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:More household props for a #blender3d #steampunk project. I had made the spice rack and utensi…AestheticsThe Best Argument for Studying English? The Employment NumbersWhile health science majors and engineer…AcademiaA masked, socially distant museum visit. So nice…

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:Turnitin.com UI Woes: One-click, No-confirmation Deletion of QuickMark SetsIn general, I find Turnitin.com’s GradeM…AcademiaAdvice to First Year College Students on Freshman CompFull disclosure… I have marked AP Engl…AcademiaPopcorn MakerI’ll have to look into this. Popc…AestheticsWinners Chosen in Annual Shakespeare Monologue and Scene ContestMichael Henninger took this wonderful ph…Books4 Skills to Help You Stand Out In…

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:CNN Profiles Former White House "Chief Calligrapher"Today was the last day of the manuscript…AestheticsFox apologizes for "error" in news story that created the impression Eagles players knelt …Context matters. Good journalists should…CultureRatified 100 years ago…