I think I would need to do more than dance a bit at the county fair to raise enough to buy this. This is the fully-functional road car purpose-built for principal shooting. Production designer Ken Adam stood firm in his belief that if the film was to be about a car, a real car would…
I just got an email from Amazon saying that typos and omissions in my Kindle edition of The Lord of the Rings have been corrected, and I can opt to receive the updated edition for free. However, like a certain similarly magical gift that I’m sure we’re all thinking of right now, this boon comes…
I’ve no idea where the “Bacon Starry Night” meme comes from. Other than Vincent Van Gogh, and bacon, of course. My wife asked whether there is a bacon “The Scream.” Not yet, apparently. Similar:Thoughtful Gestures Sometimes Speak Louder than WordsShe ended up waiting out the light cycle…AmusingFor the Uniform #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode…
The key point here is that all sellers now get a 30% commission and Apple now wants a 30% fee, which is all of our gross margin and then some. The six largest publishers have now all adopted the agency model. These publishers account for nearly 90% of all ebooks sold. Random House was the…
The New York Times Makes The Nerdiest Correction Ever – Featured on BuzzFeed. Similar:Me (glares in iambic pentameter)Me: I need to post the opening lecture f…AcademiaEdward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, 1960 Edward Gorey illustrates H. G. Wells’s…AestheticsAnd Now for This Breaking News Report “Police have cornered the suspect wh…AmusingJack…
Based on the constructivist theory of learning suggesting that students make sense of new information by joining it with information they already have, his guidelines suggest that students begin with a quick pre-read, in which they underline words they don’t know but don’t stop reading until they reach the end. They then would follow up…
Even the access to paying customers is hard to justify. The terms of the deal mean that for each Skype customer, Microsoft is paying about $1,000. And on average, those customers are worth a profit of about $30, presuming most of Skype’s income comes from subscriptions and call charges. That’s a huge disparity. Windows Live…
This is one of those “duh” studies, like “doctors who are totally stoned more mistakes in the operating room than doctors who are not,” but I do understand the value of conducing formal research to quantify cultural information. “A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more…
I’d love the retro goodness of a MOO event with smart and innovative colleagues. I don’t think I’ll be near a WiFi connection at that time, though. We’d like to invite all in the Techrhet community to the online collaborvention event, “Through the Looking Glass and Back: A MOO Rhetrospective,” to celebrate our MOO past as it…
Take a look at the photo published above, famously snapped in the Situation Room as the U.S. raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The astute viewer will notice that, like some sort of sexist version of Highlights magazine, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been Photoshopped out of the picture (not to mention Counterterrorism Director Audrey…
The whole “reality is an illusion” idea has been kicked around by everyone from Siddhartha to the existentialists. It is Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom who is most often associated with the idea that we are living in a computer simulation. His premise is based on a series of assumptions: 1). A technological society could eventually…
The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology,…
Comments on: A vane Osama bin Laden shown in new videos – CBS News. Similar:ifMUD IF discussion | Emily Short's Interactive StorytellingEmily Short on the limitations of parser…Cyberculture"Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just do…Over the past couple of years, researche…CultureExplore Geotagged Wikipedia Pages as a Text Adventure GameFor…
Disappointed because I haven’t found a news writing textbook available for Kindle or iBooks. There are some textbooks about broadcasting, and some out-of-copyright classics. This journalist blogger reports on a recent study involving the Kindle DX: College textbooks are a holy grail for the electronic book industry, but apparently they still have a ways to…
Today, I realized I’m not unique in this conundrum: having contributed assets to an interactive project on levels I can’t easily access. I was chatting with a voiceover artist who’d done a fair amount of video game work but, again, wasn’t a good enough gamer to make it to his own cut scenes. He was…
Posting this to share with students interested in The Hunger Games, which features birds genetically engineered to act as spies. Many birds can mimic sounds but lyrebirds are the masters. They are nature’s living tape recorders, and sometimes their songs can be troubling. For example, when the BBC’s David Attenborough ran into a lyrebird deep…
When the Berlin Wall fell, I soaked up the optimism. Soon after, the reporters who had been covering the Cold War began filing reports from the Middle East. I remember asking my dad, “Is it always this way? The good news story gets stale, and the bad news happening somewhere else catches the world’s attention?”…
Photographers are kept out of the room during live presidential telecasts, because the sounds of their cameras distracts from the audio. This is standard practice. As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent.…
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate,…
Dear internet, It’s not a “motherload of intelligence,” it’s a “mother lode of intelligence.” Dictionaries are fun! That is all. Similar:If watching this clip of Punjabi dancers in Ireland doesn't make you happy, I don't know w…https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/13721…AestheticsWhere is the comma in "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" supposed to go?https://youtu.be/sxfxy-3dGz0AmusingFamily catch and eat octopus with six…