Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized

via Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized – YouTube. Similar:Canada's Globe and Mail Uses Expandable Inline Meta-articles to Explain Its CoverageJournalism matters. Educated citizens wh…CybercultureGathering background objects to create cluttered shelves. This Baby Gund “Rainbow Hector” …AmusingLoved part 2 of Romeo and Juliet @thepublicpgh #pptplaytime (Next week: Tartuffe)CultureApple threatens…

Hackers and Makers

A longer-than-usual introduction to a reading assignment in my “Media and Culture” class turned into a useful opportunity to reflect. We are all busy people; yet somehow, many people who say they are too busy to take on another task spend hours reading, interpreting, and debating Harry Potter; some post stop-motion Lego spoofs; some do…

Zombie Code and Extra-Functional Significance | Play The Past

Useless code and comments in code—these are the zombie figures of software. They serve no purpose in a program’s execution, but they exude what Mark Marino calls extra-functional significance. They have meaning beyond the program. They speak not to the machine or the compiler, but to a different audience, another reader. In software development, that…

Tantalizing Details for Colossal Cave Adventure Enthusiasts

The most detail I’ve ever seen about Will Crowther’s other creative projects; here, in a conversation dated 1996, he discusses “different ‘adventures’”, and reveals that he wrestled with many of the same challenges that interactive fiction programmers faced through the 1980s and on to the present. I have at various times made different “adventures.” Two…

Facebook can be used to predict academic success, job performance | ZDNet

A good example of correlation. (Simply changing your Facebook content won’t automatically make you a better worker or student, but certain Facebook details do correspond to achievement in the offline world.) Researchers spent about 10 minutes looking at photos, wall posts, comments, education, and hobbies on Facebook profiles, while answering personality-related questions including whether the…

Bag a Bot Day

At midnight tonight, participants in the FIRST Robotics Competition must stop working on their robots and seal them up in a plastic bag. Here’s the working bot my son’s team built. Pretty good for a rookie team.     Similar:I just installed the "Old Layout for Facebook" plugin for Chrome.I just installed the “Old Layout…

Wonderful Performance of Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse”

Fantastic composition, deeply embedded into the brains of any kid who grew up watching Looney Tunes. Raymond Scott recorded “Powerhouse” on this day 75 years ago. Similar:What Critics of Student Writing Get Wrong  [T]o improve as writers, student…AcademiaThe Benefits of No-Tech Note TakingI quibble with The Chronicle headline wr…AcademiaIn the Salary Race, Engineers Sprint but…

Gamasutra – News – Second Life developer acquires experimental game studio LittleTextPeople

LittleTextPeople, founded by writer Emily Short and Maxis veteran Richard Evans, has so far focused on the development of software that replicates complex social interaction. For instance, among its internal technology is a simulator that models social behavior and individual personalities. —Gamasutra – News – Second Life developer acquires experimental game studio LittleTextPeople. Similar:Sentence Definition:…

Twitter / Search – “couldn’t remove your contacts” – All Tweets

Twitter / Search – “couldn’t remove your contacts” – All Tweets. Similar:An apology to Donald Trump, from the "fake news" mediaA good example of the power of satire. …CultureIn October, 2000, I was blogging about bobbed hair, Woolf, a CFP for interactive fiction s…In October 2000, I was blogging about …CultureJudge orders Montana congressman who…