This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for–thought they owned.–David Pogue, NYT The citizens whose Kindles needed rectification had purchased unauthorized George Orwell books. So 1984 disappeared down the…
It might sound like a logical extension from the likes of Buzz and You Don’t Know Jack, but you’ll have to believe that this [Xbox Live] game is ringing the death knell for game shows as loudly and vigorously as it possibly can. Why watch a game show, when you can participate? Why shout at the TV,…
Walter Cronkite, the CBS News anchor who famously became the most trusted man in America, died Friday at the age of 92.–NPR Similar:Will Journalism Be a Crime in a Second Trump Administration?Journalism is not a crime. It’s not …CultureAs if 2021 wasn't already bad enough, it managed to get Betty White. Beloved actress, comedian and…
The HD version actually came out better than I thought it would. More photos after the jump… Similar:Listening to the Text: The Medieval Speech BubbleFrom a culture where silent reading was …AestheticsAirport retro video games collect spare coins in SwedenFliers arriving at Swedens two biggest a…AestheticsSibling Affection and Paternal Abstraction as Drawn By a Six-Year-Old;…
The LA Times technology blog critiques the new Google Reader interface. For example, let’s say we have a news article that we like. Well, might as well click the “like” button, right? OK, now we’ve told the Internet that we think it’s cool, and we can see a list of strangers who also think it’s…
Talk about penny wise and pound foolish! NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing. Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been…
Amazing! Similar:The hidden billion-dollar cost of repeated police misconductThe story notes that when police departm…CultureFather copes with toddler son's cancer by creating 'empathy' gameGreen and Larson both admit that even th…AestheticsUpdated a handout on writing a process analysis. TechnologyI Felt a Great Disturbance in the Font. And the Margins.You don’t want to use Courier New and…
A great interview, on Adventure Classic Gaming. Was something like Adventure inevitable? That’s a tough question, but I think probably so. I’d say that the real wild-card here is not Adventure but rather Adventure‘s inspiration, Dungeons and Dragons. You just can’t exaggerate the importance of D&D to all of the many storygames that have followed it.…
A bit predictable, but still enjoyable. Similar:“The Cowherd Who Became a Poet,” by James Baldwin. (Read by Dennis Jerz)Inspiration can come to those with the h…BooksAmLit Rescue — Scratch GameA student in my “American Literature: 19…AcademiaDeath Comes for the Microbot — Flash Fiction by Aimee PicchiBee walked on six spindly legs to the sp…CultureVote for…
Wired has a good piece about the value of local reporting. “In every town in America, almost, you have reporters going out and doing humble jobs and turning over rocks every day and seeing what’s under them,” says John Carroll, the former editor-in-chief of The Los Angeles Times, a man who led his newsroom to…
And you thought the secrets to academic success would involve sensible stuff like “Study for two to three hours for every hour of class” or “Keep up with the readings” and “Meet all the deadlines your prof sets.” But those won’t help you game the system, which is the strategy Don Asher presents as the…
Clearly by “Them” the sign means “dogs,” but the since the sign refers instead to “Your Dog,” so it was already in need of some attention even before this alteration took place. Via Bryan Alexander. Similar:Why I Took My Kids’ Toys AwayMy wife is something of a hoarder. Now, …CultureBother (a minor Turnitin.com grademark bug)That…
The following started out as routine e-mail feedback on a freshman essay, but I thought it came out well enough that I might want to use it again. I don’t want this to get buried in my existing handout on thesis statements, so I figured I’d just post the good bits here. A good academic…
I missed this when it came out a few weeks ago. At Hopkins, Knudson uses Twitter as an extension of the classroom, asking students to raise questions, hold discussions online, keep up with breaking news and share links to interesting stories. She believes the limited number of characters allowed is a useful way to remember…
A website will re-create the 1969 moon mission in real time (allowing for the 40-year time lag). http://wechoosethemoon.org/ Similar:Omaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure each day Voilà, she is Billie Holiday, in a b…AestheticsAmerica’s Real Digital Divide If you think middle-class children are…CultureLen Deighton’s Bomber, the first book ever written on a word…
First, there is a general increase in use of Facebook and a general decline in use of MySpace across the board. In 2007, 79% of the study participants were using Facebook while in 2009, 87% of the sample reports doing so. In contrast, while in 2007, 55% of the group reported using MySpace, in 2009,…
She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer. “It was just really gross and it was shocking and…
Post office boxes! Post office boxes! My face hurts from laughing. New Live Poll Allows Pundits To Pander To Viewers In Real Time Similar:The girl performed musical commercials for a fund-raiser in the Laurel Highlands (and she …The girl performed musical commercials f…CultureHello, Dolly! (Apr 27, 28 & 29, Palace Theater, Greensburg)”65 kids from 15…
Older words also making their debut as a result of renewed interest online: sock puppet (a false identity used to manipulate opinions in online forums) and fan fiction. (Via Guardian) Similar:What are 'Judeo-Christian values'? Analyzing a divisive termblock of American society. But for crit…AcademiaThank you, anonymous donor of Mardi Gras candy.Okay, on closer inspection I…
The gradual, and almost invisible, transformation of many “liberal arts colleges” to more comprehensive institutions is similar to another gradual trend that has reshaped the composition and the work of the American academic profession. Over the past three decades, colleges and universities have replaced tenure-track faculty positions with part-time and full-time term-contract positions — a…