In the figure of the coltish, resolute Sigourney Weaver, Alien may just be the film that overhauled the old, unreconstructed horror genre and dared to put a woman centre-stage. Because make no mistake: a horror movie is what Alien is. “It’s basically a haunted house film,” explains the critic David Thomson. “The only difference is…
I’ve asked students in my “Writing about Literature” class to write a book review, in order to establish a connection to the literary world outside the classroom. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a brief handout, Writing a Book Review, which begins by explaining the difference between a “book report” (written for the teacher who…
I just drafted a new handout on writing editorials. I couldn’t find anything online pitched at the proper level, so I had to write it myself. (I’ll probably be able to use a version of this in my freshman comp class too.) Presume that your opponent has good reasons for disagreeing with you. Talk to…
Robin Burkinshaw has finished Alice and Kev, an interesting exercise in computer-assisted storytelling, using screen shots from The Sims 3 to tell the story of a homeless father and daughter. Originally the story was told serially, with a few posts a week; then there were a few very long gaps, but the story is finished…
The AP recently raised eyebrows last year when it announced its intent to charge bloggers who quote from an AP story, and again more recently when it announced vague plans to track the spread of AP stories through secret embedded codes. The AP’s position is that if search engines are making money delivering customers to…
Yesterday in my journalism class, I asked everyone in the room to take out a coin and flip it twice, and raise their hand if it came up the same. Then I asked the ones whose hands were up to flip again, and keep their hand up if the coin came up the same yet…
Course management systems (CMSs), used throughout colleges and universities for presenting online or technology-enhanced classes, are not pedagogically neutral shells for course content. They influence pedagogy by presenting default formats designed to guide the instructor toward creating a course in a certain way. This is particularly true of integrated systems (such as Blackboard/WebCT), but is…
Though moribund today, for decades Usenet was the paper of record for the online world, and its hundreds of millions of “newsgroup” postings chronicle everything from the birth of the web to the rise of Microsoft, as well as more trivial matters. In February 2001, Google rescued that history when it acquired the New York-based…
Full episode. “Text ‘uncle’! Text ‘uncle’!!” “But why talk… when I could text?” “That text was totally worth the 15 cents it cost to receive it!” “Then Zach Skyped us, liveblogged our spelling bee, and friended us on Facebook!”“Faculty lounge talk out in the halls?” Similar:Congrats to all the winners at the Pittsburgh 48 Hour…
Walkthrough pifieErrol Download this MP3 Directly Similar:Microsoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happyMicrosoft limits long conversations to a…Current_EventsIn September 1999 I was blogging about Tom Stoppard, techno-utopianism, voice-recognition …In September 1999, I was blogging about …CybercultureStanford to offer new undergraduate majors integrating humanities, computer scienceTraining humanists who can code like a t…AcademiaThe…
All kinds of awesome metatronics going on here. Similar:English Is the Language of Science. That Isn't Always a Good ThingEnglish speakers tend to assume that all…AcademiaNo I didn’t exactly *plan* to spend my Sunday evening tweaking the pedestrian access to th…AestheticsJon Bentley | My Life in ArtWonderfully weird retro pop art. Jon re…AestheticsThe right —…
On Wednesday, a federal district court in Los Angeles dismissed Brown’s claim against Electronic Arts for the use of his image in its Madden NFL series. Judge Florence Marie-Cooper essentially found that video games are “expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment.”…
A good collection, on a well-designed page. www.readprint.com Thanks for the suggestion, Josh. Similar:Futuristic Acrylic Chair (Blender 3D Animation)Yesterday, I sketched a chair I found at…AestheticsThe crisis in local journalism has become a crisis of democracyThe paucity of reporters has triggered a…Culture"Oliver Twist" is a story of redemption for PICT Classic Theatre.Carolyn started rehearsals for…
I’ve been a journalist for 27 years, and I love that romantic old notion of the newsroom as much as the next guy. But I recently canceled my two morning papers–The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal–because I got tired of carrying them from the front porch to the recycling bin, sometimes without…
>get text games Similar:Showing vs. Telling (Example: "I like to win.")I just wrote these examples on a student…AestheticsI can't really articulate why i enjoy crafting #steampunk control panels, but it's been a …AestheticsA 40sq cm section of a #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsCaptain’s Holiday (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 19) Picard’s Archeologica…Rewatching ST:TNG after…
I just got a phone call from the parent of a prospective student I spoke with on a campus visit over the summer. The student has decided to come to Seton Hill, and the parent told me that the time I spent talking with the family over the summer was a major factor. (I’m sure…
A fun, free steampunk word game. Too bad I have to work today… Similar:Taking Harassment Seriously Requires Serious DistinctionsEditor and columnist Jonah Goldberg ques…CultureThanks to all the students, faculty, staff, and family who joined us to serve meals in Pit…UncategorizedAugust Wilson Trifecta (Two Trains, Ma Rainey and Fences on the same day)Fences was performed in…
Our students are transcendentalists, but they don’t know it. Speaking metaphorically, Thoreau writes “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.” Rather than treating children as wild creatures that needed to be tamed and civilized, Thoreau seesorder and meaning in nature, which is threatened, worn down, and buried by civilization.…
Old joke… when’s the best time to air a radio drama? 1937. Radio is still around, but the salary of TV personality Katie Couric ” is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined.” (so says Michael Massing). If you knew nothing about the internet beyond what you…
When the University announced its Kindle e-reader pilot program last May, administrators seemed cautiously optimistic that the e-readers would both be sustainable and serve as a valuable academic tool. But less than two weeks after 50 students received the free Kindle DX e-readers, many of them said they were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices.…