The cuteness of a tribble, the temper of a mugatu, and the ham of a Shatner. Similar:Nellie Bly: A Race Against Time | Heinz History CenterOn Nov. 14, 1889, Bly waved goodbye to f…BooksShrek Image Mashup (Musical Theatre Promo)Hey, Tony. See this photo of Shrek? H…AestheticsTonight's Supermoon.AestheticsFeeling Like an Impostor at 49I reminded my Shakespeare…
I know that my bridge playset has long since gone to the big warp core in the sky, and I can’t seem to find the shoebox where I kept my original Star Trek action figures from the 70s. Even as a kid, I remember being frustrated that the playset didn’t really look all that much…
A masterful spoof of one of my favorite literary works, skewering a reference book I spent a lot of time with in my formative years.. ‘Tis hard to say, which promises more Loot:Writing, or Telling others how to do’t. — Geoff Nunberg Similar:I know stuff must be important to people who don't spend their evenings…
A serendipitous click on a link brought me to this striking example of storytelling economy in a news story. “Three flower cars, wow!” said a pilgrim from Wisconsin who was just about to chomp down on a chocolate cannoli from Mike’s Pastry yesterday morning. The cheesehead was momentarily spellbound by the stately procession of black…
A big part of my work as a freshman writing instructor seems to be convincing students that I really do mean it when I explain that Googling to “find quotes” to support an opinion you’ve already committed to paper is not the same thing as doing academic research with peer-reviewed sources. I also find that…
I dislike the term “digital native.” I mean no offense to Marc Prensky, who popularized it (along with its counterpart, “digital immigrant”), but the term is laden with colonial baggage, though as a humanities person I’m perhaps hypersensitive to that sort of thing. More important, the term also misses an important point. Today’s technologically savvy…
I recall deciding not to blog about an unpublished study that reported a correlation between lower grades and higher Facebook usage, though I did make a mental note of how some of the coverage was confusing correlation with causation. A recent draft manuscript suggested that Facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in…
While hiding from the stack of final papers, I took a break in the cafeteria. Some of my colleagues were talking about the new Star Trek movie, and the conversation shifted to what’s on TV now. My daily household duties include putting the kids to bed. My wife doesn’t really do mornings, and homeschooling doesn’t…
The grammar offered an irresistible linguistic challenge. Klingon is difficult but not impossible, weird yet totally believable. Anyone can put on a pair of pointed ears or memorize some lines of dialogue, but learning to speak Klingon requires genuine hard work. Most languages created for fictional worlds involve simple vocabulary substitutions, such as moodge for…
I’m sitting in the back of a meeting where the speaker has spent 40 minutes tracking down a technical glitch interrupting his presentation. Happily, the room has wireless access… Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom (aka Rogue), created in the early 1980s[1] by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman, is an intriguing game for many reasons.…
The U.S. government could provide tax breaks for newspapers or allow them to operate as nonprofits to help the struggling business survive, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday. — Reuters Similar:How Americans DieFantastic data visualization. How Ameri…CultureMSU asks faculty & staff to volunteer in short-staffed dining halls; @MSU_Football tweets …MSU, instead of asking your profs to…
A great little indie game by Daniel Benmergui. The game is also a poem. Today I Die Similar:Google's AI could probably beat you at AtariWhat’s significant in this story is not …CybercultureStarted Making a Journalism Game in TwineFor a long time, I’ve thought about crea…GamesAdding a little Middle-Earth drama to a photo shoot.The girl was…
His ear was severed by a sword wielded by his friend, the painter, Paul Gauguin, in a drunken row over a woman called Rachel and the true nature of art. Gauguin lied about the incident and fled, two German art historians now believe. Van Gogh covered up to protect his friend and was placed in…
Wonderfully technical discussion of interactive fiction programming issues, presented by Andrew Plotkin at Penguicon 7. Coding is art, art is code. As I write this, Inform 7 is approaching its third birthday. I7 is a tool for creating interactive fiction (text adventure games). Like all the most powerful IF development tools, I7 is a programming…
“We’re going to become a 24-hour, local news-gathering media company so we can more effectively gather content and distribute it among our different platforms: print, online and mobile,” [Baltimore Sun] spokeswoman Renee Mutchnik said. — Washington Times Reporters are reporting on how other news organizations are reacting to changes in the field of journalism. It’s…
Unicorns are much more fun when they move. It took about two minutes for my daughter to do the drawing, about an hour and a half to make the model (while my daughter played at my feet), and another two hours to make the animation (long after she was in bed). Similar:Public service announcement! If you are feeling…
Yes, that’s right, I’ve quit Facebook. After being a member for over three years–since its expansion to all colleges and universities in September 2005–I decided to deactivate my account. Why would I do such a thing? Hmph, funny you should ask. —Karissa Kilgore When I finally got around to joining Facebook about a year ago,…
Heard Any Good Books.mp3 (5min, 1MB) When pneumonia wiped me out for about two months in the fall of 2007, for several weeks I could do little more than lie on the futon and worry about the work I was missing. During the first week or so, when I still imagined it was just the…
This article from NCTE comes at a good time for me, since I’m scheduled to teach a “Writing about Literature” class in the fall. It’s a PDF (booo!). Of all types of writing, writing about literature may seem the least practical. Who apart from scholars and English majors analyzes poetry after the age of 18? Even book…
The St. Cloud Times gives retrogaming its due, with this profile of Matt Barton. The most common misconception about video gamers is that they are young teenagers who absorb everything negative that the most violent games offer. Matt Barton has another take. The 30-something English professor at St. Cloud State University considers himself to be…