Doyle Redland Says Goodbye

I’m still mourning the loss of Herman T. Zwiebel.  And now this? Similar:Trump, Obama seem equally disinterested in portrait unveiling — but journalism takes hits…On social media recently I saw people mo…Aesthetics‘Broken Age’ ReviewThis will be my self-reward when I finis…CybercultureAfter a pretty crappy day, I found shreds of joy in this clip of socially…

"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:King Hedley II ( #AugustWilson #CenturyCycle, 9…

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…

American History: "Growth of a Nation"

This animated map of the expansion of American territory since the original 13 colonies is a bit cheesy in terms of production values, and not nearly as high-quality as the wonderful animated map of The Civil War in Four Minutes, but still a good resource. Similar:Why We Dug AtariGame collectors have their story, too. F…CybercultureInteractive…

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:Multimodal Composing, Sketchnotes, and Idea GenerationUsing the mixed media of sketch notes, a…AcademiaUS regulators demand clamp down on Apple e-book contractsI made a lot of impulse Kindle purchases…BooksSimulated iceberg, preserved artifacts…

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:Stage Right's 'Seussical' offers songs, messagesThe Tribune-Review does a great job cove…Current_EventsGoogle Trends: blog, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook (2004-2012)I rather expected this — popularity of …Current_EventsPeter Sallis: Wallace and Gromit actor dies aged 96 The voice of Wallace has died. The si…CultureNASA! Mars!! Panorama!!! Video!!!! Audio!!!!!New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Persever…AwesomeTeaching Snapshot: First…

Frisbee inventor dies at 90

Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:Newspaper For Sale: The Growing Threat of News Deserts in Western PennsylvaniaAs circulation has declined, local newsp…BusinessChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.“In every previous automation threat, th…BusinessListening to Weird Al's "Word…

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…

The Superbowl, Technology, and the Police State (1984-2010)

There’s a dissertation in here. All I have the energy to do today is imply a connection. Using a police state to market technology in 1984: Using a police state to market technology in 2010: Similar:Sharing memes about news you don’t see is lazy. Be part of the solution!CultureJournalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)Traditionally,…