Happy V-Day: Valentines for Journalists

Valentines for Journalists. Similar:Interface (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 3) LaForge, using experimental augmen…Rewatching ST:TNG The cold open featu…AmusingBuzzFeed plagiarism, deleted posts: Jonah Peretti explains.In 2012 my former Slate colleague Farhad…BusinessFirst Day in the Theatre for Twelfth Night (May 3-12) Daughter: (is sad her “first day in …CultureNewsworthy vs snoozeworthyJerz > Writing > Journalism JournalismThe Girl's Obsession with…

Wi-Fi Turns Arizona Bus Ride Into a Rolling Study Hall

[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…

Frisbee inventor dies at 90

Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:In discord with its own rules, the AP refers to an 18yo mass-shooting suspect as a "teenag…The AP’s own rules say an 18yo is an adu…Current_EventsPerspective | After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job…

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:Mars Is a Hellhole: Colonizing the red planet is a ridiculous way to help humanity.Some of Elon Musk’s stunts have…

Social Media and Young Adults — Pew

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…

Google’s Super Bowl Ad: A Romance in Search

I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:First They Got Sick, Then They Moved Into a Virtual UtopiaWhen my son was about five, I sat him on…CultureNew infographic to help our graduating English majors make sense of their capstone project…AcademiaBlog…

The great global warming collapse

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…

Snowstorm touches 'primal' fears – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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…

Obligatory Snowpocalypse Photo

Here’s hoping I left gas in the snow-thrower. Similar:Why NORAD Tracks SantaThe call had come in on one of the top s…AmusingThe Woman in BlackLast night’s preview was a layered treat…CultureYou come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here… I recently came across a box of old wr…AcademiaYour first attempt at a medieval…

Doom Iphone code review.

Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:I feel juvenile enough today that this headline made me snicker.AmusingClose Reading of Sonnet 130: Form, Theme, and Cultural Context (and a Rage Comic)I’m preparing to teach Shakespeare again…AcademiaUnity Normal Problems (Importing an object from Blender 2.8b)I had a complex model that I created in …AestheticsI gave my…

ENG 111: Pop Up Scholarship

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…

The Videogame History Timeline (beta)

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:Why your brain’s so bad at letting go of negative comments Negative comments engage avoidance…CybercultureMore details in the powder room of my villain's lair. #Blender3DAestheticsBeard Typeface GuideChristian Goldeman felt compelled to…

Pee-wee Gets an iPad

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:The Dish (2000 Australian comedy)I try to watch this every July to commem…CultureSix rainbow-colored objects, arranged like THIS?These are shoe-holding racks at a local …AestheticsWhy teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’However, there’s a silver lining for Mar…BusinessTwitter and the "Two Minutes Hate"Another of the many, many reflections on…CultureThe…

Scholars Turn Their Attention to Attention

“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…

Misreading Apple and Amazon

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.…

"Can We Tape?"

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…

The Sacramentality of Teaching and Learning

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,…

Unfriended: UVA’s Corks & Curls yearbook out of business

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…