This is why 12-year-olds aren’t excited about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram | ZAGGblog

This is why 12-year-olds aren’t excited about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram | ZAGGblog Similar:My 1951 day DuoLingo streak was fun, but… Ever since DuoLingo announced it…BusinessFacebook Removes Human Curators From Trending ModuleToday, Facebook announced that human cur…BusinessAn Opt Out Letter That Speaks to All ParentsOne household notifies the authorities t…CultureThe Crucible, Geyer PAC (Scottdale, May…

Context for Halyes, My Mother Was a Computer

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…

A cut on Mary Torkos’ cheek saved her life and her family … and other Titanic ties to Monessen

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…

9yo Carolyn Re-enacts the Imprisonment of Ariel (no, not the mermaid)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9xjoffTzLo Similar:The woman yelling at a cat is probably not facilitating a nuanced, evidence-based intellec…AcademiaEssay on meaning of a life grounded in the liberal arts @insidehigheredFor David N. DeVries, the critical think…AcademiaMy son showed me Seven Samurai. I had never seen it before. Amazing!I’m going to have to watch this one agai…AestheticsMénage à Troi (#StarTrek…

NBC Fires Producer in Flap Over Manipulated 911 Call in Trayvon Martin Case

“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…

The Next Time Someone Says the Internet Killed Reading Books, Show Them This Chart

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…

York Crucifixion of Christ (Toronto, 1977) 2 of 4

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…

Chicago State University tries to limit speech

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…

There are giant feathered tyrannosaurs now… right?

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.…

3 Major Publishers Sue Open-Education Textbook Start-Up – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education

“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,…

Crabby 9yo Constructs a Head-mounted Frump-amplification Isolation Cube

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…

Building and Sharing When You’re Supposed to be Teaching Journal of Digital Humanities

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…

10 Things You Can Learn From the New York Times’ Data Visualizations | Visual.ly Blog

10 Things You Can Learn From the New York Times’ Data Visualizations | Visual.ly Blog Similar:Google responds to streaming report with shruggie GIFThe Daily Dot proceeded to shrug the GIF…AmusingMy journalism students just gave me this wristband: "What would Jerz do? / Verify or duck…. AestheticsIowa Reporter Found Not Guilty By Jury After Arrest At…

NBC Jumps the Shark on George Zimmerman | Mother Jones

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…

Paris Mayor Combats Noisy Nightlife by Deploying Roving Squads of Mimes

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.…

Yes, Faculty Members Work Hard Enough! – Innovations – The Chronicle of Higher Education

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…

Young Writers Dazzle Publisher (Mom and Dad)

Over the past five years, print-on-demand technology and a growing number of self-publishing companies whose books can be sold online have inspired writers of all ages to bypass the traditional gatekeeping system for determining who could call himself a “published author.” They include hundreds of children and teenagers who are self-publishing books each year —…

Who is the Route 29 Batman? This guy.

I did not include the very best part of the story, which is the very last few lines, but you have to read the whole thing to appreciate the writing. The little boy didn’t want to say goodbye, but his mom told him, “Batman needs to go fight the bad guys.” The little boy cried.…

There aint no party like a spam bot partay

I often have a gentle chuckle to myself at some of the random combinations that are generated by our bot chums. Vaksman Innes, Hoaglin Little, Marylou Freas – surely the names of previously anonymous guests from one of Jay Gatsby’s parties? Tanisha Hendricks, Lee Buffet, Tish Dreith – straight from a Jilly Cooper novel? Tia…

Hyperbole and a Half: PROCRASTINATOR!!!! (Updated, Like, a Million Times Probably)

Hyperbole and a Half: PROCRASTINATOR!!!! (Updated, Like, a Million Times Probably). Similar:Tin Man (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 20) Sad telepath bonds with starshi…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….CultureCriminal Code: Procedural Logic and Rhetorical Excess in VideogamesGreat example of the application of well…CultureDeath of the narrator? Apple unveils suite of AI-voiced audiobooksApple has quietly launched…