This eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent classic uses what it said to be nearly an hour of footage long thought to be lost.This is one of the the most important film archival discoveries in history, as surprising as if the missing ending of “The Magnificent Ambersons” were found. —Roger Ebert According to…
Valentines for Journalists. Similar:The End of Print JournalismThe future of print remains what? Try to…BusinessIn Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrestComedian Robin Williams and actress Laur…CultureViral App FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People's Faces And NamesViral app FaceApp has been giving people…BusinessJohn Oliver Returns to Out-News…
[O]n this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops. Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students…
Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:We'll Always Have Paris (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 24)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…MediaJournalists: The "Enemy of the American People"; Also, an "Accountability" PollI seem to be educating future enemies of…Current_EventsSean Spicer: Hero in the War…
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…
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…
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:In March 2000, I was blogging about Palm V computers for the Navy, NCAA banning online jou…In March 2000, I…
None of this is a surprise to me, but I’m glad to have statistics to back up my impressions. A very small handful of students whose first introduction to online social networking was the SHU blogosphere, before blogs went really mainstream around 2005, are still blogging here, after they have graduated. In 2003-2005 it was…
I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say The brain was not designed for r…BooksFacebook Updates its Fight Against Fake NewsThe only reason Facebook is paying atten…BusinessMoonBot (from the…
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:The Last Outpost (ST:TNG Rewatch. Season 1, Episode 4) Riker shouts from a cliff while Fer…Rewatching ST:TNG after about a 20-year …CultureSo happy to work with @crissycp and benefit from her kindness and baking talents.PersonalUnnatural Selection (ST:TNG Rewatch Season 2, Episode 7)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…MediaThis…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:The College Fear FactorWhat happens in a literature discussion …AcademiaA WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkYet another widely held cultural myth fa…CultureFacebook Instant Articles Are on Their WayTons of large new media operations produ…BusinessJust an elegant retro keyboard for…
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:Tricking the eye to see 3D details in geometrically flat surfaces for my #steampunk #blend… AestheticsA salute lost to historyHistory is complex and baffling and fasc…CultureHow a billionaires boys’ club came…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Filmmakers Find Section of Destroyed Space Shuttle Challenger on Ocean FloorInstead of World War II-era plane debris…HistoryCursor*10Great free Flash game, emulated at the I…AestheticsThe girl will be Mrs Lovett in Stage Right's Sweeney Todd at the end of July. #3week #musi…DramaMicrosoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans…
“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,…