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

Text, Speech, Machine: Metaphors for Computer Code in the Law : Computational Culture

On my to-read list once I post midterm grades. As computer software has become increasingly central to commerce and creativity, lawmakers have retrofitted it into preexisting legal regimes to regulate its production and distribution. Currently in the United States, software is eligible for protection under patent law, copyright law, trade secret law and the First…

While searching my bag for a cable, I found an unexpected wealth of food-substitute items.

Similar:Their faces when another dad joke drops. See The Fantasticks today at 2 or next week Thu-S…PersonalFantasticks (Theatre Factory, Oct 18-27)  AestheticsScratch StatsScratch is a kid-friendly programming sa…CybercultureSlicing up a massively detailed trimsheet to simulate reflections and geometry for four va…PersonalMore #Blender3D practice. Additional details for a steampunk control panel. Just because.AestheticsThis is what an…

Banned Books Week | Celebrating the Freedom to Read: Sept. 30 – Oct. 6, 2012

What, you haven’t honored your freedom by reading a banned book this week? Banned Books Week | Celebrating the Freedom to Read Similar:Watching Livestreamed Prime Stage Theatre's "Miracle in Rwanda"A very moving performance. So many chara…DramaTeaching with iPads: Motivation, Inspiration and Alienation in the AppleverseHere are the slides for the half-day wor…AcademiaMisaligned interior and exterior…

Angry 10yo Edits the Paper Heart She Gave Her Mother

Similar:Quidditch Comes to Seton HillwartsVisitors often remark the campus reminds…AcademiaThis Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest CaveThe Medium headline calls Colossal Cave …AcademiaHow to Lie with Data VisualizationData visualization is one of the most im…DesignMy son showed me #PacificRim.My son showed me #PacificRim. Liked the …CybercultureWhat would…

Yes, it’s happening here at Seton Hill. Quidditch.

  Similar:Stanford to offer new undergraduate majors integrating humanities, computer scienceTraining humanists who can code like a t…AcademiaVisiting my parents. Admiring their original Hallmark Enterprise Christmas ornament. I ask…Amusing‘WarGames’ and Cybersecurity’s Debt to a Hollywood Hack After finishing his synopsis, Reagan…CybercultureSchool ditches rules and loses bulliesSwanson School signed up to the study by…CultureThe new marshmallow…

Journalism Warning Labels

Stick these on a copy of your future birdcage liner if you spot any of the many sins of journalism. Be on the lookout for bias, plagiarism, poor sourcing, and hype. Journalism Warning Labels « Tom Scott. Similar:Liaisons (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 2) Picard is Marooned with a lovelorn …Rewatching ST:TNG Worf grumbles…

Kids Play the Way Scientists Work

Toddlers, multiple experiments have shown, can test hypotheses about how machines work—for example, they can figure out which blocks made a machine play when some but not all blocks trigger the toy. We have to be careful, though. This exploratory, quasi-scientific approach to the world doesn’t last if adults teach kids to do something else: Kids will let adult…

The Writing Revolution

When a failing high school tries to reinvent itself, it turns to writing — with amazing results. At my own high school, our science teacher was a retired nuclear submarine admiral who used to say, “Give me students who can read and write, and I can teach them to pilot a nuclear submarine.” So I’m…

Winky Winky Drudge Report

The Drudge Report today features an amusing array of images — Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Russian President Vladimir Putin — all of them winking. Clearly the nonverbal message is that all these people — who are unpopular with the conservative populist base to which Matt Drudge caters — are working together. The…

Passing On a Torch

I recently introduced my kids to “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Here’s another dad, writing about introducing his kids to classic Star Trek. But they aren’t just younger versions of me; they pick up on stuff I didn’t at their age.  After a few episodes, The Girl asked “why don’t the girls get…