My 10yo Sings “Hopelessly Devoted to You”

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Pope calls Argentine kiosk owner to cancel paper delivery

This is a very cute story, further illustrating the “regular guy” image that has underscored the vast majority of the coverage the new pope has received. “Seriously, it’s Jorge Bergoglio, I’m calling you from Rome,” the Pope insisted. “I was in shock, I broke down in tears and didn’t know what to say,” Del Regno…

Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards

The DRM proposals at the W3C exist for a simple reason: they are an attempt to appease Hollywood, which has been angry about the Internet for almost as long as the Web has existed, and has always demanded that it be given elaborate technical infrastructure to control how its audience’s computers function. The perception is that…

Washington Post seeks blogger to post ‘at least’ 12 times per day

The ideal candidate would have experience reporting, writing and producing online content as well as a proven fluency in social media. We need someone with the confidence to work independently, but also a team player who can collaborate with our critics, columnists and reporters. This blogger should be able to identify trends, cutting through the…

Pew’s State of the Media: Ignore the doomsaying. American journalism has never been healthier.

American news media has never been in better shape. That’s just common sense. Almost anything you’d want to know about any subject is available at your fingertips. You don’t need to take my analysis of the Cyprus bank bailout crisis as the last word on the matter: You can quickly and easily find coverage from the New…

The Blessay

My own pedagogical term for this is “richly-linked blog post” — emphasizing the value of hyperlinking to sources, evidence, definitions, counterpoints, etc. (Thanks for the link, John S.) Sorry, I don’t have a better name for it, but I feel it needs a succinct name so we can identify and discuss it. It’s not a…

Diamonds Are Bullsh*t

I did propose with a diamond ring, for which I paid a substantial portion of my income, but since I was in grad school at the time, my income was very modest. The next time you look at a diamond, consider this. Nearly every American marriage begins with a diamond because a bunch of rich…

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own

As long as Congress focuses on just unlocking cellphones, they’re missing the larger point. Senators could pass a hundred unlocking bills; five years from now large companies will find some other copyright claim to limit consumer choice. To really solve the problem, Congress must enact meaningful copyright reform. The potential economic benefits are significant, as…

The Effect of Tragedy on Journalists

College is already pretty stressful, and journalism culture is not exactly relaxed, either. The psychological strain of trying to do justice to a newsworthy story, while also respecting the suffering of members of your own academic community, while also suffering as a member of that community, is no picnic. The stereotype of the hard-hitting journalist…

When In Academia – WHEN A COLLEAGUE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT ‘DIGITAL HUMANITIES’:

When In Academia – WHEN A COLLEAGUE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT ‘DIGITAL HUMANITIES’:. Similar:Where is the comma in "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" supposed to go?https://youtu.be/sxfxy-3dGz0AmusingU.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human AbilitiesAmericans are more worried than enthusia…CultureI should be writing my "Fake News" paper for this weekend's "Computers and Writing." Inste…Could the absurd…

Washington Post to begin charging regular website, mobile app. users for digital subscriptions

The Washington Post says it will begin selling digital subscriptions this summer, asking frequent visitors to its website and mobile apps to pay a fee supporting the company’s journalism. The Post announced plans Monday for a metered subscription model. It will require a paid subscription after the viewing of 20 articles or multimedia features per…

CNN Reports On The Promising Future of the Steubenville Rapists, Who Are Very Good Students

Excellent analysis of the emotional impact when TV journalism shows gripping footage of convicted rapists breaking down in tears while the victim, whose identity is protected by privacy laws, remains anonymous and invisible. It is unlikely that Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow are committed rape apologists; more likely they simply wanted a showy, emotional angle…

FIRST Pittsburgh Regional 1st Time to the TOP – 3955 – YouTube

“The Big Tickle” was the only bot at the the Pittsburgh regional FIRST Robotics Competition that tried climbing all the way to the top rung for 30 points. The crowd went wild every time our bot did its thing. We got picked by the seventh-ranked team to join their alliance in the quarter finals. Though…

New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade

Wonderful, inspiring article that uses text, photos, and audio samples to tell how a researcher remixed wordless sounds to create an artificial voice for a voiceless child. Patel can take that sound, run it through a computer and find out all kinds of things about how that person would sound if that person could speak…

Today’s Google Doodle is Mostly Harmless

Ford Prefect kept a script of Godspell in his satchel, by the way, in order to support his cover story of being an actor. I used an image from the cover of “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” in a slide presentation I used as a prop on stage during the “Tower of…

Can’t upload photos to Facebook from my MacBook

I spent 30 minutes trying to upload about 10 photos, but I only succeeded in uploading two. I’ve tried Safari and Chrome… I’ve tried uploading photos individually and in groups. The rest uploaded part of the way, and then froze, seemingly forever, with this bar. Oh, well… I guess that’s why I don’t upload many…

Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, 1960

Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, 1960 | Brain Pickings. Similar:Terms of ServiceFascinating example of new media journal…AestheticsThe Myth of ‘Learning Styles’The discourse around “learning styles” (…AcademiaFont vs Typeface: bold and italics are fonts, but Arial and Times New Roman are typefacesAestheticsNarrative, Creativity, and EvolutionMy students are finishing up Hayles,…

Fired for Making a Game: The Inside Story of I Get This Call Every Day

He knows that if he’d instead posted a song or a poem or a comedy routine on YouTube, the bosses would have watched that, and might have understood what he was trying to say to them. If he’d created something that told the same story through a more traditional form than a game, he’d probably…

Chillax, Wikipedia, and bridezilla are not puns: Against adjoinages

So if recessionista and fembot are not really puns, what are they? They’re neolexic portmanteaus, in which root words are brutally slammed together with cavalier lack of wit. “Neolexic portmanteau” is a mouthful, so instead we shall choose a simpler handle. Sherry-manteau, catastrounity, misceg-formation, piss-poortmanteau, and poor-man’s-toes all proffer themselves as alternatives, but they are…

Academy of Interactive Arts & Science — D.I.C.E. Summit Awards

Gaming ledends Dave Lebling and Mark Blank honored for their pioneering work in text-adventure games, at Infocom. (Clips from Jason Scott’s GET LAMP documentary follow Dave Lebling’s introduction, around 1:35 or so. Welcome to the Official D.I.C.E. Summit Website. Similar:More world-building props for a fantasy #steampunk #Blender3D project.DesignHow to fix the internet: If we want online…