I’d like this article better if it weren’t divided up into four ad-generating chunks, but here’s the payoff: It’s not all about colossal caves and twisty little passages any more. Here are a few IF highlights that show off how varied the genre can be, from card-based trips to the ‘Neath to hunts for lost…
Three weeks ago tonight, I got an email from the director saying he thought he could use me in the cast. A whirlwind of rehearsals, a week of run-throughs, three performances, and we’re done. Wow! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0tbJj5Jpjo The first act of Godspell is almost entirely fun and games, but the second act quickly moves through the…
When I finally found a way to contact Verizon through “email” (really a form to fill out), I typed out my complaint. I have separate internet and telephone accounts; for some reason, the payments I try to make to one account are being applied to the other account, so one account is overdue and the…
PROUSTZAC Enhances and enriches remembrance of things past. Can lead to increased carbohydrate consumption. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Banned Performance Enhancing Substances in Literary Competitions.. Similar:The elements, in haikuEach element of the periodic table gets …AmusingPaper Titles: Inform by Stating your Topic and Position; Grab the Reader’s Interest If You…An effective research paper title will …Academia‘Tragedy…
The talented and insightful scholar Matt Kirschenbaum tells a wonderful story. Deighton stood outside his Georgian terrace home and watched as workers removed a window so that a 200-pound unit could be hoisted inside with a crane. The machine was IBM’s MTST (Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter), sold in the European market as the MT72. “Standing in…
That’s me in the white shirt, with a tie around my head. The show opens tonight. Anthony Marino, artistic director for the performing arts group and professional theater company Stage Right! in Greensburg, has played the role of Judas in the classical musical, “Godspell” eight times. He is about to take stage for the ninth…
But when I do, it’s because they are this adorable. Saving this for the next time my daughter is crabby and needs some comfort. Similar:What gives you comfort? I collect lights. Some of these have magnets!!AmusingProfessor teaches class of 300 students from his phone while trapped in elevator with 2 sm…https://twitter.com/jayvanbavel/status/1…AcademiaThings may be awful, but…
The article is short, but I particularly like the links that show the wording of the questions and the survey methodology. Bear in mind that this survey does not check o see which form of news is more accurate, comprehensive, unbiased, timely, profitable, etc. The survey just asks for personal preference. More Americans turn to…
The Tribune-Review is very dependable in its coverage of the local arts. (That’s me kneeling in the white shirt, with a tie around my head.) It’s not always the adults who are the teachers. In Stage Right’s production of the Broadway musical “Godspell,” director Anthony Marino says it’s the youngest performers who spread the word…
Here’s a great article I’m asking all my journalism students and all my lit-crit students to read. Words do more than just describe the world. They literally define it. They shape and frame it. “Most people don’t understand this,” says linguist George Lakoff of the University of California, Berkeley. “Most people think that words just…
Is higher education ready for the switch to mobile technology? It’s kinda cool to be working at a university where the Luddites are the ones who are attached to their laptops, but I’m conscious of our need to do more. When I put a ton of work into a website for a performing arts school…
While competing in the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest Saturday, contestant Gerald Green reportedly incorporated characters, dialogue, and set design from 16th-century English playwright Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus into his elaborately choreographed dunk routine. “Lo, Mephistophilis, for love of thee/Faustus hath cut his arm, and with his…
Lessard pushes back in useful ways against the notion that modern computer games emerged fullly-formed from the coding experiments of Will Crowther — a notion I’ve helped to promote (though of course I’m exaggerating as I present it here). I’ll want to read through the essay again in more detail, but here is part of…
Apparently these are two famous and physically attractive celebrities who are popular enough that lots of people will wade through lots of words in order to look at pictures of them doing things that celebrities do. Which presumably does not usually include talking about the federal budget. Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the Sequester.…
The ways that the informal speech of women impacts the language is soooo underexplored. For the past five years, Sali Tagliamonte, a linguist at the University of Toronto, has been gathering digital-communications data from students. In analyzing nearly 4 million words, she’s found some interesting patterns. “This reduplication of letters, it’s not all crazy,” she told…
Fascinating. Barsalou then goes all math geek and applies to the data the Bayes’ Theorem formula for calculating conditional probabilities. After a little mathematical shake and bake, he determines there is a 61.9 percent chance that any given casualty is wearing a red shirt. That still sounds high, but it’s not really once you consider…
Here’s a brief clip of a rehearsal of “All for the Best,” from the Stage Right! Greensburg production of Godspell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8Kje6PvHg (I’m in the back on the left, wearing a tie as a headband.) Similar:Friend I hadn't seen for about 20 years delivers a vintage nerdy gift.During the original run of Star Trek: Th…MediaWe found…
Since he started teaching at Johns Hopkins University in 2005, Professor Peter Fröhlich has maintained a grading curve in which each class’s highest grade on the final counts as an A, with all other scores adjusted accordingly. So if a midterm is worth 40 points, and the highest actual score is 36 points, “that person…
Okay, so yeah. One of these describes a very unpleasant, completely ruined vacation. The other sounds like hell. Similar:8 Questions for 'Star Trek' Superfans Restoring Galileo ShuttlecraftThis nerd’s geek heart grew three sizes …AestheticsThe daughter is doing another thing, this time in Galway, Ireland. AestheticsThe 19th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Welcome to IFComp 2013, the…
Apple’s marketing strategy in the 1980s presented its products as democratic and liberating, but the freedoms the Apple users enjoy include the inability to customize or otherwise access the working interior. Apple users trade freedom for security. In short, expansion slots made standardization impossible (partly because software writers needed consistent underlying hardware to produce widely…