I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:Why Our Brains Make Us Click on ListsThe article-as-numbered-list has several…CultureCongo nun overcomes blackouts with homemade hydroelectric plantSister Alphonsine Ciza spends most of he…Current_EventsTolkien v. Orwell: Who understood modern surveillance best?Interesting set of…
It is dangerous to use local weather events (such as a heavy or light winter) to make judgments about global climate. With that caveat, I’m blogging the following because I’ve noted a shift in the online discussion about “global warming,” or the more general “climate change”. This essay does a good job exploring the events…
Coming up… we’ll tell you whether you’ll be impaled by sharp, radioactive icicles hurled by mobs of rampaging robots in your neighborhood. But first, people panicking, filling up three shopping carts of toilet paper and canned food. Hear the techno-pop pulse of our theme music, and know that you’re being conditioned to think of us…
Here’s hoping I left gas in the snow-thrower. Similar:Facebook Removes Human Curators From Trending ModuleToday, Facebook announced that human cur…BusinessHow a billionaires boys’ club came to dominate the public squareThe world’s richest man, Elon Musk, atta…BusinessLook at how many times this false claim of media conspiracy is being shared. Compare that …PersonalI played hooky from…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:Culture Desk: My Life in PencilsDevotees of the Blackwing had been payin…AestheticsHTML5 Boilerplate: The web’s most popular front-end template HTML5 Boilerplate helps you build fast…CybercultureMy crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…AestheticsStar Wars: The MusicalThe Walls are Closing In  …
Our first few readings in my freshman writing course were personal essays, with a clear narrative. We read an academic paper today, and there’s another assigned for Friday. A few students are already reporting feeling a little lost in the detail. I gather this is because they are used to reading textbooks, where all the…
I wish I’d seen this a few weeks ago, before my Video Game Culture and Theory class ended, but it’s still a welcome find. Similar:The U.S. government and Facebook are negotiating a record, multibillion-dollar fine for th…Are you still relying on Facebook to fil…BusinessThe Printed Word in Peril: The age of Homo virtualis is upon…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:The world's population is lopsided.AwesomeA stranger approached me today.A stranger approached me today. I was a…CultureApple Watch is ugly and boring (and Steve Jobs would have agreed)I am not feeling the love for Apple’s iW…AestheticsUnderstanding the difference between credible information and propagandaIn the context of my role as…
“One of the deepest questions in this field,” Nass says, “is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring–that is, they’re really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay–or…
I know, I know: Amazon relied on those $9.99 prices to give it a head start in the digital books market. And raising prices to the $12.99 to $14.99 being talked about could certainly slow sales if consumers don’t bite. But here’s the thing: it’s not as if Macmillan is only raising prices for Kindle.…
I usually carry a digital voice recorder with me. In most states it’s legal to record a conversation if all parties consent, although Pennsylvania law requires that all parties to a conversation be notified that a conversation is being recorded. “It is always legal to tape or film a face-to-face interview when your recorder or…
For the one-credit journalism class that I teach every semester, I’m teaching a unit on editorial writing. Students will take a leisurely 10-chapter journey through Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. It’s the first time I’ve taught a whole unit focusing on sentence-level phrasing. The class meets once a week, for just one hour,…
I’ve sometimes pointed out to my students that in my generation, graduating from high school and leaving your peers behind to go to college mostly meant that you were saying goodbye. Since then, I have gotten back in touch with a couple dozen high school friends, and even some elementary school friends (including the smartest…
Personal comment, with embedded links to recent postings indicating that I’ve actually had independent thoughts about this issue and I really do have something to contribute other than just reposting something that I found on BoingBoing. A brief quote from something noteworthy or controversial, offering an opinion and inviting readers to comment. Similar:When an Eel…
Studying the faked predictions was more fun than finding out the actual gadget. I’m very interested in seeing how this shakes up the competition, but I’m not going to be one of the early adopters. Plato’s Phaedrus tells the story of Theuth, inventor of the alphabet. The god Thamos said, “O most ingenious Theuth, the…
As a kid growing up in Fairfax County, just a commute away from Washington D.C., I remember often looking out the window of the family car and seeing a statute of a huge dog cocking its head at a phonograph machine. Washington Post Here we see the sculpture on top of a museum roof in…
Interesting use of pseudo-Arabian exotica that Edison used in order to communicate to the public of 1905 just what his cylinder phonographs could do, likening them to rings to place on the finger of a musical genie. “Wouldst thou have melody? Place thy ring upon my finger and I will sing for thee a tender…
I have not been ravenously following the streamed coverage of the iPad release, but I did note that the NYT was the first site Jobs presented during the demo. I really hope someone from Improv Everywhere runs up the center aisle, whirling a hammer around her head. It’s very significant, of course, that Apple is…
With its six wheels stuck in powdery sand and two wheels no longer working, the resilient little explorer will become a fixed, immobile scientific observatory — if it can survive the harsh temperatures of the upcoming winter. —LA Times Similar:Carnegie Science Center: Roboworld (and a bit of SportsWorks)Here’s a brief video, made up of clips…
While the Bible does present Jesus as being able to read, and there is a story of Jesus drawing something unspecified in the dirt, the first followers of Jesus lived in an oral culture. The Gospel of Luke begins thus, identifying to the difference between oral culture and print culture: Since many have undertaken to…