[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:And the People of the Book of Face Were Deceived “And I looked up and saw a sign, and…AestheticsUnderstanding Shakespeare: "Pick a play. Click a line…"Pick a play. Click a line. Instantly see…CultureBurgh to Burg, episode 2.AcademiaThe…
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:Candyland is a masterpiece of game design (John Brieger unpacks the specific cultural cont… AestheticsHarvard revokes admission of several students…
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:Plato's Allegory of the CaveIn The Republic, Plato uses an extended …AcademiaShe was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested…Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a…
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 barbican at Mickelgate was pulled down in the 1800s but I made a rough approximation f…AestheticsUshering for a school matinee. Love seeing the kids excited about @prime_stage Frankenstei… CultureThe Man Who Photographed GhostsThis review of a book about early photog…AestheticsAlike (2015)This short film reminds us why…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:Original Mickey Mouse Character Enters Public Domain in 2024As a grad student in the 1990s, I chose …AcademiaIf You Check the Source of an Inspirational Prayer You Shared on Social Media, You Might B…I needed this prayer yesterday. I checke…AmusingIn between 3 walks and a chess game…
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:Microsoft lays off journalists to replace them with AIMicrosoft is laying off dozens of journa…BusinessTwo Cheers for the Middle Ages! by Eric ChristiansenI love good writing. “Even those who dou…CultureThe cultural…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Games Based Learning through Text Adventures As I make progress in designing the cl…AcademiaDisruptive Decorations: Kids learned better in a sparesly-decorated CMU labKids learned better in a sparse lab sett…AestheticsIndustriousness. Self-improvement. Thrift. And orange slime. The girl amusing herself on our 70m …AestheticsGoogle Favors Good Reporting, Not Liberal…
“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:A comic about…