Soap: How Much Cleaner Does It Actually Make Your Hands?

This is not encouraging. The scientists tested three types of soap dispenser, in both lab and real-world settings. Of the three variants, the dispensers that were refillable from a giant bottle of liquid soap were by far the filthiest, leading to a 26-fold increase in handwashers’ bacteria levels. —Health – Brian Fung – Soap: How…

Westmoreland County Air Show 2012 (Video)

See also: photos from the 2012 Westmoreland County Air Show (from the runway) Similar:Internet Explorer cheated its way to the top, and I won't miss itI started teaching myself HTML in earnes…AcademiaSix rainbow-colored objects, arranged like THIS?These are shoe-holding racks at a local …AestheticsAncient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately for 10,000 Years”It’s quite gobsmacking to…

Feelies: The Lost Art of Immersing the Narrative

This paper discusses the materializations of story world entities that are distributed with game packaging, here referred to as feelies, as props that support narrative elements in story-driven digital games. The narrative support is suggested to function on global and local levels, where the first one refers to the immersive effects concerning the story world,…

Science: It’s a Girl Thing

I won’t be showing this to my daughter. I might instead show it as part of a media studies unit, as an example of a self-made PR disaster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtMmt5rC6g Update: I didn’t think that would stay up for long in its original location. Here’s a copy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA Similar:Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays…

My 14yo Helps Teach a Vacation Bible School Class

In character as “Pontius Pilate,” washing his hands of the fate of Jesus, Peter asked one of the kids a rhetorical question. When the kid responded with, “Duh!” my son quipped, “One does not say ‘duh’ to the prefect of Judea. I think we’re gonna need another cross here.” Similar:She feels pretty at the dress…

My 10yo Launches a Soda Bottle Rocket

Similar:So peaceful and majestic. Another outing with my son.PersonalI don't expect any but the largest text will be legible in my #steampunk project, but it w…AestheticsThe Bremen Town Musicians (WAOB Audio Theatre) My daughter plays the narrator, my…HumanitiesStage Right's "The Secret Garden": Performing with My Talented Daughter This weekend has been magical. Frida…CultureSinéad O'Connor's open…

“Excuse me just a second…” Microsoft product showcase features a frozen ‘Surface’ tablet

Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky jogs to the side of the stage to replace a frozen Surface tablet computer, during an otherwise slick product demo in Los Angeles. Video: Microsoft’s Surface tablet ‘fails’ during Los Angeles showcase – Telegraph. Similar:I just thought of a time before you were born when I should have been kind, but…

Missing Freshman Comp – Lingua Franca – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Have you hugged your college’s freshman writing course today? (Not the students, not the teachers—we don’t want disciplinary hearings. The course.) Like most who have worked in English departments, I was rarely excited to be assigned freshman rhetoric (as it was called where I started). The essay-grading was back-breaking and social-life-destroying, to say nothing of…

That’s an interesting privacy policy

While signing up for some online training for work, I found this screen, which seems to ask me to grant my consent to permit the service provider to use my private information in one of zero ways. Similar:Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, 1960 Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s…AestheticsAll…

Reports suggest UVa board wanted president to eliminate language programs

Apparently, her defense of the classics and German was among the reasons UVa recently ousted the presudent. As a grad student needing to beef up my foreign kanguage credentuals, I took the summer German course Herr McDonald comments on here. William C. McDonald, director of undergraduate studies in German at the university, stressing that he…