Interesting application of math to sports. In analyzing teams’ shot quality, shot rates and shot percentages, Skinner found that the average NBA squad has a 4 percent probability of shooting the ball when left with 15 seconds on the shot clock in their final possession. The ideal rate is 12 percent. Skinner didn’t offer guidelines…
Nothing really new in this article, but it’s useful to be reminded of how valuable our data is to those who want to make money off it (without our permission). Apple allows any app to access your address book at any time—it’s built into the iPhone’s core software. The idea is to make using these…
When reporters report on what reporters are doing, you know it’s a non-story. The group was set to make its biggest news splash yet on Tuesday—holding a rally outside the Westminster Kennel Dog Club Show at Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan—this time with real dogs. The event attracted at least 15 reporters, 10 photographers…
We finished the game over the weekend. Delightful. via My daughter likes Machinarium. – YouTube. Similar:Hermann Zapf, the font designer behind Palatino and Zapf Dingbats, has died at 96Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such…AestheticsWriting Computer Games with InklewriterIf brass lanterns or slathering-fanged g…CybercultureChess with my son. As usual, it didn't go well for me.GamesFor God's…
I may seem laughably sentimental about what’s essentially pixels jiggering about. But somewhere deep inside when I was little I wanted to be an artist. And a whole art form has developed in my lifetime. I remember for the first time reading: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own…
I may seem laughably sentimental about what’s essentially pixels jiggering about. But somewhere deep inside when I was little I wanted to be an artist. And a whole art form has developed in my lifetime. I remember for the first time reading: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own…
A pleasant little reference to old-school letter-writing. At Seton Hill College, which gained university status in 2002, the switch cost about $200,000. The team there also relied on community goodwill: They asked business owners along Route 30, a major traffic corridor in Westmoreland County, to re-letter their moveable-type signs to congratulate the new Seton Hill…
I’ve been showing some of my Blender 3D creations to members of my son’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, and several of them asked me to teach them how to make a game. Blender 3D is a fantastic (free! open source!) tool that can model 3D computer-generated scenes and characters, render high-quality videos, as well as…
My old college roommate, Rob Bell, is the state legislator behind this bill. Robert Bell, the legislator who is sponsoring the Virginia bill, said it represented increasingly nuanced parental thinking as home-schooling has evolved into a more mainstream activity, up from 850,000 students nationally in 1999 to 1.5 million in 2007, the latest figure available…
A survey of 1300 people across the UK was carried out by Opinion Matters on behalf of the agency, and found that 65 percent of 16-24 year-olds rated social media as their favourite hobby, rather than watching television, reading or playing video games. […] TV was considered as a favoured leisure activity by 54 percent…
Seton Hill University students can attend a local professional production of the musical theatre classic “Man of La Mancha” for just $10 Feb 17 and Feb 19. As part of the Stage Right Theatre Company’s professional season, the show will be staged February 17 – 19 at the Greensburg Garden Civic Center. Seton Hill University students can…
I was not a theatre major, but I did have various paid jobs in my college theatre department, including working in the scene shop, painting billboards, writing press releases, etc. Nothing excites my 9yo daughter like acting. On her one day off between her last two shows, she built a sock puppet theater out of…
Was it worthwhile, Throwing off my shawl, Turning toward the writers to say: “That is not it at all, That is not what you meant, at all”? They thought me Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse. They just wanted to dish about Johnny Depp on the loose. I grow old…I grow old… But…
Near the end of a review of a time-management game, Emily Short offers some fairly brilliant narratological observations. A Little Princess and Jane Eyre — and buckets of other classic and semi-classic literature for young women — revolve around the idea of patient, perennial self-sacrifice and obedience as a way of life, with the hope that one day,…
Phil Komarny, my school’s VP for IT, offers a preview of a plan to implement printing from campus iPads. He’s right — printing is less important when so many of us have iPads, though the occasional need to print flyers, recommendation letters that need to be snail-mailed, etc. means I’m grateful every day for my…
Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported. “Fixed playground equipment that meets licensing codes is unchallenging and uninteresting to children,” they wrote in the February issue of…
I almost cried while reading this. But the best part is getting to share with my kids, share the geeky things that informed my childhood and continue to inform my existence: Star Wars, Star Trek, math, science, reading, writing, music, computers and video games, movies and television. I can’t tell you the joy of having…
“People tend to try to learn in blocks,” Bjork said. “Mastering one thing before moving on to the next.” Instead of doing that Bjork recommends interleaving. The strategy suggest that instead of spending an hour working on your tennis serve, you mix in a range of skills like backhands, volleys, overhead smashes, and footwork. “This…
The new censorship technology announced by Twitter allows the company to block tweets or users on a country-by-country basis. Previously, blocking tweets had to be done globally, meaning if an oppressive regime asked Twitter to remove a tweet or block a user, it had to be done for everyone in the world. Now, Twitter can…
I think they mean “Teaching digital humanities to undergraduates could boost…” Pedagogically, undergraduate forays into the digital humanities need not be as complete or ambitious as building formal archives and discovery tools from scratch, the panelists said. Rather, the point is to spur students to “think critically and differently” about digital gateways and to “encourage…