A popular handout from my site, Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers, includes a phrase uncommon enough that Googling for it (“practiced scream therapy“) leads me to short story exercises that develop an example into more detailed studies, or pages that remix the content of my site in order to make a similar point.…
There is a lot to like about Google+, and getting to 25 million users so quickly certainly seems promising for the Google social network. But, it doesn’t bode well if the excitement is already fading. Google needs to not only create a capable social network, but it needs to make that social network compelling enough…
This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points. Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets…
I was doing a lot of impulse buying during the $9.99 days, but since then, on occasions when I’ve seen the ebook offered at a higher price than a paperback, I have just turned to interlibrary load instead. “Terrified” by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase…
David Mahokey of Dunbar, a senior at Point Park University, and Greg Kerestan of Greensburg, a senior at Seton Hill University, wrote the 20-song score and script, respectively, for ″In Control,″ a musical that focuses in part on Mahokey’s real-life battle with bone cancer. Two free performances of ″In Control,″ directed by Anthony Marino, artistic…
Which is cooler? That my 13yo son was just sitting at the kitchen table singing lyrics to MC Frontalot’s “It Is Pitch Dark,” or that my 9yo daughter was chiming in with corrections? It Is Pitch Dark Similar:Siblings gotta sib.PersonalMy crazy Friday night involved tweaking the graphic for an #MLAstyle instructional web pag…AcademiaWe were pretty…
The heartbreaking thing is that this fall, over 10,000 bookstore employees across America will be out of work. The way the publishing industry is going, many of those people won’t be able to find jobs that are even tangentially related to books anymore; they’ll go on to work in movie theaters and grocery stores and…
The layout of this display at the Carnegie Science Center almost makes it look like the Maria duplicate in Metropolis came before Karel Capek’s play RUR (which was written in 1920, first performed in 1921). Similar:Star Trek: The MenagerieJust finished watching a two-part episod…Personal‘One of the great American stories’: the incredible life of playwright August…
The control panel. Similar:First steps towards reconstructing a 30-year-old simulation. Marking the locations of the …First steps towards reconstructing a 30-…AestheticsFirst Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News Shad and co say bots play a part…AcademiaAll About Soap — Why Washing Your Hands Fights the CoronavirusPeople typically think of soap…
Images from an extended tour of a cold war submarine. (We liked the tour we took last year so much, my son and I came back.) [portfolio_slideshow size=medium trans=scrollHorz ] Similar:ink: Inkle's open source scripting language for writing interactive narrativeGearing up to teach “Digital Storytellin…CybercultureTrump and JFK: Masters of New MediaI didn’t use Newsweek’s clickbaity…
My daughter, as the wizard, with her talented castmates, in our local theater school’s preteen summer camp musical. Similar:Today's 10 sq cm of #blender3d #steampunk control panel. #aesthetics #design #blender3dartAestheticsAgain with the chess.I try to go to Planet Fitness or chess w…PersonalBack in the MLAAs the humanities decline in the United …AcademiaAmerica's ShakespeareShakespeare continues to…
As for Starbucks, the decision to pull the plug is reportedly up to individual stores thought to be only in New York. —Many New York City Starbucks Locations About To Put An End To Squatters « CBS New York. Awkward phrasing… Who is doing the reporting if this fact is “reportedly” so? Who is doing…
In 2008, when her scientific publication, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science, became the first in China to use CrossCheck text analysis software to spot plagiarism, Zhang was pleased to be a trailblazer. But when the first set of results came in, she was upset and horrified. “In almost two years, we find about 31 percent…
Interesting story about a performance artist who bought what was once high-tech military gear, but ended up sold as scrap on eBay. A glimpse into the hardware and software suggests some interesting critiques of the industrial-military complex. There was no password on the gear that was supposed to be outfitted on the robot, so he…
My friend and colleague, Balázs Tarnai, shared these pictures of a bluejay catching a bug on his garage roof. Similar:Surprise sidewalk encounter with my man Hopkins outside the Admin shuttle stop this mornin… Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hop…AestheticsYouTube distortion after the same clip is re-uploaded 1000 timesIn theory, technology lets people make a…AestheticsDisruptions: Texting…
LEGO figurines representing the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and Galileo Galilei are flying to Jupiter. (NASA/LEGO) August 4, 2011 — They have launched aboard the space shuttle, visited the space station, and flown to Mars. Now, three more “very special” LEGO figurines are set to fly to Jupiter with NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The…
As I understand it, some people reported seeing a man with a gun at Va Tech today. but this ABC report has an image labeled as a sketch of the “shooter.” Did I miss something? Were there reports of a shooting today? Let’s hope there aren’t, and let’s hope for accuracy in photo captions. Virginia…
Another example of how easy it is for a hoax to spread, when the content fits an esablished “narrative,” and editors are hungry for evidence supporting a story they already believe is true. I have no particular love for IE, but the truth is worth publishing.. All you diehard Internet Explorer users can relax this…
I’ve occasionally taught a unit of Flash here or there, but I’m far more interested in HTML5. Interesting to see that Adobe sees HTML5 for the threat that it is to Flash. Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like…
Students are starting to contact me asking about books. I will have the course websites up in a week or two, but for now, here are the textbooks. LA101 “Seminar in Thinking and Writing” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader, Second Edition (ISBN 978-0-312-60141-6) The SF Writer, Fifth Edition (ISBN 978-0-205-75197-6) EL200…