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 the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they …AcademiaWhy typewriters beat computersThe BBC offers a pleasant bit of…
Similar:Just a #steampunk captain inspecting the æther power orbs. #Blender3D #Unity3D #design #ae…AestheticsThe Search, Part 2 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 2) The Federation makes a ri… Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap…MediaThe eagles in Lord of the Rings are a plot hole, but also an us problemPart of my enjoyment of genre franchises…BooksMarching in…
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:Imma Let You Integrate QuotationsIn the poem “Imma Let You Integrate Quot…AcademiaIn September, 2000, I was blogging about PICK UP AX, Bellamy's Looking Backward, WB Yeats,…In September 2000,…
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:On Night, Darkness & the…
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:Bing’s A.I. Chat Reveals Its Feelings: ‘I Want to Be Alive.…
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:Lies about history in Texas can be traced to the Lone Star State's own Big Lie: The AlamoYet many Texans feel they need …CultureMy beautiful daughter says "Happy Valentine's Day" View t…AestheticsText Games in a New Era of StoriesClever NYT writer cleverly notices a…
Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Still shot from a flyover video that's been taking about 3 minutes to render each fra…AestheticsI'd like to speak to the manager. Yes, I'll wait right here. The manager is of course somewhere e…Aestheticsxkcd: Headlines It: nailed. xkcd: Headlines.AmusingA former student contacted me to share…
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:New "Adventure" Details from Will Crowther in Mammoth Cave BookThe new book from the University of Kent…BooksThe 22 rules of storytelling, according to PixarMy favorite: “Once upon a time there was…ArtUS regulators demand clamp down…
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:“The author talks about [topic]” is filler.…
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…
If you were a kid during the ’80s and read any books at all, you probably read at least one Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), probably by either R.A. Montgomery or Edward Packard. And if you read one, you read more than one. They were addictive, candy for our brains, but also, they empowered us…