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:The Outcast (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 17) Genderless civilization oppress…Rewatching ST:TNG Members of a ge…CultureOn this date in 1999 I first added a date to the list of web links I had been curating.…

Radio News Delivery: How to Sound Like a Radio Broadcaster

Listen to a short news broadcast, such as the NPR Hourly News Summary. These stories will typically include audio clips from newsmakers, and perhaps the noise of crowds or nature. But we’re just focusing on the sound of the radio journalist’s voice. Don’t try to sound like “an announcer.”  Forget the barking style of voice that radio announcers always…

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

Similar:Why Teachers, Parents, and Society at Large Have Destroyed Kids’ Love of LearningI have experimented with rewarding stude…CultureTop deck of a #neovictorian #steampunk cruiser needs an airlock at the top of the spiral s…    AestheticsShy Preschooler Won't Say Her Lines in "Peter Pan" Rehearsal (Stage Right! Greensburg)Little Maggie isn’t so sure she wants to…DramaDo…

Sports hooligan evolves advanced stadium camoflage skill

Dude! Your shirt looks just like the blue walkway and the brown sand! How do you do that? From the MailOnline, via. Similar:Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It)Someone who thought Twitter was da bomb,…BusinessWhy We Dug AtariGame collectors have their story, too. F…CybercultureBrilliant, Troubled Dorothy Parker by Robert GottliebIn 1915, Parker, aged…

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:Media Bias Chart (Ad Fontes, v. 9)Objective news reporting is an ideal. Wh…CultureA Dance Mom Gets Schooled by a Ballet Mistress Who Can WriteAvoid trying to publicly shame a ballet …ArtJournalism In The Service of…