Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Hero

It’s a spoof, but it’s well-researched and contains plenty of insight. Similar:The Hidden Feminist Messages in 'Schoolhouse Rock!'Hidden? Sure, but certainly not accident…Academia"Look for the helpers" is good for distracting preschoolers from horrors they can't change…”Look for the helpers” is only one part …CultureFar-Right Twitter Trolls Won’t Admit They Were Wrong About Killing of a…

At 13,000 years, tree is world's oldest organism

The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today. —Independent Reading this story reminded me of a story…

A sound you do not want to hear from your furnace

I canna give the furnace any more power! I hope the lithium crystals are still under warranty. Furnace.mp3 Similar:Behind the bar in the officers' pub, from the #steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell my…AestheticsHanging with the rude mechanicals @setonhilluniversityA Midsummer Night’s Dream.CultureCharlie Brown has his kite-eating tree. I have my keys-eating chair. #foundthem PersonalMy Son…

Every Day the Same Dream

I just played this Every Day the Same Dream. Simple, stark, and in places charming. I smiled and thought a little. Similar:How do you spend your last week of summer break?AcademiaTwo decades of Alzheimer's research may be based on deliberate fraud that has cost million… Over the last two decades, Alzheimer’s…BusinessI'd love to do a…

Game Studies – Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games

I’m gearing up to teach Video Game Culture and Theory for the third time. It’s a 200-level elective, with no prerequisites. Students will have taken a basic comp course, but some won’t have done any academic research yet. I’m conscious that some students may have difficulty switching from playing the games they want to play,…

The best walkthrough of Myst I've seen so far

The first part of a walkthrough of the classic (1993), a moody, contemplative point-and-click adventure that defies the stereotype of games as violent and chaotic.  Popular with women and causual gamers, but also appreciated by expert gamers for its puzzles and graphics (photo-realistic CGI, with pre-rendered animations), it was the top-selling game for nearly a…

Clicks vs. Bricks

Is this for real? On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. —Amazon.com Hold on, though… who goes online to shop for more books on Dec 25, before the spines have been cracked on the new books that were under the tree?  Amazon was heavily promoting its…

Colossal Cave Adventure, an Exhibit

Fascinating student project from Zach Whalen’s “A Videogame Canon” course. Adventure. Rules, Representation, and Meaning in Colossal Cave Adventure Analysis of Colossal Cave Adventure Social Impact Colossal Cave Adventure as an interactive narrative and similarites [sic] to fictional novels Other projects include coverage of PONG, Half-Life, and Super Mario Kart. Similar:STEM Education Is Vital–But Not…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog

A reading from a chapter of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Similar:In May, 2002, I was blogging about… typefaces in period movies; poets Paul Dirac and Ste…In May, 2002, I was blogging about …ArtEmpathy in a Downtown Sub ShopSitting in a downtown sub shop. A half d…CultureNarrative, Creativity, and EvolutionMy students are finishing…

The Buzz on Electronic Writing: Fiction Goes Digital

In the late-eighties and early nineties, electronic writers wrote hypertext fiction and poetry, the classic example being afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce. In hypertext literature the narrative unfolds through a long series of links that produce different outcomes — but now the shrapnel of the technological explosion includes hundreds of sub-categories, each completely unique.…

Emulators — Good and Otherwise

I’m gearing up to teach a Video Game Culture and Theory course this January.  The first time I taught it, in 2006, it didn’t occur to me that students who were looking for information on, say, Space Invaders, would just play any old flash clone, without being discerning about whether it was a faithful port,…

Handheld Learning 2008 – Steven Johnson, Author

Good overview of the concepts Johnson explores in his book Everything Bad is Good for You.   Similar:R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Artistic Prosperity TrailerWe rehearsed and recorded a Zoom recordi…ArtWest Side Story to play out on Geyer Performing Arts Center stageCarolyn Jerz is playing the lead role of…CultureCombating Shakespearean shrinkage – Shakespeare & BeyondThe worst…