One of the most popular pages on my site — a single page that earns about 20% of my hits — started out as a class assignment for a technical writing student whose project for a real-world client ran into a snag. In Fall 2002, I showed my student Kathy Kennedy a model of a…
Similar:"Daddy, I'm sick of your tears."”Daddy, I’m sick of your tears.” –my 11…CultureNo, Dr. Seuss is not being "banned" or "censored" — but Dr. Seuss Enterprises is voluntar…It’s nothing new that Theodore “Dr. Seus…BooksIt's a Didactic Day in the Neighborhood: Mister Rogers and Educational IdeologyI recently lamented that my kids are gro…Aesthetics10 top writing tips…
I believe I feel like a pribbling idle-headed mumble-news. (Thanks for the link, Jessica!) Tastefully Offensive | Premium Funny: Shakespeare Insult Kit – StumbleUpon. Similar:Telekinetic Coffee Shop SurpriseBlogworthy promo for a movie I have no d…AmusingShutting the Door on the Hard-Knock LifeIn sync with the resurgence of labor act…BusinessAbout that Cough, Rough, Pony, Bologna MemeDo…
My 13yo son plays through chapter 2 of my 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition entry, Fine Tuned. Similar:After I noticed an overnight traffic spike to a classic handout, I touched it up and creat…This is the overall traffic to my websit…PersonalShe doesn't have keys or a phone or an ID. Why does my tween need a…
The local paper’s headline spins the news a bit more negatively than it probably deserves. I rather enjoy the opportunity to look at some familiar words in a fresh light. Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: (Current Text) Priest: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us. (New text)…
[poll id=”2″] Similar:Jury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-…GovernmentI Regret to Inform You That My Wedding to Captain Von Trapp Has Been CanceledI must confess to being rather blindside…AmusingFake Kitsch! Not Really the 80s! There is a part of me that misses …AestheticsOnce on This Island (Stage Right! Greensburg; May 11 & 12 Promo…
While teaching Richard II in a Shakespeare class, I had to get up to speed on the rules and customs of succession, as Shakespeare knew them, so that my students and I could understand and explore the political issues that Elizabethan audiences would find in the play. News from England today bears word of some…
Students collaborate on a breaking news journalism assignment. I wrote a mock police report, an official statement from a university official, and some personal info from various simulated sources, and gave students 45 minutes to churn out a news story. Here, students collaborate on a Google doc while consulting their textbook on a iPad. My…
In the mid-1950s mathematician John McCarthy issued a call for research on “Automata Studies,” but the phrase was so bland that few people understood what he meant. So he came up with a more provocative description of the idea he was promoting. He called it artificial intelligence. via John McCarthy, the father of artificial intelligence,…
A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
The problem is that Google is killing off the current crop of social functions from Reader – and in doing so, they’re fundamentally altering the way most of us use Reader, and in the process they’re sending a huge archive of curated posts and shares and comments down into the void. And this is a…
Similar:Making Connections in Virtual One-ShotsI often invite my colleague Kelly Clever…AcademiaMan enough to sew my own computer bag. Insecure enough to seek validation on social media …AmusingTexty Cloak of Darkness in ProseBelow is a snippet from “Texty Cloak of …GamesWho cares about hyphens, commas and capital letters? You should.You’re a busy editor, fighting a deadlin…BooksResponding…
Of Archimedes, he who allegedly popularized the word “Eureka!”: “His cleverness is beautiful. Understanding Archimedes is like understanding the most elegant joke in the world.” The researchers paid their respects to the 10th-century scribe who copied down works by Archimedes of lasting importance. The palimpsest contains the only version of “On Floating Islands” in Greek…
The value of this essay is not specifically in the nostalgia for ye goode ole days of bloggynge, but rather the combination of work-ethic angst and the recognition of the value of investing effort in long-term projects, as opposed to seeking immediate rewards for clear-cut, predetermined actions. The philosophical reflections of the shovel-wielding ditch-digger are…
The greatest abstract for a journal article ever – 22 Words. Similar:The Benefits of Writing Crap (A Reminder)A first draft gives you something to go …EssaysBe Kind, for Everyone You Meet Is Misattributing This Quote in a MemeBe kind, for everyone you meet is fighti…AmusingMusician uses computer algorithm to compose every melody possible in C,…
[J]ournals ceased being a means of communication a long time ago – more than 20 years ago for sure. New research would be unveiled in seminars, circulated as NBER Working Papers, long before anything showed up in a journal. Whole literatures could flourish, mature, and grow decadent before the first article got properly published…. The…
“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in…
Caves and sandboxes are some kinds of game spaces I’ve explored in conversations (and an unpublished manuscript) with David Thomas, so I was very interested in these musings from Not Your Mama’s Gamer. In a landscape polluted by smog and litter, box stores, fast food chains, more subdivisions and ever more streets–it becomes harder and…
Similar:Ultimate Infographic Design Guide + Design Tricks – VenngageThis website is selling something. You c…AestheticsSlate: "Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide" | Notice how writing style frames a story? Gr…The ongoing protests following the killi…Current_EventsPerseverance lands on Mars today! Here's what you need to know Today, February 18, 2021 at 20:44 UTC …AwesomeStoryNexus: building your own…
Big, sad news in the world of big (sad) journalism. One of Rupert Murdoch’s most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation’s flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy…