The Internet Bible: The Fall of Eve

Via Similar:Reading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communitiesthough Limbaugh is wrong to decide that …CybercultureYou have 20 minutes before the sun blows upThis charming game focuses on exploring …AestheticsPeer Review Paranoia: The system is built on trust between scholars. AI is undermining tha…From an essay that includes a reflection…AcademiaJustine Sacco Is Good at Her Job,…

Doyle Redland Says Goodbye

I’m still mourning the loss of Herman T. Zwiebel.  And now this? Similar:Prime Stage presents ‘Twelfth Night’ as season-ending productionLooking forward to seeing this! Set in …CultureProfessor Sees Parallels Between Things, Other Things”By drawing parallels between things and…AcademiaMake Video Horizontal Again For confessionals or tapdance routi…AcademiaA Fistful of Datas (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode…

"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:When the art director was too cheap…

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:The woman and the car: a chatty little handbook for all women who motor or want to motor (…Great piece of history, from 1909. Dorot…AmusingThe Dauphin (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 10)A…

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:Take a look at the moon tonight!I wish I had the time or energy to get o…AestheticsFrodo Baggins, A.B.D.When I had pneumonia a few years into my…Academia"Look for the helpers" is good for distracting preschoolers from horrors they can't change…”Look for the helpers” is only one part …CultureGreensburg student wins Shakespeare contest…

Frisbee inventor dies at 90

Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:George Stone Credits Scott Adams Adventure Games for Inspiring "Max Headroom"Scott Adams (creator of “Adventureland,”…CybercultureFair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright caseFair use is a concept baked into US copy…BooksEvita in Zelionople Culture'Dream' casting…

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:You don’t hate millennials. You hate 21st-century technology.A favorite observation about millennials…CultureIf You’re An English Major You Should Take a…