Peter Anspach posted this list. Here are some of my favorites. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my…
Students who are new to journalism often introduce a quote like this: When asked about a habit he’d most like his journalism students to break, Dennis Jerz said, “Usually when I see the phrase ‘when asked about,’ I look for things to throw.” We only encounter that phrase in reporting, so when students start writing…
Students in my journalism class are publishing short articles on the U.S. election, starting with advance stories today, then continuing with live updates on Election Day and afterwards. This year, students have already started publishing articles online as soon as they are ready, rather than waiting until after the print edition has been sent to…
A few weeks ago, I had to get a new credit card because someone tried to use it fraudulently. The new credit card didn’t arrive until after Verizon tried to charge my bill to the old card. I’ve updated the auto-pay feature with the new credit card, but I don’t know how to read this…
My good camera is out of commission… there was a class action lawsuit against Canon for the “lens error” flaw in the camera I bought, so perhaps I’ll be able to get it repaired for free. I volunteer doing PR for a local theatre company; while I was sitting in the waiting room during my…
I’m not sure “thank you” is the right way to acknowledge this painful link from Paul Crossman. “Oh, come on,” you’re probably saying. “It’s not the music that’s addictive. It’s the dance, from the goofy video. That’s what went viral.” (There’s that word again.) Well, it turns out that this programming effect could be embedded…
“Our store has been closed with them for two years now and if you google the name of my boutique Amazon links appear,” she said. “We have sold on Sears, eBay, and others, and if we ask them to close the merchant account, the links disappear from Google. So why not Amazon?” She has a…
William Shatner and technology go way back, but it’s taken him until today to get his own smartphone app. Then again, he is a man known to take long pauses. Dubbed Shatoetry, the new app (iPhone-only, for the moment) lets you string together a variety of pre-recorded words — each with three different versions —…
Attending this was one of the handful of cultural treats my wife and I splurged on during our grad student days. LA Times – Canada's Stratford Festival losing 'Shakespeare' from its name. Similar:Humans are being hired to make AI slop look less sloppy The illustrations clients bring to her…ArtUnderstanding The Fake News Universe The fake…
In anticipation of the film, Sony turned to Wieden+Kennedy to give fans the opportunity to serve alongside the Royal Secret Intelligence Service’s most famous fictional agent, by passing a secretive five-part examination conducted through an online text adventure game. Finding the text adventure game in the first place required more than a little work. A…
Great resource. Cover your Backside with B-roll on Vimeo Video School on Vimeo. Now consider this: Similar:Should you trust media bias charts? – PoynterTraditional journalism values a focus on…Culture20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't GetI expect my English majors not to balk w…AcademiaThe GE Mascot That Proves They've Never Seen 'The Matrix'On a scale of 1…
Addis, LA: Little Orphan Annie stopped for speeding | #Beet’s B.O.O.T.. Similar:Beam me up, Chewie. AmusingSuddenly Human (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 4) Picard Bonds with Human Te…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break …CultureDennis Jerz, R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), Karel Capek's "Fantastic Melodrama" – YouT…”In which the origin of the word “robot”…AestheticsHow cult leaders…
I’ve accepted the role of FDR in the upcoming Stage Right! Production of Annie. Auditions for the little ‘uns are Friday afternoon. My 10yo daughter and her tweeny friends are sticking out their chins and grinning and singing “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” or whatever…
For more than 20 years, Navy archaeologist Steve Schwartz searched for that cave. It was believed to be home to the island’s most famous inhabitant, a Native American woman who survived on the island for 18 years, abandoned and alone, and became the inspiration for “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” one of the 20th century’s…
I rather expected this — popularity of the search term “blog” from 2004-2012. And this, too, was not a big surprise — Similar:That's what's been bothering me since yesterday's #AirPod reveal. #manamanaNumber of times one of my $9.99 headphon…BusinessI ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.I felt like a capitalist, buying in…
Visitors often remark the campus reminds them of Hogwarts, so it’s fitting to learn that a Quidditch goal has been assembled at Seton Hill University, in preparation for a charity tournament Monday. Similar:Kids Turn Bratz into Star Wars Rey DollsSometimes, I catch myself thinking there…AestheticsI just found an abandoned blog draft, dated 2011, on economics…
Study used D & D characters to test how subjects responded to eyegaze in human, humanoid, and monster characters. Observers were presented with images selected from the popular fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D; figure 1a). The images could be of humans, creatures with eyes in the centre of the face (humanoids), and creatures with…
Why does Facebook always use this image for the thumbnail? This image isn’t the first or the last on the page. It’s not embedded into the post, it’s part of the template. Lately, even when I specify a different thumbnail, Facebook uses this image. I’m using a plugin called Social, which does a great job…
“Once we got to the Internet/cable-news cycle, really in 2004, there was no capacity to control” the message, said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “I leave it to others to judge if the power has gone from us to the reporters. I don’t know that, and it probably depends on the day, but…
Mean technology. Mean, mean technology. The legal case brought by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google was a revelation, as important, if not as celebrated, as the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In the face of the openness and honest labor of engineers, the priestly class closed…