Most small publishers only received letters from Google last week asking them to contact their out-of-print authors and let them know that soon their rights will revert to Google unless they “opt out” immediately. This gives small publishers two weeks to track down their writers, many of whom spend at least half the year in…
My class topic today was an introduction to oral presentations for a freshman writing course. The students had already given informal four-minute practice presentations earlier in the term, but they’re gearing up for a more formal presentation. So this article comes at a good time for me. The ability to give an engaging lecture doesn’t…
Another thought-provoking link from BoingBoing. Maybe the language is a bit alarmist, but that’s what gets the linkers linking. The Authors Guild — which represents a measly 8000 writers — brought a class action against Google on behalf of all literary copyright holders, even the authors of the millions of “orphan works” whose rightsholders can’t…
We Didn’t Start the Flame War. (Don’t listen to this one with urchins underfoot.) College Humor does not pull its punches when it satirizes (and celebrates) the depths to which human nature can stoop when participating in discussion threads. (My favorite bit is the Rick Astley impersonator, a reference to an internet meme of the…
An interesting introduction to literary Darwinism, from LiveScience.com: Carroll hypothesized that modern readers would gravitate toward protagonists who displayed pro-social tendencies or promoted group cooperation — similar to how ancestral human hunter-gatherers valued such behavior. He joined forces with another Literary Darwinist, Jonathan Gottschall, as well as two evolutionary psychologists on the study. Their online…
My daughter has a terrible time settling down for the night, so about a year and a half ago when she randomly asked me to tell her a story, I very lamely told her, “You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small…
I try to read to my kids for an hour every night — sometimes two hours, if we time everything right. Whenever I need about 20 minutes to do a load of laundry or make a phone call, I tell the kids “It’s time for the book game,” which involves each child picking a book…
The always-interesting Language Log offers this detailed and thoughtful analysis of gender and sports terminology. Here’s just a snippet: I’ve never seen man used to refer to a female athlete in an expression like “guard her man” or “I had my man beat”. Nor, for that matter, have I ever seen woman used in such…
There’s nothing terribly stunning or new in this interview with Steve Meretzky, but I’m happy to read his memories about the good old days of text adventuring. SM: It’s kind of hard to imagine, looking back on these text games now, but at the time, they were really the cutting edge–not just of games, but…
No comment. Just watch it. Two minutes well-spent. Via Kairosnews. Similar:August Wilson House officially opens in Pittsburgh's Hill DistrictThe August Wilson House officially opene…CultureRobot Dramas: Autonomous Machines in the Limelight on Stage and in SocietyA thoughtful overview of robots in cultu…AestheticsGoogle Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads Google said Wednesday that it stoppe…AcademiaHow to…
Spill-chuck rares it’s ulgy heed. The caption described a photograph illustrating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ General Conference, and it referred to the group’s “Quorum of Twelve Apostates” rather than “Apostles.” — Chronicle of Higher Education Similar:Rascals (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 7) Transporter glitch tween-ifies Picar…Rewatching ST:TNG A glowing Space…
And to think Charkes Kinbote had to make do with John Shade’s index cards… The influence of authors’ environments on their writing has always interested scholars. Marcel Proust, for example, is known to have been heavily influenced by the paintings he surrounded himself with when he penned the novel Remembrance of Things Past, between 1909…
The Huffington Post said Sunday that it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation’s economy…. Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said.…
My wife can’t stand computers, but she’s more than an honorary geek because she knows her classic sci-fi. She pegged this scene instantly. In this re-creation from “The Cage,” green-skinned Orion slave girl Vena dances for Captain Pike. Why does Elchesen put in the hours necessary to create such images? “The time involved depends on…
Ted Stevens was right…. The Internet is a Series of Tubes (techno remix). But the Parisian telegram system in the early 1900s and the American postal system in the mid 20th century had their own tubes, as Molly Wright Steenson demonstrates (in this example of Pecha Kucha, a genre of speech delivered with exactly 20…
My son watches, as a baby becomes totally engrossed with a pair of sunglasses, puzzling over how to get them on his face. The baby keeps manipulating the glasses, turning and twisting them in attempt to get them to stay on. “Look,” says my son. “It’s like his ‘Zork‘.” Similar:The amazing daughter is featured in…
People. This is serious. Is nothing sacred? Matt will play the character of Mondain Minax, a cyber-space explorer and weirding weapons expert who lives more in VR than RL. Minax is a member of the crew of the alien Sontarans space vessel Zero Wing (veQDuj’oH Dujllj’e’) which acts as a foil to the Stargate Universe…
Researchers quizzed 571 people aged 17 to 25 about their lives and found those who grew up with sisters were more likely to be happy and balanced.–BBC News Well, at least “Sisters appear to encourage more open communication and cohesion in families.” The words “make people happy” only appear in the headline. From another point…
A number in the news is no longer a cold fact, it is a killer fact, with all the murderous zeal that word implies. Journalists everywhere know the meaning of the phrase, the dagger of detail that runs the opposition through: the 23% up! The £16m wasted! The 140,000 children! For an example, try 271.…
Two police officers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been suspended and are having their employment reviewed following allegations that they dumped copies of The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper, that featured an article about the arrest of another police officer, The Boston Globe reported.– Inside Higher Ed Similar:Headphones, Croutons and RhetoricME (with crouton tongs…