Doyle Redland Says Goodbye

I’m still mourning the loss of Herman T. Zwiebel.  And now this? Similar:Judge rules Jim Acosta can have his White House pass back A federal judge ruled that CNN corre…Current_EventsCrime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were over In the weeks leading up to the US midt…Current_EventsWhat gives you comfort? I collect lights.…

"By Their Sidewalks You Will Know Them"

There are no sidewalks where I live, but if there were, my sidewalk, and my conscience, would be clear. Here’s the first stanza of a five-stanza poem by TImons Esaias. Originally there were eleven CommandmentsMoses, perhaps confused by the unfamiliarsnow, ice, and sidewalk,botched one, and left it out. Similar:Should you trust media bias charts? -…

The ABCs of Adventuring

Thanks for this find, Mark Sample (via Twitter). The ABCs of Adventuringby Admiral Jota, Dylan O’Donnell, G. Kevin Wilson, and Dan Shiovitz.A is for Adventure, the first of them all;B is for Brass lantern, so you don’t take a fall.C is for Compass, an unseen one you keepD is for Drinking, eating and sleep.E is…

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Gripping story of an effort to use data to predict teaching excellence. As Teach for America began to identify exceptional teachers using this data, Farr began to watch them. He observed their classes, read their lesson plans, and talked to them about their teaching methods and beliefs. He and his colleagues surveyed Teach for America…

Why Google Has Become Microsoft's Evil Twin

Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the “whoo-hoo look at me!” aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant. —PC World Similar:Networks cut away from Trump’s White House addressNEW YORK (AP) — ABC, CBS and NBC all cut…Current_EventsJJ Abrams announces fourth rebooted Star Trek movie“We are thrilled to say that we are…

Critical Code Studies Working Group — Colossal Cave Adventure Annotation

This week, I’ll be facilitating a week-long collaborative annotation project, as part of the Critical Code Studies Working Group online conference, on the source code to Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure (a classic text-only computer game from the 1970s). According to Donald Knuth, designer of the “literate programming paradigm,” Colossal Cave Adventure is the “ur-game…

Happy V-Day: Valentines for Journalists

Valentines for Journalists. Similar:Vanessa Otero's Complex vs. Clickbait, Liberal vs. Conservative Media ChartUpdate, June 2020: See Vanessa Otero Ad …CultureGoogle Favors Good Reporting, Not Liberal Views: StudyIt’s a logical fallacy to suggest that w…CulturePew finds embattled newspaper industry still pulls in more than half of all news revenueRevenue is not the same thing as profit,…BusinessWendy's…

Frisbee inventor dies at 90

Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:Narrative, Creativity, and EvolutionMy students are finishing up Hayles, My …AcademiaCOVID-19 Becoming Less DeadlyBits and pieces from a news article that…Current_EventsOperation War DiaryOne hundred years ago today, Britain dec…CultureGoogle Favors Good Reporting, Not Liberal Views: StudyIt’s a…

Peter West, Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869

Interesting examination of role-playing, illusion, identity, and power in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, one small branch of which was the inspiration for the 1976/7 computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave was a popular tourist destination for travelers from around the United States and beyond. The cave…

Typography and Textuality

Zach Whalen is turning his dissertation into a blog-web-thing, in the hopes of developing a book-thing. In whatever form it takes, it’s an interesting approach to a textual study of video games. This study asks how the design and configuration of text in videogames contributes to their textuality. I argue that videogames are texts in…