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:Annoyed and Bored by Lazy Anachronisms in The Great Gatsby MovieI just watched the recent Great Gatsby m…AestheticsIn September 1999 I was blogging about Tom Stoppard, techno-utopianism, voice-recognition …In September 1999, I was…
The HD version actually came out better than I thought it would. More photos after the jump… Similar:Again with the @shu.pippinPersonalHappy Easter 2019 Current_EventsYou cannot serve both…PersonalLooking forward to more live local theater. (Support the arts!)PersonalBy the way, humans sent a robot to another planet, and the robot sent us the sound of a du……
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:In October, 2002, I was blogging about stupid space explosions, the superiority complex, w…In October, 2002, I was blogging about …CybercultureDeath Comes for the Microbot — Flash Fiction by Aimee PicchiBee walked on six spindly legs to the sp…CultureA Robotic Dog’s MortalityFascinating video journalism from the Ne…CultureThe Rhetoric of Anthems and the Drama of…
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&DÂ to all of the many storygames that have followed it.…
A bit predictable, but still enjoyable. Similar:"I don't view Shakespeare's work as intimidating anymore." — midterm reflection from coll… “It has made me more confident in my…AcademiaThe Little Girl from the 1981 LEGO Ad is All Grown Up, and She’s Got Something to SayGreat article featuring the little girl …BusinessThe Emissary (ST:TNG Rewatch: Season Two,…
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:Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…When I was working in radio news…
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:My son showed me Seven Samurai. I had never seen it before. Amazing!I’m going to have to watch this one agai…AestheticsBlender 2.8 Released. Please leave us alone together for a few days.I’ve been using the beta for…
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:‘Unexpected item’: how self-checkouts failed to live up to their promiseBusinesses still fret over these issues,…BusinessEnglish Is the Language of Science. That Isn't Always a Good ThingEnglish speakers tend to assume that…
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:Elderly ballerina hears familiar music from 50 years agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owb1uWDg…AestheticsThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (workshop premiere of a new musical by Greg Kerestan) I really enjoyed…
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…