[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:Completed uniforms for the officers and crew from the #neovictorian #steampunk bedtime sto… Right now I can move the player aroun…AestheticsIn October, 1999 I was blogging about college application essays, Willie Crowther, and Eli… Jessica found herself…
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:You can be a Trek fan without loving TOS. But if we think tolerance and empathy are good t…I was…
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:MS-Word's helpful "View -> Focus" mode delays stress-related breakdowns.You won’t usually catch me saying anythi…CybercultureThe poetry of deafnessMy auditory processing disorder makes it…AestheticsFilmmakers Find Section of Destroyed Space Shuttle Challenger on Ocean FloorInstead…
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:I wish I could credit the designer. This is brilliant.PersonalThe boy approved of the WWII historical fiction Dunkirk. CultureI had already created the little utility craft on the lower left, but this weekend I expan…PersonalAddis, LA: Little Orphan Annie stopped for speeding Addis, LA: Little Orphan Annie…AmusingThe Fantasticks…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pinkJust watched videos of the musicals “Tho…AcademiaWhat It Takes To Change Your Brain's Patterns After Age 25Most of our brain’s patterns are solidif…Health3-Year-Old's Birthday Party Theme: 'NewsHour'When a young St. Paul boy got to pick th…HumanitiesRedemption, Part II…
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:I Cannot Begin to Tell You How Proficient I Am in Microsoft WordIs this satire? It doesn’t matter. It ga…AestheticsNASA | A View From The Other SideA number of people who’ve…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Snap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO priceNASDAQ.com throws shade via Reuters: Sn…BusinessI do not know why this antique service button from my campus cafeteria delights me so.AestheticsThe A.V. Club's AI-Generated Articles Are Copying Directly From IMDbI’ve enjoyed human-written A/V Club arti…BusinessSorry, not sorry. I don't want…
“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:Umberto Eco and…