Before settling down to finish reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins, my daughter made this Lego reindeer. Similar:Actors Fail to Distract Audience from Prop Newspaper HeadlinesMy daughter and I were talking about pro…AmusingAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this meme because the last time I used in cla…Academia'History has treated her badly': Hamnet and…
Ferrell’s wife, Karen, buys groceries and not all her clothes come from the dumpster, and some of their furnishings did not come from the trash. But Ferrell says he never buys clothes for himself. Scrounging is his word for what he does. When he moved to Texas 10 years ago from Arizona, Ferrell decided to…
We have one more day of classes Monday, but in honor of the end of classes and the start of finals, here’s a handout designed to help students make the most of timed writing situations. If you are, at this moment, frantically cramming for tomorrow morning’s exam, that first tip may not sound all that…
In fact, while Lamarr qualified as an inventive genius for her artistic flair, she fell somewhat short on her scientific acumen. She certainly fizzed with creative ideas throughout her life. My favorites include sugary “bouillon” cubes to plop into water for an instant Coke, and a “skin-tautening technique based on the principles of the accordion.”…
• The total number of U.S. households with TV sets declined year to year for the first time since Nielsen started counting TV ownership. • The number of households with no TV at all is at its highest level since 1975. Three percent of homes are TV-free. The decline was not trivial, either — from 115.9…
It’s hard to think of a device more aptly named than BergCloud’s Little Printer. It’s little. It prints. It even smiles at you. And why wouldn’t it? It’s adorable. Equally notable is what it produces — RSS feeds printed out on grocery store-style receipts. Berg’s Little Printer churns out RSS feeds with a receipt…
The researchers also suggested that the success of the “Star Wars” prequel films might partially rely upon how teens can relate to the troubled Anakin Skywalker. Only adults can be diagnosed with to borderline personality disorder under the current DSM-IV guidelines, but Bui and Rodgers pointed to several studies that suggest the disorder is fairly…
Even the most nimble-minded among us have pondered that question after walking into a room with some purpose in mind — to get something, perhaps? — only to blank on what that purpose was. Now a new study suggests that it’s the very act of walking through a doorway that causes these strange memory lapses.…
An analytical piece dissecting a woefully inaccurate local TV news segment. This isn’t to say that people aren’t still being arrested for recording cops in public—in Pennsylvania or elsewhere—or that cops aren’t still threatening people who attempt to record them with cell phones or other devices. In fact, in spite of those court rulings, a…
My sister used to send my wife and me videotapes full of Babylon 5 and Mystery Science Theater 3000, when I was a graduate student in Toronto. Since we often ended up watching six or seven B5 shows in a row, we got a good sense of the show as an overall story, rather than…
“People don’t want to be sword,” learns this little gamer. Similar:Blondes 'to die out in 200 years'”The last natural blondes will die out w…CultureThe Benefits of No-Tech Note TakingI quibble with The Chronicle headline wr…AcademiaAmusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Imagine a scenario in which circumstan…Aesthetics'The Meatball: Not a Funny Rhyme' says Peter Jerz, age…
Stuart Glogoff wrote up his experiences teaching with blogs. The article is from 2005, and its main usefulness for me is that it validates some of my own practices — giving students individual blogs, requiring students to read and comment in peer blogs, and acknowledging that students will quickly abandon their blogs if they feel…
A public elementary school in Texas that was given “exemplary” status for student achievement only taught reading and math to third graders last year and made up grades for each student in social studies, science, music and other subjects. — ‘Exemplary’ Texas school taught only two subjects – The Answer Sheet – The Washington Post. Similar:If…
For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement,…
AUTOMAKER Nissan Australia was trying to put the brakes on a social media backlash today after handing out a car as top prize in a Facebook competition to a friend of the employee managing the contest. The PR disaster came only a day after iconic national airline Qantas experienced a similarly negative reaction when it…
Qantas on Tuesday invited users of the micro-blogging site to enter a “Qantas Luxury” competition, asking people to describe their “dream luxury in-flight experience” and possibly win a pair of Qantas first-class pyjamas and a toiletries kit. The timing of the PR exercise was questionable, coming just a day after Qantas and its unions broke…
This is the first moment I’ve had in months to think a bit about my upcoming 3-week online course, “Video Game Culture and Theory.” The class went well the last time I offered it, though there is always room for improvement. Best practices include deconstructing single longer assignments into frequent shorter assignments, scheduling the first…
Now, we’ve shown that Facebook promotes captive content on its network ahead of content on the web, prohibits users from bringing open content into their network, warns users not to visit web content, and places obstacles in front of visits to web sites even if they’ve embraced Facebook’s technologies and registered in Facebook’s centralized database…
See more at Pepper Spray Cop Squirts the Internet in the Eye Similar:As a student journo, naturally I covered the visit from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry…I recall just sort of telling the editor…AcademiaStories from the Tall Tales Club – Episode 1 The Time ElephantI’ve had a lot of fun in this new ensemb…AmusingNASA finally…
I wonder what kind of a government we would have, if laws were written as collaborative Wikis. Looks like Iceland’s new constitution came close. To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document…