My daughter shared the role of Alice this weekend (she played “Small Alice”). On one night, she also doubled as the mouse, for a different Alice. Similar:More glorious #steampunk control panels, created for no practical purpose. #blender3d #ble…AestheticsThe daughter looks stunning in pink. AestheticsMe, contemplating the implications of maybe doing a socialize this weekend.PersonalNASA astronaut:…
I love the obscure Prufrock reference win this Washington Post story: So as the motorcades come and go, are they talking of Marco Rubio? via Is Bilderberg a conference on world affairs or a powerful global cabal? Similar:What are 'Judeo-Christian values'? Analyzing a divisive termblock of American society. But for crit…AcademiaCharlie and the Chocolate Factory…
Similar:The 3 Scariest Words A Boy Can Hear ("Be a Man")Former NFL player and current pastor Joe…CultureHow Star Wars was saved in the editI learned a lot while watching this vide…AestheticsUnless Buzzfeed-style Clickbait Replaces all Forms of Human Communication, or Republicans …I love some good meta. I wrote a dialogu…AmusingShadowplay (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2,…
In the grand scheme of things, this means very little… but still, it’s kind of cool to be one in a billion. —email tips – Google Search. Similar:Warning: Don’t Download Software From SourceForge If You Can Help ItLooks like SourceForge has backtracked o…BusinessSorry, Wrong NumberNumerical errors usually occur for one o…EducationJimmy Maher's Appreciation of Infocom's…
When I am insanely busy during the academic year, I relish the time before I fall asleep, as time I can think about anything at all. If it’s productive and interesting, I’ll stay awake. If not, well, then I won’t waste much time before I conk out. In an attempt to carve out enouth time…
In 1975 a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the world’s first portable digital camera by cobbling together parts scavenged from a Super-8 and a cassette player. Baffled colleagues asked, “Why would you want to look at photos on a TV?” —The Pocket Camera Moment | Raw File | Wired.com. Similar:Another lovely variation of a…
Remember this, Dennis. Remember this, Dennis. Remember this, Dennis. That is all. I ask my students to give me, by email, a proposal two weeks before the essay is due. I tell them what I think is good about their idea and what they need to watch out for; more often than not I advise…
A powerful essay, for the next time I teach Videogame Culture and Theory. (Some salty language ahead.) So the Hitman Absolution trailer. Do I have a problem with the existence of female assassins? No. Do I have a problem with female assassins dressing up as nuns? No. Do I have a problem with Agent 47 killing females…
This month’s edition of The Pulse podcast features a conversation with Mary Ann Gawelek, provost of Seton Hill University, discussing how her institution’s iPad experiment — begun in 2010 — has fared. RPP_102_iPads-in-Education.mp3 via The Pulse: Seton Hill’s iPad Experiment | Inside Higher Ed. Similar:Coding Sucks: Why a Job in Programming Is Absolute HellI enjoyed…
Almost all the promise once held by virtual worlds has since been realized by Facebook. For every social interaction, brand engagement or persistent multiplayer social experience that Second Life or World of Warcraft or MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side was supposed to provide, there’s something the same or very similar available on Facebook — probably…
“Overall, it was just boring. Really boring! Really boring!” —The Washington Post. Similar:The woman yelling at a cat is probably not facilitating a nuanced, evidence-based intellec…AcademiaWendy's Bests Internet Troll, Then Unwittingly Posts Completely Unrelated, Obscure Racist …I fixed the clickbaity title for you. A …BusinessNew Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand TextFar from being “stochastic parrots,”…
Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Consciousness: Where Are Words?Words, words, words. With the advent of …CultureThe Duolingo owl has been judging my German every day for the last year.EducationWhy We Fall for Fake News and How to Bust ItMeasuring the impact of fake news spread…AcademiaMicrosoft has no shame: Bing spit…
Contrary to concerns that increasing use and popularity of ‘txtspk’ will ruin children’s vocabularies, youngsters demonstrated that they know when it is not appropriate, only including it in their stories when transcribing an imagined text message. The research also found that many of the words contained in children’s stories are repeated from celebrated writers –…
To qualify for a day at the local water park, my daughter woke up early, and is now happily reading. Similar:It's Friday night in July, and I'm jamming with my fall course preps.The dean sends me an email at 9:07pm. In…AcademiaThe Emissary (ST:TNG Rewatch: Season Two, Episode 20) — Enjoyable Worf-centered RomanceRewatching ST:TNG after a…
A middle school teacher in South Carolina has been accused of dragging a student under a table during class, telling the boy “this is what the Nazis do to Jews,” police said Monday. The 12-year-old student said he got up to sharpen a pencil at Bluffton Middle School on Wednesday when Patricia Mulholland grabbed him…
I updated the journalism portal of my online writing site, and touched up some existing handouts: News Story vs. English Essay Your English instructor carefully reads your essay to evaluate the depth of your knowledge, the breadth of your vocabulary, and the loftiness of your ideas. Joe Sixpack glances quickly at your news story to…
Atwood, on his blog Coding Horror, miffed by the “everyone should learn to code” meme, likens coding to plumbing. It’s not for everyone. “Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people,” he writes. “But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge…
My daughter was recently in the Stage Right! Greensburg homeschool preteen production of Once Upon a Mixed-up Fairy Tale, playing Little Red Riding Hood. Here the girls are singing “Astonishing.” My son played Marshal Cord Elam in the teen production, Oklahoma. He’s wearing the vest and white hat. Similar:Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control…
In the early 1970s William Crowther worked for the high-tech R&D company BBN Technologies as part of a team developing the ARPAnet; a computer network predecessor to the Internet. Crowther has never shown any desire to court celebrity for his achievements. Aside from a couple of interviews from books, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Genesis II: Creation and…
My intuition is that, even for the wary, recalcitrant, or skeptical, the ways individuals connect now online and learn from one another’s connections no longer represent the pathological or aberrant (i.e. the shallow, distracted, lonely, asocial, unprofessional digital generation: you know the litany!), but “the future.” Since many are worried about “the future,” those who…