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:The Supreme Court could soon change the internet forever — here’s what you need to know There’s a history of case law protecting…Cybercultureink: Inkle's open source scripting language for writing interactive narrativeGearing up to…
The HD version actually came out better than I thought it would. More photos after the jump… Similar:Someone seems to have slipped this over my transom. Thank you, #foodsubstitutefairy whoeve…PersonalMy 13yo homeschooler had no idea how to open a little milk carton. I had to show her.CultureKLINGON STYLE (Star Trek Parody of PSY – GANGNAM…
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:A picture of puffy white clouds floating in a blue skyAestheticsMeet the guys who tape Trump's papers back togetherI tell this old newsroom tale to my stud…CultureFair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright caseFair use is a concept baked into US copy…BooksHarvard revokes admission of several students for posting "offensive" memesThe…
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:Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be publishedSome of my happiest memories of fatherho…AestheticsTwitterverse, are we grieving over coder droves now leaving? AmusingFinished Reading "Deathly Hallows" for the First TimeWhem my kids started reading the books o…BooksThe Sacramentality of Teaching and LearningFor the one-credit journalism class that…AcademiaWhy Were Old Video…
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:‘It’s destroyed me completely’: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI modelsOpenAI has already taken a toll on human…BusinessFamily…
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:Magnetic Scrolls Original Games Source Code Recovered!Here we have possibly the only surviving…CybercultureRaw Deal on Printer Ink”The ink we print with can cost more tha…BusinessIn September 1999 I was blogging about Tom Stoppard, techno-utopianism, voice-recognition …In September…
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:There is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer.I have so far resisted the jump to strea…BusinessPagers, Pay Phones, and Dialup: How We Communicated on 9/11For much of the day, those aboard…
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:In Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureStandardized Test Scores Don't Really Measure LearningThere are ways to raise a…
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…