My undergraduates are working their way through N. Katherine Hayle’s My Mother Was a Computer. They told me that they benefitted from the notes I wrote the other day, so I’m continuing the effort. In Chapter 3, Hayles reminds us that the “worldviews of speech, writing, and code” are not merely theories, they are…
Yale journalism students say they could have easily broken the Watergate scandal themselves, simply by Googling for keywords. “This is Yale,” Bernstein said gravely. “That somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events,” Woodward said. “And they went on to say the political environment would be so different that Nixon wouldn’t…
I’m withholding judgment until I find out exactly what the argument was about. Perhaps the punch was appropriate. Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush said the man went to a party at a home in the 100 block of North Ingalls Street at about 2 p.m. on Saturday. Bush said the man was sitting on…
The canonical definition of “creepy treehouse” was written by Jared Stein in 2008. Here’s an excerpt: n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids. Example: “Kids … can see a [creepy treehouse] a mile away and generally do a good job in avoiding them.” John…
This is why 12-year-olds aren’t excited about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram | ZAGGblog Similar:Skeleton Crew at BarebonesSupport the arts in your community. BusinessURL Hacking (new graphic for an older page that’s surprisingly popular on my site)CybercultureI regularly teach A Raisin in the Sun but haven't seen a live production in decades. Looki… AwesomeTrump, finally, takes…
Hayles is an established authority on a humanities-centered approach to human-computer interactions, and My Mother Was a Computer (2005) is her third book on the topic. At times she writes with the expectation that her readers already know some foundational topics that she may have spent more time introducing in her previous books. In the…
That day, on the Southampton docks in England, the Torkos family wallowed in disappointment. Anxious to head home to Monessen, Westmoreland County, the Hungarian family had been banned from boarding the ship because of the cut on 7-year-old Mary’s cheek. Fearing the spread of infection throughout the ship’s steerage, officials banned Mary, and thus the…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9xjoffTzLo Similar:Elmo? Yes, I do mind. I learned far more from Bert.Like plenty of people my age, I grew up …AestheticsPope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are right and God isn't 'a magician wi…The theories of evolution and the Big Ba…CultureGetting ready to run a ChoiceScript workshop for Computers and Writing 2023. #cwcon…
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” Zimmerman is heard saying in NBC’s edited version. The difference is significant, since activists have been claiming that Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin. Critics have argued that NBC set out to purposely advance that narrative by condensing the 911 tape to make it…
Looks like this blogger presented the chart as an implicit argument about the quality of literature being read today, rather than the quantity. We were a civilized civilization. This was before the Internet and cable television, and so people had these, like, wholly different desires and attention spans. They just craved, craved, craved the erudition…
Christ willingly stretches himself down on the cross. Surprised, one of the soldiers observes: “Behold, himself has laid him down,/and bent his back unto this tree.” From one of the first web pages I created, for an academic article about a computer simulation of the epic medieval Christian pageant the York Corpus Christi Cycle. The…
According to my 9yo daughter, “It’s completely and utterly stupidulous.” Pancho McFarland, an associate professor of sociology at Chicago State, fears the policy could restrict all types of communications by professors, including speaking engagements. “It will put a chilling effect on our ability to speak in a number of venues,” he said. “It is part…
Regular readers will perhaps know that I (and others) have been saying for a while that Mesozoic Earth was not the global hothouse that many have long assumed. There’s evidence for cool continental interiors and poles during parts of the Jurassic and Cretaceous (Barron & Washington 1982, , Sloan & Barron 1990, Sellwood et al.…
“Whether in the lecture hall or in a textbook, anyone is obviously free to teach the subjects biology, economics, or psychology, and can do so using, creating, and refining the pedagogical materials they think best, whether consisting of ‘open source educational content’ or otherwise,” it reads. “But by making unauthorized ‘shadow-versions’ of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,…
My 9yo was ordered not to leave the kitchen table until her lessons were done, but she wanted to communicate to the world that she was in a bad mood. From where she was sitting, she had access to paper, scissors, and tape, which she used to construct this head-mounted frump-amplicfaction isolation cube. Ironically, it…
In Stallybrass’s mind, students—and in fact, all scholars—need to do less thinking and more working. “When you’re thinking,” Stallybrass writes, “you’re usually staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank screen, hoping that something will emerge from your head and magically fill that space. Even if something ‘comes to you,’ there’s no reason…
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What follows is an excerpt from NBC Jumps the Shark on George Zimmerman | Mother Jones: According to the Today show, here’s what George Zimmerman said to a 911 dispatcher as he was trailing Trayvon Martin last February: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black. What a racist! Obviously Zimmerman had a real…
This is both creepily terrifying yet kind of awesome, in a drunk-whisperer, Pied Piper, passive-aggressive arrogantly Gallic yet obviously better than pepper spray and riot gear kind of way. You have encountered a “Pierrot de la Nuit,” or Night Mime. These “nocturnal artistic intervention squads” are officially being launched this weekend in 15 Parisian neighborhoods.…
I’ll be Tweeting my workday, as part of an organized grass-roots response to a recent essay that claimed faculty members outside research institutions earn professional salaries for just 9-15 hours of teaching a week, for just 30 weeks. That essay assumes that 1 hour of prep time is all a prof should need. It takes…