Comic book heroes lift spirits, fight grime at Children’s Hospital

Great photo, awesome headline. Comic book heroes lift spirits, fight grime at Children’s Hospital | TribLIVE Mobile. Similar:Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment?Wow… what a drab, unquoteworthy, unsou…AcademiaAppreciating the production values and so-stupid-it-might-be-brilliant comedy in Avatar: T…The daughter is showing my wife and me “…AestheticsTransfigurations (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 25)…

Is Superman the next Drudge? Clark Kent quits newspapers in latest issue

Even Clark Kent can see through the writing on the wall when it comes to the newspaper industry. In the next issue of DC comics’ “Superman,” due out on Wednesday, the superhero’s alter ego will eschew being a mild-mannered reporter, presumably to become a snarky blogger, when he quits his post at the Daily Planet.…

‘Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’: A Reminder To Tolkien Fans Of Their First Love : NPR

Yet though it’s widely celebrated, The Hobbit’s always kind of existed in the shadow of Tolkien’s other great work, The Lord of the Rings. Corey Olsen, self-described “Tolkien professor,” tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that Tolkien fans tend to fall in love with The Hobbit as children, then move on…

Churning Out More Non-profit Arts Promos

As part of my volunteer work for a local nonprofit arts group, I make promotional videos for online marketing. Thursday I was sitting in the waiting room during my daughter’s ballet class, when the artistic director asked me to interview the new ballet mistress. I went and got some video of my daughter learning that glissade…

What’s next in game narrative, with Emily Short

Something that I tended to think was unfortunate about certain MMO storytelling… you get these narratives where the NPCs have lots of really emotive things to say to you, and they want to throw you into this narrative. Then on the other hand, your interaction with the characters played by humans — even if theyre…

Omaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure each day

Voilà, she is Billie Holiday, in a black dress with a red tissue-paper flower tucked into her strawberry-blond hair. Behold, she is Grace Kelly in pink satin lace on her wedding day. Poof, she is Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, wearing a hat her aunt got her in Vietnam. The Dundee Elementary School…

Mathematics and What It Means to Be Human

A humanities faculty member and a math faculty member collaborate on a course about the meaning of math. “Don’t worry;” I told them. “You can’t find this more frightening than I do.” And it was true. Ever since the word problems my father forced on us at dinner, I’ve always been terrified of math. I…

Sad Doggy Says: People Who Confuse Correlation and Causation Are More Likely to Accept Schlocky Science Journalism

Somehow I don’t expect to find this story hyped up on TV news shows… but if a similar study proposed any sort of connection that made video games look bad, that would be another story. Using complex actuarial tables and adjusting for smoking, waist circumference, dietary quality, exercise habits and other variables, the scientists were…

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

Code? Not So Much

I teach my journalism students to write CSS and HTML by hand, to make simple games in Scratch, and to write text adventure games in Inform 7 not because I expect them to get jobs doing any of those activities, but because a fundamental coding literacy, on top of their liberal arts education, will help…

North Sea cod: Is it true there are only 100 left?

A spokesperson for the Sunday Times told the BBC: “The headline and the first sentence of the article over-simplified a complicated issue, which we regret. However, the rest of the story made clear that we were referring to cod over the age of 13 and the figures cited were accurate.” And what of that other…

YouTube Now: Why We Focus on Watch Time

YouTube has adjusted its search algorithm to emphasize videos that users watch more. Over the past few months we have made some changes to YouTube to encourage people to spend more time watching, interacting, and sharing with the community. To support this, we’ve updated what we call video discovery features, meaning how our viewers find videos…

One Child, One Laptop … And Mixed Results In Peru

Because you couldn’t go online, everything had to be done in person. Patzer spent most of his time busing and hiking from village to village, often just to reinstall software with a USB drive. “Imagine you have hundreds of these little villages that take two or three days to travel to. I mean, the logistical…

Classroom Project: Students Get 1 Hour to Propose, Shoot, Edit, Publish Documentary

Students created this in 60 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drU6n2nDfxo Other student projects (see links at bottom of page): http://blogs.setonhill.edu/el200/2012/09/18/videography-ex-2/ Similar:Verizon Forced Me to Remove Parentheses, Quotation Marks, and Apostrophes from a Customer …When I finally found a way to contact Ve…HomeYour Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthThe Rule of Capek's Robots:…

Obama vs. Romney D&D Smack-Down at NYC Gallery

This week, if you head to the Allegra LaViola Gallery in New York City to see Fiend in the Void, a solo exhibition of works on paper and sculpture by Casey Jex Smith, you’ll get a chance to see a Dungeons & Dragons clash of the titans between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The winner…

DNA has a 521-year half-life

By comparing the specimens’ ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and…

Rocky Horror Show Live 2012 — Stage Right Greensburg

Throw toast at the actors and get spaced out on sensation at the Stage Right Theatre Company’s Halloween show, The Rocky Horror Show — Live. I put this promo together from video I took at the yesterday’s first rehearsal. Clips include Science Fiction Double Feature, The Time Warp, Dammit Janet, and more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdWGMLL-asg Similar:The Collaborator…

The Tale of Two Cetis

An intelligent, thoughtful, well-written review of the best of the Star Trek movies. And kudos to the headline writer — amazingly nerdy and appropriate for this story. We know that “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (1982) is the best of all of the “Star Trek” movies. I am not stating anything new here.…

Fire Chief Grants Fireman 3-Day Extension On Difficult Fire

Shortly before leaving work Monday, local fire chief Pete Wilkes reportedly approved firefighter Joseph Ainslie’s request to take an extra three days on a particularly tough fire, advising him to “take [his] time” with the two-story blaze. “What matters most is doing the job right, not rushing through it and getting it done fast,” Wilkes…

Free Game Friday: Text-Based Games

2012 Interactive Fiction contest we’ll be featuring text-based games in this week’s Free Game Friday roundup. Not all of this week’s games come from the competition, but they all feature the written word as their main gameplay mechanic. We also didn’t have space to feature all the great games in the competition, so here’s a…

“Chores” — Clip from Snow White: The Musical (Stage Right Greensburg, Sept 2012)

Here’s what it sounded like at our first rehearsal, after learning the parts for about 40 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3xLg9KuiI Here’s how it looked opening night, two weeks later (I’m the surly guy in the white hat): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1bXEF8B4wY Similar:Conflict Strategies for Nice PeopleNothing to do with Christmas… just thi…AcademiaVibing to a park saxophonist as I code for…