Disney to buy Marvel in $4bn deal

Is your Spidey-sense tingling? Disney will take over ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men.–BBC Similar:Truth Trumps BiasTrump offers plenty of opportunities for…Current_EventsBeautiful, meditative video shows how books are madePretty sure you can’t do this to a Kindl…AestheticsDistributing Candy at Holiday ParadeCurrent_Events‘Chronicles of Prydain’ Movie: Disney Acquires Rights to DevelopWe went…

Birdhouse: Existential Philosophy, Biology, Aesthetics, and Re-enactment of a Literary Entombment

Similar:Higgs Boson VideoGreat video about subatomic particles, f…AcademiaMerry Christmas 2013Current_EventsTreasure peaceful moments in a turbulent world.AestheticsThe school mocked. I turtled.Draft: “As my classmates tormented, I sh…Academia'Dream' casting a family affairAmong actors in Cabaret Theatre’s upcomi…CultureWriting for the Godless: Flannery O’Connor on Dogma, Belief, and the Difference Between Re…I’m not teaching her time period this te…Books

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

OMG! The prez is in ur internet, killin ur freedomz! The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the…

Wikipedia Will Limit Changes on Articles About Living People

Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries. That right was never…

Student writing is getting worse- or wait, it's getting better!

Wonderful stuff from Steven Krause. Representing the world champion, the “going to hell in a hand-basket,” the eternal the youth are getting worse and worse, and carrying on the tradition of complaining about students that dates back in western culture to at least Isocrates, I give you Stanley Fish’s “What Should Colleges Teach?” on his…

Idea to Implementation

I’ve been sitting on a particular interactive fiction work-in-progress for ten years. Ten years! Every so often I dust it off and add a little more, but I still haven’t finished the chore of converting it from Inform 6 to Inform 7.  And while hiding from this project, I went and released a different project…

Auto-Tune the News #7

People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big O-M-G. — Katie Couric, advocating a “designated texter.” Similar:As a student journo, naturally I covered the visit from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry…I recall just sort of telling the editor…AcademiaIn journalism, the speech is more important than any speaker. (Put newsworthy quotes first…EducationCameras…