 1993, when he was asked for his input on a new program’s fonts. “When I loaded the CD a little dog came up. He talked in a speech balloon like you would get in a newspaper cartoon strip, but it was in the system font Times…
Draft: “As my classmates tormented, I shrank into my turtle-like shell.” Suggestion: “The school mocked; I turtled.” (Yes, I am #marking.) Similar:Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext StoryIt’s not that hypertext went on to becom…CultureWorld Trade Center Literary and Cultural Reflections (first posted September 11, 2001) Not knowing what else to do, in…
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Even after the proliferation of print, the humble pen continued to flourish. History owes a lot to the literates who, entirely off their own steam, chose to document the times they lived in. Without people such as Samuel Pepys, there would be huge caverns in our knowledge of major events that happened in relatively recent…
A newsworthy story is recent (rather than stale), rare (rather than common), affects many (rather than few) people, has weighty (rather than trivial) impact, happens nearby (rather than far away), and involves prominent (rather than ordinary) people.
Green and Larson both admit that even the most seasoned gamers might be disturbed when they realize they can’t simply “win” this level by battling some final boss or shooting at a group of hungry zombies. But this discomfort is part of the point — by allowing player to fail in a certain sense, they…
Curse you, eyelids, for being so heavy. It’s not even 11:30! A 13-hour day planned for tomorrow, though the last hour is a student social. Similar:It's been nice knowing you, iPad3 It’s been nice knowing you, iPad3, but…TweetsTweet: For an anatomy project, my #geekling made a Vulcan…For an anatomy project, my #geekling mad…TweetsFormer student: "I…
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